Librarian: Dead Career Choice?
Like dinosaurs, librarians will one day become extinct. At least that’s what I have been told
repeatedly since I decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Library Science. Why
do you want to waste your time and money?
Librarians are a thing of the past.
Who needs a librarian when you have the internet? All of these questions and more are said
somewhere in the world on a daily basis.
As a new librarian/media specialist, I need to know how to respond to
these remarks not to defend my profession, but to actually perform my job as
the “gatekeeper” of information. The
people making these comments are ill-informed.
It’s my duty to set them straight; help them to understand. This is why I am posting this blog. I will
present to you today the evidence of why today’s tech savvy students still need
a librarian to guide them with their search for information.
Early on students learn to use google, yahoo, and nameless
other search engines, but do students know how
to use correctly and efficiently. The
answer is no! As an elementary teacher,
I saw quickly when a student had a research topic or question to answer; they
would type in the whole questions giving them thousands of search results many
of which were pointless. First of all,
students should know that there are two types of search engines: individual and
meta. An individual search engine only
compiles their own databases, while meta searches many different engines all at
the same time. Examples of individual search
engines are Google, Yahoo, and Ask. These
search engines scan all of the databases for keywords or phrases and come up
with a set of hits for the students.
Therefore, my poor misguided 4th, 5th, and 6th
graders who were typing a whole question were getting hit from every word in
their search query. I am sure they
thought they were searching the entire World Wide Web with each search, but
again they were wrong. They were only
searching within a fixed index within their search engine. Students
also need to know that no two search engines are the same. Again, each one uses a fixed index within
their own search engine. Therefore, a student could find different information
using a different search engine, because they rank the importance of each site
differently. Students may still be
learning about search engines and how to use them. Their media specialist can quickly show them
how to use multiple search engines to pull out relevant information for their research.
Now that a media specialist has explained an individual
search engine and its benefits to the student, what about metasearch
engines? A metasearch engine can search
many individual search engines at once. Examples of metasearch engines are
Dogpile, Mamma, and Vivisimo. This would be the quickest way to get the most
relevant results for a query. Once a
metasearch engine retrieves the results, it will display them either in a
single list with all the different search engines results merged together, or
it will create multiple lists without combine the different search
engines. One warning about the
metasearch engines though, they rely on the directories of individual search
engines for the results. It can only
pull up what others have already categorized.
Library media specialists can guide students to use this resource when
they are in a hurry, needing a quick overview of a topic, and/or just
researching a simple search with little detail.
Another way library media specialist can assist
students/patrons with their research is teaching them about subject directories. Subject directories are maintained by
editors. These editors will edit,
review, add, and delete items for the directory as necessary. With humans editing the pages, obviously a
subject directory will be much smaller than a search engine, but it will
contain the most relevant hits. There
are differences within the subject directory world. There are general directories, academic directories,
commercial directories, portals, and vortals.
Subject directories and search
engines are becoming very similar as companies begin to use both (such as MSN
search engine and MSN Subject Directory). A librarian would know that students and
teachers should use directories for more general information. Examples include: Beaucoup, LookSmart, Excite
(portal), and MSN directory (portal).
This is probably way more complicated than you thought at
first. Research is as easy as logging on
to a computer and type in a search, right?
You are beginning to see a small portion of what is out there and how an
educated media specialist is necessary to the success of the students and teachers.
We now dig deeper into ways to search for information. Gateways and subject-specific databases are
next. Gateways consist of library
gateways and portals. A library gateway
is a group of organized databases and informational sites. These are usually arranged by subject and
have been reviewed by librarians. A
subject based database (also known as vortals) are dedicated to just one
subject that has been created, organized, and maintained by a professor, a
specialist, business expert, etc… Examples of vortals are Expedia, Kelley Blue
Book, WebMD, and Educator’s Reference Desk. There is a large portion of the
World Wide Web that is called the “Invisible Web,” because many search engines
and databases do not find and index them.
However, many library gateways and subject specific databases are
pointing browsers in the right direction to find these items. Students and teachers should use gateways and
subject specific databases versus search engines when they are looking for very
reputable, high quality, specific information such as news links, archived
data, mailing lists, job finders, etc… These
search devices can be trusted due to the fact that they are developed by researchers
and experts in the field.
