In the latest issue of Library Journal, Steven J. Bell shares his disappointment with librarians for participating in a Google infomercial. While I don’t agree with all he says, he did bring up some things that hadn’t occurred to me – things I probably should have thought of.
When I first saw Google’s video highlighting four librarians promoting Google by talking about how they use it with their patrons, my first reaction was “hmmm, a little strange”: a movie supposedly geared towards librarians (it was a feature at the ALA conference) which describes how Google can be used for patrons’ benefits. Strange because most librarians I know already know about these fancy gadgets. And then, without thinking further on it, I continued surfing…
Steven’s article gave shape to my first reaction:
After all, what librarian needs to be informed that Google is a great search engine for helping sixth graders find transcripts of TV shows? With an infomercial, I can quickly ascertain the target audience. But just who did Google have in mind when it created this program? A Google booth attendant told me the movie would be added to Google Video and that it might be on display at other professional conferences, leading me to believe that Google would eventually use this movie to promote its product to the masses.
He goes on:
Used as a promotional tool for the general populace, i.e., our patrons,
the movie portrays librarians as unabashed promoters of Google as the
one and only best discovery tool, when our top priority should be to
promote to our communities the incredible range of information options
from which they may choose.
We should be careful about our public image and the corporations we may promote. And I would like to see a more balanced video delivered to the public that shows librarians talking about EBSCO, RSS, podcasts, Google, and all the other cool tools that are available in the library (both physically and remotely).
But I guess in this case, I don’t take the Google video too seriously – after all, there are some benefits. If the general public does see this video, they’ll probably be surprised – after all, aren’t librarians supposed to be kind of old, hair in a bun, hiding behind spectacles, saying “shhh”? Librarians certainly aren’t exactly what you’d call techno-saavy, right? A video like this at least helps to squash that image. Let’s face it: the whole world seems to think Google is cool – if librarians sing its praises, maybe the whole world will have more faith in us and think about using libraries and librarians in their quest for information.
But let’s take up Steven’s challenge and outdo Google: let’s make a better video highlighting all, or at least, some of the many tools we use. In that vein, check out David Lee King’s video.
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