In defense of stupid users
When I read Todd Miller's article: In Defense of Stupid Users in the March 15th issue of Library Journal I immediately made copies, distributed them to some of my colleagues, and hung one up next to my computer monitor. I was thrilled when someone brought it up on Web4Lib last week, generating far more responses than I could possibly process. This is exactly what libraries should be doing, should be thinking about. Searching, once the near exclusive domain of libraries, is now in the hands of the end user. It's a do-it-yourself age, we pump our own gas, check out our own groceries, it was only a matter of time before the civilians wanted to do their own searching- thank you internet. Now, with Google and its ilk, our users have *gasp* expectations of their information professionals. More and more everyday are looking at Google and looking at libraries and deciding that Google is giving them more satisfying results. We can holler about it all we want about credibility and exhaustivity but they're voting with their feet. What are they saying? They're willing to sacrifice things like credibility and exhaustivity for a simple interface and a do-it-yourself platform. But why should they have to? We could give them both.
I know it's tough. All the decades our profession has spent developing controls and sophisticated search algorithms. It's really hard to contemplate abandoning them. I don't think we have to, we just have to move them behind the scenes, call them good enough, and refocus our energies on reaching interface consensus and natural language searching. It's a big job, but exciting. I don't know about you, but I'm putting down my jelly sandwich and getting to work.
