Sep

26

Who Needs A Librarian?

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

September 26, 2007 |

A question that’s been asked often in recent years, even by some librarians, is, Who needs librarians? For that matter, who needs libraries now that we have search engines like Google? I made some points in an article I wrote several years ago titled Googling Libraries, about the way that all Internet search engines are essentially garbage in, garbage out, while libraries make a sincere effort to categorize and organize information in a way that makes searching easier, faster, and more reliable. As far as I know this has never been addressed, although search engines like Ask.com attempt to do something similar, and Yahoo used to attempt to organize web sites by topic. Don’t take my word for it, though. Check out this very clever short film introducing the Visual Resource Center of DePauw University Libraries:


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. James on September 26, 2007 3:05 pm

    If you got rid of libraries where would all the homeless people go when it was too hot or cold outside? Oddly enough some of homeless people I have met have been well read (seriously), but then again not well read enough to get themselves out of their situation.

  2. ycrswdtb ifnoj on October 24, 2007 8:49 am

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