The Future-Ready Librarian: Getting current with new technologies to anticipate your users’ needs

Marydee OjalaEditor, ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals

Staying one step ahead Envisioning what users want before they tell

you Knowing your user base, their thought

processes, deliverables, preferences Their subject area

2SLA-SD Chapter, October 14, 2011

Explaining online 30 years ago Black box Carlos Cuadra’s survey Ability to see what others can’t Readiness to discard what doesn’t work


Fact: Everybody Googles Fiction: Everybody Googles well and always

finds what they want Information literacy


Google That it dominates is indisputable

SLA-SD Chapter, October 14, 2011 5

Personalization of all search results Everything isn’t all there is Instant claims to speed up searching Databases – books, finance, blogs, images,

video Constantly tweaking Killing off products –Labs, realtime, health,

wonderwheel, news timeline, image swirl, and others



Is this a benefit or a pain? Results updated as you type Fewer suggestions – now 4 rather than 10 Results limited to 10, regardless of how you

set preferences Predictive search – autosuggest,

autocorrect You can turn it off


Exact phrase (“ “) Wildcard in phrase (“ * “) Precision search (+) Search by voice, image Google now forcing you to search in basic

mode before can switch to advanced


Colorful home page (HTML5) Deal with Yahoo to power search

◦ But not in all countries◦ And not all verticals

Social – deals with Twitter & Facebook Updates at 6 month intervals




Site: Filetypes Date in left hand panel Other limits in left hand panel


Msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ ff795620.aspxaltloc: loc: lcontains: meta:feed: msite:filetype: near:hasfeed: noalter:inanchor: norelax:instreamset:literalmeta:


Search now powered by Bing◦ Same database◦ Same results

Verticals not powered by Bing◦ Finance, Blogs

Not in all countries


Or don’t Has become Q&A site


Blekko◦ Slash the web

Duck Duck Go◦ Devoted to privacy

Exalead◦ Demo for enterprise search

Qwiki◦ Hear search results





Yandex◦ Russia, has offices in Netherlands, USA◦ Invested in Blekko◦ Public company

Baidu◦ China◦ Fought with Google & won

AliBaba◦ China◦ Rumored to want to buy Yahoo


LinkedIn◦ Finding experts, employees, ex-employees◦ Look at answers to questions

Twitter◦ Real time news◦ Advanced search options◦ Archival search with Topsy.com

Facebook◦ Likes◦ Customer service


Proving that we know more than our clients Not being arrogant that we know more than

our clients Staying current so that we do know more

than our clients


Personalization – to deliver behavior driven ads

Emphasis on consumer search, pullback from advanced search features

Social signals for search Non-text search

◦ YouTube is second most-used search engine



SLA-SD Chapter, October 14, 2011

26


If there’s going to be a “Google killer”, it will be Google

Search is designed for the masses not for information professionals

More data visualization, better relevance, contextual search

Overlapping postings, duplications


More personalization - appeals to consumers not information professionals

Geolocation also skews results More emphasis on embedded multimedia Quality and relevance remain important Critical thinking


So many search engines to explore So many new things Exciting developments in search

technology Be flexible, open to new ideas, and brave Understand that it’s a volatile environment



Marydee Ojala Editor, ONLINE: Exploring Technology &

Resources for Information Professionals www.onlinemag.net [email protected]


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The Future-Ready Librarian: Getting current with new technologies to anticipate your users’ needs