CIL2009: Achieving the Dream to Go Green

John Law, ProQuest
Maria Gebhardt, Broward County Library

John Law:
How do you follow Google? Providing a high-quality library search experience

They did a bunch of research … trying to understand how people do research, and how libraries factor into that

He claims people percieve the library to be great, but actually use google, etc. That slightly differs from the OCLC study (ie., users don’t think about us). Aside – This is a proquest guy wanting to make sure libraries continue to buy ProQuest products.

Google – easy, simple, fast

Library – confusing, clumsy, slow

Existing options for getting to library content – library catalog, eresources (article databases), google/google scholar, etc

Better navigation won’t solve the problem …

I think he’s making the argument that google is fast and finds stuff, but doesn’t have the best stuff, while the library has better things, but hard to use. I’m not sure I buy that part about Google. Google finds actual good stuff – I’ve talked to librarians that do telephone reference – they told me 85% of their questions are answered via a google search.

Me – don’t hate google – instead, learn to use it.

Now he’s introducing us to Summon – some new product…

Maria Gebhardt:

Focused on their customers – surveyed them, found out what the wanted and what they’re really using

They used print, web, in person, and impromtu versions of their survey

website and impromtu worked the best

Made an enewsletter – it won an award. Wow – it had a TON of text on it!

And I needed to leave early, so notes are done for today!