Librarians as heroes?

[altivo]

Well, the article may be a bit over the top, but still...

DesMoines Register columnist Mike Kilen declares "Librarians are heroes"

"We live in an information age full of experts. Call up a couple of Web sites, write a blog and join a long list of blowhards who just repeat the information they found surfing. A person who does the grunt work and finds the original, respected source of information is practically a dinosaur."

and...

"Think you're an expert, Googlehead? The Pew Internet and American Life Project did a survey earlier this year and found only one in six users of search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements."

--Columnist/Opinion page, October 23, 2005, DesMoines Register

Comments

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Well, instead of having not enough information, now we have too much..the job being now to sort the junk, static, and opinions from the real thing. You know, if I could change careers, Librarian would be right up there (I did very much enjoy working in the library as a page).

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Don't give up on the idea of changing careers. It can be done. :) I know quite a few librarians who did that well after age 30 or even 40. Library school in the US is only a one year master's program. You can do it part-time, one class at a time, in about three years. And a number of schools, including both University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Illinois at Champaign have distance learning (web-based) degree programs if you aren't close enough to a regular school. I recommend real classroom exposure if at all possible, but with motivation, distance learning could do most of it.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Now I'm picturing you with a cape.

I've long thought that whoever designed searching on the World Wide Web without involving librarians from the start did a real disservice to everyone.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

There was a librarian's project to do a better job. But the fact is, conventional library approaches cannot keep up with the growth and change rate of the web.

OCLC FirstSearch had an index called NetFirst that was a good first attempt. Sites screened and selected for content, indexed using standard topical subjects. I think they finally gave up and killed it, though.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

That's true, as fast as the Web grew, it would've fast outpaced any efforts to classify and organize it. Although there might've been a way to set up a basic system that would at least give broad organization to it. We'll never know, because the nabobs of the Web decided early on that ideas such as librarianship were The Old Way and this was a Brave New World. The computer can do anything! Except, of course, it doesn't, when people don't think to ask it to do things properly.

Now, the issues with all the static that lobowolf mentioned, they're something else entirely. Very much a royal pain at least, and destructive is probably not far off.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Destructive is right, but mostly because people are so incredibly naive and unthinking about the things they see online.

I've seen a lot of negative comments about Wikipedia lately for instance. And there is a kernel of truth to the criticism that says an encyclopedia made up of unjuried reader submissions can be questionable. However, many of the articles do cite original sources and can be validated if we choose to do so. It's a reasonable first line of recourse, especially for immediate topics, jargon, and new concepts, like "podcasts" for example, that won't make it into traditional reference sources for at least a couple of years.

People who can't tell the ads from the information sources on a Google search, though, deserve what they get. The scary thing about that is that a lot of them are probably leaders of government and industry and will make stupid decisions based on the garbage they pick up there.

I've been in the position, since the web first hit public consciousness back around 1994, of having to explain to classrooms full of college students about the intricacies of web searching and how important it is to filter the retrieved information and verify it for source and reliability. I have to say, sadly, that I could tell most of my advice was falling on deaf ears. Just as the convenience of fast food overrides any sense about nutrition, the convenience of fast "information" overrides any notions about quality.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

Everything I learned didn't come from Kindergarten...

It was from a librarian.

*does the "I'm not worthy" bow*

^_^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Aww, gee, no. If you weren't worthy we wouldn't have shown you anything. ;P

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

^_^

[corelog.livejournal.com]

*hugs ya warmly* I think you're a hero, sure and I do! :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I wish I were. I'd certainly be busy rescuing you and finrod7 and hgryphon and a number of others too.