At work I frequently have people ask me where they can find information on many different subjects. Although I work in a medical library with a great clinical medical collection I am still surprised that people use Yahoo! or Google for "answers".
Thankfully the majority of our patrons know to use PubMed or one of our subscription databases such as Ovid or MDConsult to do research, but some people still don't get it.
We refer almost everyone to our catalog where there is access to journals from EBSCO & Elsevier, among others. Don't get me wrong. I use Yahoo! and Google to search for many things...but the longer I work in a library the more I understand these search engines do not have all the answers!
I steer people clear of wikis as I don't think they can be trusted to find true, reliable information. After I inform people of the "dangers" of a wiki I demonstrate reputable sites for them to visit. LII.org is good source, as are encyclopedia.com and Encyclopedia Britannica.com (although one has to pay for this resource). If someone needs statistics I think the Center For Disease Control (www.cdc.gov) is a great one as it contains more than just medical statistics and facts.
Library employees are there, in part, to guide patrons to the appropriate resources for their needs and we need to know the pros and cons of various resources to better inform them.
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1 comment:
Very well said! I, too, am surprised at how hard it is to teach someone that Google is not always the answer. As a major Google-fanatic, that is a hard thing for me to say, but it is true. Good observations!
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