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> Michael Gorman, President of the American Library > Association, recently wrote a > Los Angeles Times op-ed piece about digitizing books for Google: > > "Hailed as the ultimate example of information retrieval, > Google is, in fact, > the device that gives you thousands of "hits" (which may or > may not be relevant) > in no very useful order. Those characteristics are ignored > and excused by those > who think that Google is the creation of "God's mind," > because it gives the > searcher its heaps of irrelevance in nanoseconds. Speed is of > the essence to the > Google boosters, just as it is to consumers of fast "food," > but, as with fast > food, rubbish is rubbish, no matter how speedily it is delivered." When librarians start talking like this, I worry about the future of their profession. Ite reminds me of a talk from the technical director of Kodak in the late 80s explaining why chemical photography would always be superior to digital. When did he last ask the average knowledge worker (like me) about the effectiveness of getting information from Google versus getting the same information from a library? Michael Kay http://www.saxonica.com/
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