Chat Room: Going Gaga over Google

Yeah, it's easy to get a Google logo and search box from www.google.com to put on your site. But think about the message you're sending. When students arrive at your home page, instead of being directed first to your catalog, databases, or a list of recommended Web sites that are ideal for their assignments, they immediately see a link to Google. You're saying, in effect, "Sorry, the library can't really help you. Instead of visiting our site, why don't you visit Google and poke through its 3,083,324,652 Web pages on your own?"

This is not what librarians should be telling the students and teachers they serve, and I said so in an article that appeared in the summer 2003 issue of NetConnect, a supplement of School Library Journal. Almost immediately, I received an e-mail response from Mary Dagold, a librarian at the Edith Hamilton Library at Bryn Mawr School, a private school for girls in Baltimore. If you visit her library's site (http://library.brynmawrschool.org/edith.htm), you'll notice that there's a large link to Google displayed prominently on every page. Dagold believes that Google is a fact of life. "Our librarians are fully aware that Google is our students', our faculty's, and sometimes our own first choice to find information," she says. It is so much their first choice, adds Dagold, that its ubiquitous presence is unavoidable.

When she created the Hamilton Library's site four years ago, she told me that she had felt as I did. Google and other search engines of worth were available, but from the second page. By the time she redesigned the site during the summer of 2002, she knew that things had to change. Many students just signed into their own accounts, went directly onto the Internet, and thus never visited the library's Web site at all.

Dagold says that she and her colleagues at Bryn Mawr are no slouches when it comes to teaching her students information literacy skills. "We do a tremendous amount of teaching about our leased databases, and we encourage the use of periodicals through our pathfinders and lectures. By the time our students go off to college, they understand directories, they can search fairly sophisticated databases (example: ProQuest and its Historical Newspapers), they have used JSTOR and Project Muse and gotten a taste of a scholarly journal. They know what a refereed publication is, and they know that Google is not the answer to life. It's still handy to have close to hand, however."

I agree that it's good to have Google nearby. I use it frequently myself, although I prefer to begin at the "Advanced Search" page to hone my search to a sharper point. But I still don't think having a Google search box occupy the most important piece of real estate on your home page is the best way to persuade students to use the library's online resources. If you want to see an example of a Web site that does a terrific job promoting its own unique resources, visit the University Laboratory High School library's site (www.uni.uiuc.edu/library). Run your cursor over the names of the resources at the heart of the home page to see a description of each in language that even students who haven't been paying attention can understand. A smaller link to search engines sits on the left.

I wrote Dagold back, telling her that if she feels that there should be a link to Google on every page of her site, well, okay. But does it need to be so big—bigger than the links to the catalog, databases, and just about everything else on the site? "Theoretically, I concede that Google should be underplayed," replied Dagold. "[But] after observing hundreds of students (and faculty) in action, I changed my mind. Everyone starts with Google except librarians. So the prominence is not an accident, but a tip of the hat to the real world."

Is it true that almost everyone heads straight to Google? If that's the case, I fear for the future of school and community libraries. If we aren't promoting our own high-quality resources with real enthusiasm, who else will?