Librarians = Search Engines

In “Can Serendipity Make You Rich?” Malik outlines the current problems with information overload. Right now there is excessive information available to us online, (or at least available to those who have internet access). But despite whether or not each person has easily accessible internet connections, more and more information is available online. According to the article, ComScore market research reported that in the US in May 2008 there were over 10 billion internet searches. More and more people are looking for information online.

The author, however, raises the issue that these searches are not necessarily successful. Though billions of searches are being done, the information needs of people are not always being answered or not fully answered or not answered without extensive repetition. This is partly due to the exponentially increasing amount of websites on the internet. Malik wants to see what he calls the “Dolby of the Web.” The one company or organizations that succeeds by being able to “remove the noise and give us clear sound.” This, according to Malik, is the way for someone to rake in the big bucks. Because people do not have time to find all of the information they need.

My response to Malik is: Have you ever asked a librarian at the reference desk a question? I do not make any claims that librarians are all-knowing. In fact, we are far from. But I do think that we know how to find information pretty well, especially those of us who do it as our job. Malik is asking for a great big web librarian. I’m not sure if that’s possible through a search engine or other database, but then I’m not a computer engineering guru. I’ll go ahead and leave that up to someone else.

However, I will throw in my two cents about librarians. Librarians have been doing what Malik is asking for since the beginning of the profession: organizing information in order for people to find it. Especially with this most recent wave in librarianship, which focuses on the user and what the user needs, librarians have been trying to make the information organized in such a way that the user can easily access it. Because users are desiring to be more self-sufficient, librarians are trying to make our systems and OPACs more user-friendly. But even with all of these strides, this does not diminish the fact that librarians are experts in finding information. Malik’s article makes it seem that marketing this aspect of librarianship will be beneficial so that patrons or perspective patrons realize that librarians can find web information and we don’t just shush people.

Malik, Om. “Can Serendipity Make You Rich?” Business Week.com. (14 July 2008). 19 July 2008. <http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2008/tc20080712_675645.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech>