Reading Assignment #4

The article “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google” is about how libraries and producers of databases are trying to work together to get students to see that there are unlimited databases available for research outside of Google. The article also talks about how “library professionals and [database] companies” want to figure out how they could be “more like Google” and become more or just as appealing and attractive to students. One problem that rose in the article was the fact that too many of the “larger database” providers are more worried about gaining “libraries business” than developing an interface that is more user-friendly for students. One solution was to come up with software that is easy to use and it produces “high-quality results” for people who are not tech savvy in using databases. Finally, the article mentioned how professors and librarians need to work together to force students to have to use higher quality material for the research papers that are written.

Libraries and producers of databases want to be more like Google in terms of being easy to use, but they also need to keep in mind that “you get what you pay for.” So, they want to be producers of high quality results, then of course it going to be a lot more costly because of the software they have to come up with and provide that will produce the best results. It just goes to the point that Google information is freely available to anyone that’s why a bunch of the results that are provided is crap. It is very few people that will give up information that they have worked hard on for free and place it on the Internet. I think the only way databases are going to attract students is if they make databases more user-friendly.

Steven J. Ball “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google”