Library Service, Part 2

March 19, 2005

I got a little wordy in the last post - apologies. A few other blog postings caught my eye tonight, mostly from others also talking about the challenges of providing better services and tools for our users. These are two from the OCLC gang that struck a chord with me…

1) Getting Thousands of Hits” - Ban This Meme

Yes, people get thousands of hits when they search Google, and they do because it’s easy. But, it is a convenient fiction librarians tell themselves that nothing of any use is found this way because of the abundance of information. It just isn’t true. I say so in the introduction to The Environmental Scan: almost all of the 250+ references in the bibliography were found using Google, using keywords. So, let’s get past this unhelpful “us vs them” mentality and work a lot harder at making the valuable information we curate easy to find.

2) Oregon State University
Lorcan highlights their vision statement, quoting the following…

In conversations with our key stakeholders, we have received a clear and unambiguous message about the expectations for OSU Libraries. In the future, the libraries will:

* be competetive with our peer institution libraries;
* be as easy to use as Google and other search engines;
* deliver information wherever and whenever it is needed; and
* take the lead in archiving and preserving digital information.

“This is an ambitious agenda, and makes it clear where the library needs to be.” Indeed.

Posted in Access to Information