Showdown: Google vs. the Cornell Librarians

Perhaps it wasn't quite the OK Corral, but when Cornell University's reference librarians recently decided to test their mettle against Google Answers, it was a showdown nonetheless. The librarians took the opportunity to "shift their focus from fearing the impact of Google as usurper

of the library's role" to examining what has made Google's service so attractive. Anne Kenney, Cornell's associate university librarian for instruction, research, and information services and director of programs for the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) published a paper outlining the study in the June issue of D-Lib Magazine (www.dlib.org/dlib/june03/kenney/06kenney.html ). "I think that librarians need to have a good sense of what the trends are out there and ways that we can improve our own services," Kenney told netConnect .

Google Answers, a service offered since April 2002, allows users the opportunity to submit questions that researchers respond to for a price. The service most closely resembles email reference services. In the study, Cornell librarians fared better than Google's staff—but only slightly. And that, Kenney notes, may be a good thing.

Kenney says that not only can studying Google Answers help librarians better assess their own service but may provide the opportunity for librarians to focus on what they do better than Google. "If, for instance, an outside provider can adequately address simple reference questions at one-fifth the cost of doing so in-house, why duplicate the service?" If reference librarians can free themselves from more routine tasks, they can focus on "aspects of complex information discovery at which they excel."

Kenney says response to the study has been eye-opening. "One of Google Answers researchers wrote a nice letter indicating that while there appeared to be such a great divide between librarians and Google, in fact it's an artificial one, because we're all in the same business." Kenney says that, no surprise to anyone, many of the Google researchers are, in fact, librarians.

From librarians, however, reaction was mixed. "One person, a Ph.D. student in California, considers us the devils incarnate for misrepresenting what reference librarians do," Kenney recalls. "While another, a faculty member at Syracuse, is making the paper required reading." Such responses indicate that the study has touched a nerve, and Kenney says Cornell librarians are gearing up to study reference issues further.