Librarian: Dead Career Choice?

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 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th 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