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A number of years ago I was chastised (gently) by a language
and literature professor to whom I was explaining the wonders
of computerized database searching. I had emphasized that much
would change for librarians and researchers because computerized
database searching would become ubiquitous. "Yes," he
said, "I can see the changes already. You just used 'access'
as a verb!"
Indeed, I had lapsed into the common parlance of the early digital
generation. "Access" became as common as "prioritize;"
given the need to pare down verbiage in order to save on computer
memory, it was not surprising that nouns and phrases were transmogrified
into simple verbs.
I heard a young friend arrange to meet someone in DC, saying
they needed to "geographize." Now, Lauinger Library
offers the Geographic Information System (GIS) so that users can
correlate data with location. This is very useful in performing
demographic or market research, for example. But my friend merely
wanted to coordinate a rendezvous place and used "geographize"
to make the point quickly. While I had thought "geographize"
was another recent -ize word, I learned from the Oxford English
Dictionary that its first use dated to 1818, though in the context
of describing geography rather than of positioning oneself geographically.
But now many people invent their own versions of verbal shorthand,
once a word or concept is understood widely. Perhaps the best
example in today's parlance is "google." No doubt you
have "googled" yourselves to see what the world of
the web--insofar as Google™ is able to search it--says
about you.
Google™ as a search engine is very fast and presents hundreds,
thousands of results, across a variety of sources, to the general
user. Google™ Scholar, a product aimed at the academic community,
aggregates the results by format and shows links to libraries,
through OCLC's WorldCat, so that users can identify the location
of a work. With its "one-stopshopping" approach, Google™
is the search mechanism of choice for so many of our students.
Librarians know that any such engine can search the "surface"
web, but despite the billions of web pages that may be retrievable,
massive amounts of digital information will not emerge. There
are proprietary restrictions in the deeper, scholarly, less accessible
regions of the web that few freely-available search engines can
mine. This is why our library, at considerable expense, subscribes
to services that produce excellent results and assure our scholarly
community's access to the highest quality resources possible.
Google's™ latest project to digitize books from five of
the world's most prestigious libraries is a promising opportunity
"to potentially democratize access to information that has
long been available to only small, select groups of students and
scholars." [John Markoff and Edward Wyatt, "Google™
is Adding Major Libraries to its Database," New York
Times,
December 14, 2004, front page.] With about a billion dollars from
its IPO offering, Google™ is underwriting the cost of the
digitization.
Not surprisingly, librarians will be engaged in numerous and
lengthy discussions about the impact the Google™ digitization
project will have on our libraries and on our careers. But every
new instance of a technological revolution, it seems, only reinforces
the need for smart, service-oriented librarians to transport our
users through a maze of confusing information into a world of
wisdom.
I am reminded of the wonderful 1957 Katherine Hepburn/Spencer
Tracy movie, Desk Set, in which the new "electronic brain"
is pitted against the research librarians of a corporation. As
we were taught in that movie, the computer will be a supplement,
but not substitute, for a library's greatest assets-its collections
and its staff. A recent eloquent affirmation of the work of librarians
comes from a splendid article by Dr. William R. Brody, President
of Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Brody writes: "[O]ur library
has the most effective search engines yet invented-librarians
who are highly skilled at ferreting out the uniquely useful references
that you need…Massive information overload is placing librarians
in an ever more important role as human search engines. They are
trained and gifted at ferreting out and vetting the key resource
materials when you need it. Today's technology is spectacular
-but it can't always trump a skilled human." ["Thinking
Out Loud," The JHU Gazette, December 6, 2004. To read the
entire article, go to www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2004/06dec04/06brody.html].
Well said, Dr. Brody!
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