"Swallowing a cuttlefish" while others "pirouette around"

Library Books Are OK, But Here's What Google Should Really Be Concentrating On

Well, the headline threw me once, and again. He's talking about Google Print, though he seems a little behind the news. In any case, he is making the case that Google is wasting resources digitizing old library books. I cannot agree with that. I agree that access to the deep, hidden or opaque web is something else we want and need.

"Web pages that are spawned on the fly from database queries, and/or are hidden behind the CGI'd, Session ID-URL'd moats of password-protected and fee-accessed Web sites." Frustration. Those "page cannot load" messages, et al. Some users are beginning to express the belief that if information does not turn up in Google within ten hits of one or two keywords, then it does not exist. This terrifies me.

I had to work hard on Saturday to convince an intelligent young woman that MPOW's subscription databases could get her more and better info than the big G on her search topic. I did convince her, and possibly made a convert. But I know she really just wanted to do it herself. Even though I was nice and helpful and showed her how to do it herself, it was clearly not the same. I think she will turn to a librarian next time she really gets stumped, but only if she has no other choice.

I do not want to be the user's last resort. We need to find ways to bring information to them, to be where the user is (as the OCLC 2003 Environmental Scan said), to make it feel more empowering. Google Database is a possible answer, if G can outmaneuver those damn pirouetters.

P. S. Library books are more than ok.