The Google Opportunity

Librarians just need to look at the latest announcements from Google to see why the Chinese character for change is the combination of the characters for danger and opportunity. In the past 18 months we've seen the arrivals of Google Scholar (see "Google in the Academic Library," Online Databases, p. 32), Google Print, Google News, Google Alerts, Google Deskbar, Google Desktop Search, Google Library Digitization Project, Google Suggest, Google Local with Keyhole (maps), Google Gmail, Google Orkut, Google Picasa (digital photo organizer), and on and on. For two years Google has also been snapping up new technology companies—from blogging software to a global positioning system—while also investing in Baidu, China's largest search engine. These changes are altering the world in which we work and, some fear, even threatening our profession and institutions.

Google has staked out an extremely strong position in the mind of the information seeker. For advertisers, Google's new services are designed to deliver the advertising sweet spot: the demographic where buying habits are still flexible. For users who cry out for online discussions, communities of practice, group and individual blogs, and connections through social networking software, Google already offers Blogger, Google Groups, and the new Orkut beta, already a pretty advanced social networking tool.

Google Print, which searches book content, is larger than most library collections. With library partners, Google is digitizing all or part of the collections of the University of Michigan and Stanford University, as well as specific collections from other libraries.

Public librarians should keep their radar on the search engines'local search initiatives. If librarians value their communities and foster deep attachments to branch neighborhoods, then they should see what can be experienced at MSN, Yahoo! Local, and Google Local. Where's the library?

Google has accomplished a lot in five years and now has the infusion of capital to accomplish more. Can libraries compete, complement, or cooperate? Or will we lose out? It's still our choice, but not for long. Here are ten key things your institution, your library, and you can do in a Google world.

1. Reposition the librarian Vastly more information is used outside the library than in libraries—and most of it is now virtual. Recognize that librarians' and library workers' key contributions aren't merely collecting, organizing, and delivering the information—it's improving the quality of the question.
   We must find the path that places the library's programs and people at the center of the question space. That's different from the "search" space. Here, more time is spent on finding and understanding than searching. We see tools to support this effort in technology and services from Tutor.com, Docutek, OCLC's QuestionPoint, or simple instant messenger applications. We must ramp up information literacy training to levels we have not imagined.
2. Know your market Our communities are changing. It's not just understanding standard census data on ethnicity, incomes, and homes with children. It's about changing consumer values, and libraries are a consumer service at their core. Unfortunately, our neighborhoods and kids are evolving more quickly than we are. Society is more diverse on almost any measure, whether it is language, values, lifestyles, information skills, and more.
   We must become familiar with the huge new range of market and business analysis tools, including GIS Mapping tools and OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing). OLAP is a software tool that allows managers to gain insight into data (like all library use statistics, from internal measures to the OPAC to web use) in real time and through multiple points of view. Then we must derive insights, like trend analysis, from this information mining and act on it.
3. Rethink the repository Libraries are making great progress on this front. Using tools and pilots, such as OCLC's CONTENTdm, DSpace, Sirsi's Hyperion, JSTOR, Project MUSE, just to name a few, we have created amazing vaults of content. Let's do more. We must keep our eyes on open standards and open archives projects like OAIster.
   We should closely watch the Internet Archive project and its potential to create an open archive outside of private ownership. We should maintain a sharp focus on building the repositories that meet our core missions and not just converting the "popular." We must make sure that we are not creating content islands and are respecting users' access skills.
4. Push content out People aren't magically aware that something that might interest them is newly available. Libraries need to get better at serving these needs with such tools as alerting services, blogs, and RSS feeds and aggregators. These tools are cheap and easy. Let's get more one-on-one with these services and delight our users as individuals and not just as market segments. While we're at it, make sure they know that it comes from their library.
5. Get on the bandwagon early When you experiment, you become expert as innovations hit their stride. We should experiment more with pilots in specific areas—such as the adoption of new browsers like Firefox or Opera that offer some hope for browser "biological" diversity and will reduce our exposure to the spam, virus, and spyware wars. I'd love to see libraries riding the crest of the e-learning wave; there's development money here, and libraries are integrally tied to continuous and institutional learning. We should also experiment with ethical P2P file sharing and streaming media architectures in preparation for the new generation of files that hold information and cultural objects.
6. Invent targeted search The days of little boxes and just basic and advanced search and display are so last century. Users will demand search and display options that match their needs and information literacy levels. Display results will evolve beyond simple ranked lists—and libraries have the opportunity to offer ad-free results! Technological solutions such as those presented by Convera, Northern Light, Vivisimo, Endeca, Sirsi Rooms, and Anacubis's TouchGraph offer insights into the future of specialized search and display.
   We also have to get search down to the context of the question. Users shouldn't have to search the entire universe of knowledge in a single commercial engine. Nor should they have to search dozens of repositories serially. We should offer users the ability to search just the content sets that match their needs and literacy levels. Federated search technologies and link resolvers provide solutions to address the context of users' needs.
7. Lead the wireless revolution We must follow the lead of wireless scholarly campuses; public libraries like those in Philadelphia, Chicago, Edmonton, and Fredericton that are involved in citywide wireless projects; hospital libraries with their great PDA-based information services; and businesses with their Blackberry applications. Communities of all kinds must have information when and where they need it, not just during our hours or at PC stations. How do we make the library's community web page the default on our community wireless hot spots?
8. Get into the community With the wireless revolution and ubiquitous computing technologies, we have an opportunity to spread the library's tentacles throughout the community. Let's move collections into the places where they are needed and can be used and support diverse communities by shifting collections throughout the system to ensure variety. Can we create great alliances among schools, community centers, and public libraries? We have, and we can do better. Can we make ourselves and our services highly visible in our communities? Yes, we must.
9. Make the library discoverable What happens when you search for your library on Yahoo!, MSN, and Google? Your web site is there, right? On the first page of results? Good! What happens when you search for a book in your collection on Yahoo!, MSN, and Google? What happens when you search for one of your services or a special repository or local collection? Are you still on the first three pages? Use the techniques of an SEO (search engine optimizer) to ensure that your web site is not only registered to be crawled by the major search engines but that you use the right words to be picked up properly. There are ways for your users to find your library and its services—even if they don't know what you offer or that you even exist. If we want to survive we must place our messages where the users are seeking answers and will trip over them. Today, that usually means at Yahoo!, MSN, and Google.
10. Build context first Libraries serve many communities in many sectors. This is our context. We improve the quality of questions, organize the world's recorded knowledge and culture, and deliver the right content experiences for our users. But, overall, we live in the context of our users.
    We don't create that context; our users arrive at our service points with their context fully blown and intact. It is basic to our profession that we understand deeply the communities we serve. We need to empathize with users' goals, psychological needs, and competency levels, no matter if they come in virtually or not. We must ensure that the user doesn't get too much content, too little context, and too few librarians.