Just with old fashioned book research, not everything out on
the web is good information. Library
media specialist help students to evaluate the particular websites and web
pages they come across to determine if the information is valuable. First thing that a student should learn is
how to read the universal resource locator (URL). Here is a list of important things everyone
should know about web addresses:
http – literally stands for hypertext
transfer protocol, which means the format the information is in and how the
information is dealt with
www – Most people know this one stands for World Wide Web
(some websites are choosing not to use it anymore).
Part directly after www – second level domain name; usually
designates the server’s location.
.edu – educational site
.com - commercial business site
.gov – United States government site
.mil – United States military site
.net – network, internet provider
.org – United States non-profit
organization
.aero – airport industry
.biz – buisnesses
.coop – cooperatives
.info – commercial and noncommercial sites
.museum – museums
.name – individuals
.pro – certified professionals and
professional entities
.shtml - scripted hypertext mark up language
/ - the slash mark usually separates directory names
and subdirectory names, folder and subfolder names, and file names
Finding the
page authorship is a great way to check the authenticity of a web page. Usually a webpage ending in gov and edu can
be considered accurate information without checking the authenticity. However, net, org, mil and com domains are
pages where an individual or company can display any information whether it is
completely accurate or not. To check the
authenticity of the site look at the last date the page was updated, find a
link for comments and questions, and look for the name, address, telephone
number and email address of the page owner.
These pages are rarely reviewed, can contain bias, or be trying to convince
the reader of their agenda. Be careful
of fraudulent sites. The librarian can
help navigate the murky waters of the internet.
A student should make a plan of action before starting research. Knowing exactly what to look for, will help
the student with the they of research they do.
A student needs to know what defaults the search engine has in place
such as adding the word “and” or the word “or.” Search engines also contain stop
words (a, an, about, and, are, as, at, be, how, in, on, of, this, to, etc…)
These words could be ignored even if they are put into quotation marks. Librarians will tell anyone doing research
the following tips:
Be
specific
Use
nouns and objects for the keywords
Put
the most important words first in the keyword list and add a +in front of each
one to ensure they are all searched
Use
at least three words
Combine
keywords into phrases
Avoid
common words unless they are in a phrase
Use
words that you expect to find on the page as keywords
Write
down your search statement and revise it as necessary before you start
searching
Use
a – sign to exclude words
Use
quotation marks to search for exact words
Type
keywords in lower case and upper case versions
Use
truncations (also known as steming) to help find variations of words (example librar*
results in library, libraries, librarian, etc…)
Combine
+ - and “”
As a student/teacher/researcher have you heard of Boolean
logic and proximity operators? Again a skilled librarian does know these terms
and how they will affect research.
Boolean logic is named after British mathematician George Boole. Boole wrote about calculus of thought, which
in his mind was a system of logic to produce better results from searches. From these writing from the 1800s, the words “and,”
“or,” and “not” are used as to link together words and phrases for
searches. Using “and” will find results
with both keywords. Using “or” during a search will allow you to retrieve searches
with both keywords. Using “not” and “and
not” limits searchers to specific items without the other. Search engines do vary on whether these words
need to be capitalized, spaced apart, or allow the use of symbols + / -.
Researching can be a very tedious, daunting task. Electronic records and print records must be
organized in a way that they can be retrieved.
Usually they are organized into fields.
Websites contain fields for title, domain, host, URL, and link. Student can research by searching for
keywords in theses specific fields.
Research can be limited to specific sites such .edu, .org, and
.mil. If the student (or media specialist)
knows that the information is found on a specific site, the search can be
narrowed to just that host. The same goes for URL.
There are supports on the World Wide Web to help narrow
research such as Clusty (which searches
in Ask, GigBlast, LookSmart, MSN, Open Directory, Wisenut), Dogpile (searches
in Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN search, MIVA, Looksmart), and GigaBlast. Many of these resources are unknown to the
average user. Not all search engines last. Many are now history as newer, better designed
systems become available. The media
specialist’s job is to be aware of what is available, what is up to date, and
what the best choice is for that particular patron.
The overall point here is that regardless of technology, home computers, and easy internet access people will still need assistance navigating the massive World Wide Web. Research is still the same as it was hundreds of years ago: the search for information. Becoming a librarian is not a career death sentence!!! It is the chance to grow in my knowledge of information and where to access it. Students and teachers will always need someone to help them find information or want to know the easiest, fastest way to get it. That's what I get to do for a living!!! How about you?
Information
for this blog came from: http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml
