Hi Jim It's these statements which I find most contentious, and certainly don't reflect my experience - switching to keyword searches as default has either failed to register in statistics of use as especially popular (i.e. presumably people switched to title browse searches, despite the default), or resulted in outrage from the users upon introduction in another institution.
People like Google searches, but only when they work well. Google itself often does work well, but many "google-like" databases and search engines don't neccesarily cut the mustard so well. Furthermore, there is a difference between seatching for "whatever there is" and looking for something in particular: Once it's known what is actually desired, browse searches are inevitably preferable, and often (justifiably) preferred. Google works better than most keyword based search engines on defaulting to a browse like specifity when that is relevant, but even there, you can lose even exact hits in a slew of less relevant hits very easily. And numerous library meta-search engines struggle to match it in their efficiency, unfortunately. But the "Google effect", myth or no myth, continues to be used as an excuse to, well, not bother, at the end of the day, based on the dream that keyword is king - whereas a better way of looking at it would probably be it's a particularly popular fruit, even if people get sick of all the pips.... But still end up buying because it's the only one that's sold in all the shops, or even because they don't know there are so many other fruits...... Cheers! Martin Kelleher Electronic Resources/Bibliographic Services Librarian University of Liverpool -----Original Message----- From: Resource Description and Access / Resource Description and Access [mailto:rd...@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim Sent: 03 September 2010 08:59 To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA Subject: Re: [RDA-L] Time and effort "and that the traditional way is not even of primary concern with our patrons today; in fact, even the very concepts of the traditional methods are becoming more and more removed from the experience of younger patrons. My evidence for this is that people genuinely like Google-type searching and databases, and it is *impossible* to do anything like the FRBR tasks in those databases. They prefer these methods to ours. Therefore, to maintain that the public wants and needs the FRBR tasks is illogical and untenable." "Once again, I shall state that *I do not know* how people search information and how they use it. I have noticed tremendous changes in my own patterns, and what I have witnessed from people I work with, it is also very different. Since I understand how traditional access methods work, I can also see that these new methods are lacking in many ways (e.g. not even any decent author searches??), and in the hands of people less trained, these new patterns can lead to incredible confusion and frustration."
