Michael Jensen's information eco-system
Saturday, May 6, 2006 at 09:48AM "Today, if something's not available digitally, it's rapidly becoming as good as invisible." Michael Jensen.
As a part of the College of DuPage's Library Challenges and Opportunities April 28, 2006 teleconference, "Google Book Search," Michael Jensen, Director of Publishing Technologies at the National Academies Press, listed a number of ways in which one type of information is becoming more valued than another by today's searchers. This is the list he shared:
- Free trumps cost.
- Open trumps firewalled.
- Easy trumps intricate.
- Fast sufficiency trumps clumsy quality.
- Integrated/linked trumps siloed.
- Findable trumps precise.
- Recommended trumps available.
- Updateable trumps static.
What Jensen shared is what a number of us see happening with K-12 students and their information seeking/using behaviors. They (and many adults, me included) are "satisfic-ing."
While Jensen is looking at information ecosystems through a scholarly publishing lens, we as school library media specialists need to be thinking about what this evolution means in regard to our programs and resources as well.
- Are our libraries/schools providing information resources that are "free, open, easy, fast, integrated, findable, recommended, and updateable" or "costly, firewalled, intricate, clumsy, siloed, unfindable and static?"
- Is there any reason to be buying print reference materials?
- How hard do we struggle against this evolutionary trend, working to put "quality" information into students' hands? Do we as librarians need to adapt to a new environment ourselves?
- Are we really committed to teaching the evaluation of information quality? Are we making any head-way getting teachers interested in teaching kids about evaluating the quality of information?
- Can we take the "risks" Jensen in his keynote (link below) suggests libraries must take if they are to successfully evolve?
Links to writings in which this topic is developed:
- Jensen's keynote to Illinois Association of College and Research Libraries on March 30, (referenced in the COD teleconference and a must read).
- Jensen's other papers and presentations
- What is Web 2.0 (Tim O'Reilly's seminal work which bears re-reading).
Reader Comments (1)
That said. I am SO with you on this. I am frustrated at the roadblocks the traditional information superstructure is putting in front of searchers. We will lose everything to Google et. al. if we don't deal with this. My vision is to have the full text of our collections searchable via our library catalogs. All our books need to come into our libraries in both print AND digital format. That way searchers can find the 3 or 4 pages in a book that are just right for their narrow information need - and then be able to take out the book (or download it to a reader) if/when they discover that they want to read the whole book.
The frustration with Google Book Search is that it searches such a vast array of books. It is overwhelming. If our school libraries could search the full text of just our own collections - we would offer a better service than Google. Our students would be searching a collection that has been carefully developed by a professional and tailored to their specific needs. They would be finding books suitable for their interests and reading levels - not wallowing around in a database so huge that it contains everything from primers to scholarly treatises. They would be far more successful in locating information of relevance to them without being drowned by everything in the universe.
And the user name/password maze that the databases create makes our students wonder why on earth they should bother when Google is so much easier. And who can blame them? I wish I had the tech know-how to solve this problem. I know that content providers need fair compensation. But - there must be a better way.
If we could make book searching and database searching as easy as Google - we would be our students' first choice. Ultimately they are interested in FINDING not searching endlessly. They would find what they needed much more easily if they could search books and databases in their school libraries using a searh interface as simple as Google.
Additionally - our catalogs could become interactive. People could write reviews. They could provide a "people who borrowed this book, also borrowed these books" feature similar to Amazon. Where are the catalog vendors who are working on this kind of interactivity? Any ideas?