There seems to be brouhaha a brewing between Librarians in favor of Google Answers and those who are not:
Jay writes in response to two of my recent posts: “It seems to me that the best way to promote librarians is to work with Google and expand the Google Answers program. Many people don’t know about Google Answers and the services seems ill defined. But a good start.”
Promoting Google Answers isn’t a good start for librarians. Google Answers competes directly with librarians and libraries and the services they provide. (Yes, some librarians work for Google Answers, but that’s a different discussion.)
1. I've used the online research service offered through my own library (contracted through www.247ref.org ?) a few times. It's an interesting (okay, it's lame as hell) combination of chat-room + frameset, with a live human delivering web pages to my screen. To be perfectly honest, i can Google better than she did... I wanted an answer to a very specific question, not a collection of more/less related webpages... Maybe i'm missing something...
Posted at 4:40PM on Oct 29th 2005 by Marty