Library 2.0 (Week 6 #15)

The article by John Reimer (To Better Bibliographic Services) raises some valid issues regarding access to information in libraries. The days of a collection of physical materials contained within the walls of a library are long past. Information is now provided to our users through a wide variety of electronic resources. Access to these resources is generally handled by having to visit each resource or group of resources that may be provided as a package and searching each separately. If the users even knows that these resources are available, the process of multiple searches is cumbersome and time consuming. Providing access to electronic resources through entries in the library catalog is useful approach as the reources are then retrieved along with the physical materials in the library when a catalog search is done. This works reasonably well for individual items (ebooks, downloadable content, ejournals, etc.) but it does not provide access to the contents of resources such as online databases. Technology such as Z39.50 and federated searching helps with the ability to search across multiple resources but, in the end, multiple searches are still necessary. We are providing service to users who are used to doing Google and Yahoo searches and retrieving data from a wide variety of sources. Frequently a single search will return all the resources they need albeit much of it is of a questionable quality. Libraries must continue to move toward far more inclusive searching and recovery of information.