June 20, 2004 8:25 AM PDT

Libraries try to fit into a Google world

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Librarians have increasingly seen people use online search sites not to supplement research libraries but to replace them.
The New York Times

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Google and the deep web
Many librarians make it sound like it is Google that is at fault for failing to index the hidden web pages. Google would love to access this matereial but it is prevented from doing so either by barriers put up by the very people doing the complaining. Many humans like to protect and limit access to the information they have. They like to be important. If they can force others to come to them, the gatekeeper, to access the information then it strokes the ego and satisfies a basic human need.

An interesting follow up article would be interview the gatekeepers that block tools such as Google from indexing their records. Why do they do this? Is it a lack of resources, servers, and bandwidth. Or is it a hoarding of information, or something else?
Posted by (1 comment )
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It's not a matter of blame
To me, it just sounds like libraries and librarians (and the people
to the do the budgets) are expecting Google to be all things to
all people.

A whole year's worth of Law Books are EXPENSIVE. A subsciption
to Lexis/Nexis allows one to search all of them and immediately
see the latest information on how the case law has been applied
without having to search through updates. I don't think Google
could afford that even if they went to popup ads.

Also, the databases I use for technical journals have a lot of full
articles on line in PDF form and my University library does have
to pay to access them.

Intellectual property costs money. Writers of books and journals
should be compensated. Just because it can be placed on line, it
doesn't mean it should be free. Maintaining a database of 100
years of a psychological journal costs money and it's not
unreasonable to expect these companies to limit access to the
CPU intensive searches they allow with certain contracts.
Posted by (2 comments )
Link Flag
Current Student. Much more than Google Available!
As a current University student, I do tend to use on-line
searches, but rarely do I use Yahoo or Google. I log into our
University's system and use the different Journal databases that
are out there.

I can sit in class and if a VERY specific issue comes up in
discussion, I can connect to the wireless network, log in to the
library, and then search a database I use ERIC quite a bit) and in
many cases find PDF documents that might only be a month old
on the latest research on that issue. The majority aren't in PDF
format yet, but even if the information I want is 50 years old or
more, the database points me to the correct volume and a
second automated search lets me know if we have it in house or
if I need to request a copy from interlibrary loan. If it is in
house, I just need to walk to where the bound copies of the
older journals are (or to the exact placy the current issues of the
journals are) and make a copy.

Most of this information is NOT available on Google, and I can't
imagine relying on it for major research. I use Google a lot in
my spare time, but it's to find 'Aunt Mary's" web page or Froogle
to find a good price on something I want to buy.

An attorney doesn't rely on Google, their searches would be on
Lexis/Nexis. It's the same thing for any specialized research.
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