Search methods, in my opinion, are how librarians will be used to the most in the future. If older librarians and new librarians are not aware of how to use their tools to the best degree, how will anything be found?
Saturday, December 13, 2008
A friend of mine earned her library degree in the late sixties. As the Internet was slowly added into the public domain, she took seminars to familiarize herself with the new technology. I was privy to a conversation between her and my immediate supervisor about search terms for the OPAC and search engines. The librarian in question said she always typed in a full question when searching and typed in every part of a title or author in the OPAC. From my experience, these tool do not react well to wordy phrases. The main conversation point was that she spent twenty minutes trying to find an item for a patron, but her methods weren't working. My supervisor, who had early Internet technology integrated in her library degree, was aware of only using key search phrases and leaving out stop words. The patron's item was found in a couple minutes.
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