I am constantly surprised by the amount of *things* Google does. I enjoyed playing around on Google books and wasted spent some time searching and narrowing my searches using their advanced search box (such a librarian, I know..). I also was amazed at Google translate as I had only vaguely heard about this site, but had not played around on it. I typed in my blog's URL and then translated the page from english to spanish - just because I could!
This site has great potential for explaining information about the library's services and resources to multi-cultural patrons.
I read somewhere - can't remember where - about people being afraid of Google's domination in our online lives. I guess this is where we as librarians need to be able to step up to the plate and teach digital literacy skills that equip our customers to critically think, live and learn in an online environment, I know of many libraries that do this already. I like this quote that I read in an Educause Journal about digital literacies:
Ironically, while some see the profusion of realities as threatening to us, to our children, and even to democracy, the new media is nothing if not simply another way of viewing our world, of interacting with one another, of opening ourselves to learning in realms of possibility we never conceived of before. In our development as higher-order thinkers, multiple realities are far less important to our survival than our ability to understand what we see, to interpret what we experience, to analyze what we are exposed to, and to evaluate what we conclude against criteria that support critical thinking. In the end, it seems far better to have the skills and competencies to comprehend and discriminate within a common language than to be left out, unable to understand.
PS - I am updating my post with my response to a comment on this post. 'Quite ironic really that I completely forgot to include google as a search engine, google reader, You tube, blogger and google scholar. Just goes to show how completely integrated they are within my life that I didn't even think to include them!'
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Thanks for this interesting and thought-provoking blog post! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm currently reading Planet Google by Randall Stross - a fascinating look at where Google has come from, what it has accomplished, and the positive and negative aspects of its increasing expansion into our online lives.
I too have more Google in my life than ever before - I use the search engine, Google Scholar, Gmail, Google Reader, YouTube, Chrome, Google Translate, Google Sites and now Wave. Coming to grips with Google Maps is my next online 'task' :)
I try to use alternatives when I can, but I'll use the Google versions if they are better or offer useful features (eg. I used Babel Fish for years, but have recently switched to Google Translate because the translations are cleaner).
I think it's important, as you say, to keep on scanning the online environment - both for useful tools that we can use and to know what our clients are using. For example, I can extol the benefits of library-provided news service subscriptions, but I look like a bit of a dill if my client says he uses Google News instead and I don't know anything about it! In that sense, I guess we need to understand our competition too :)
Sally.
Thanks for commenting! Quite ironic really that I completely forgot to include google as a search engine, google reader, You tube, blogger and google scholar. Just goes to show how completely integrated they are within my life that I didn't even think to include them!
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