Making “E” Visible

This summer, I helped a Yale grad student writing her dissertation on African American life in the Chicago suburbs. We spent hours adjusting microfilm, photocopying census records and city directories, looking for oral history collections, retrieving digitized Chicago Tribune articles, and more.

One day she came over to show me a wonderful new online tool she'd discovered that let her search through thousands of scholarly articles and print out the full text. She was referring to Google Scholar. “Isn't this great?” she asked happily, as the titles of thousands of articles scrolled across her screen. I pointed out that almost none of the pages she'd retrieved actually provided the full text for free, that she couldn't search by subject terms or in the article abstracts, and that she could search by author but not sort articles by author or date. She was undeterred: “But this covers so many sources! Where else could I find this much in one place?” she exclaimed. I showed her the hundreds of online sources available at the Yale library web site, including an African American newspapers database and historical databases for national newspapers. She had never seen or used any of these before.

My sister-in-law, a freelance tutor who works with troubled kids in New York, was in the throes of SAT prep season. “These tests change so often,” she groaned. “All the test prep guides I bought are out-of-date already.” I asked her if she'd tried the public library. “Oh, their books are way too old,” she said. I pointed out that the New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library both provide their cardholders with paid subscriptions to an online test prep service. No one in her tutoring program had ever used the resource.

At a Morningstar party during a recent conference, a youthful library school student who lives in my town and I were bemoaning the invisibility of libraries to most online surfers. “People keep buying all these pricey online services when they could be getting the same material from their libraries,” I remarked, sipping a chardonnay.

“I know,” he agreed. “What are people thinking? I mean with something like Morningstar it's different…no one's going to be able to get that from a library.” I swallowed and pointed out the library does subscribe to Morningstar online. Confused, he explained that he pays for the premium edition because he needs 24/7 access. He was devastated to hear that the library provides 24/7 remote access to the exact same material he'd been paying for monthly.

Why are smart, well-educated, otherwise well-informed people so glaringly ignorant of what their libraries offer in the way of online research? And what are we doing about it?

Missing the mark

Actually, librarians think they are doing a lot about it. Go to nearly any public library's web site, and you'll see such headings as “Online Research Tools” or “Use Our Databases” or “The 24/7 Library.” We dutifully publicize our “database of the month” in the library newsletter and post helpful explanations on the superiority of library databases to Google searching. We attend workshops and poster sessions on “Marketing Online Resources” and hand out neatly typed bookmarks listing all our databases.

It isn't helping. Recently OCLC released “Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources” (www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm), a survey of a representative sample of over 3300 online information consumers and their information-seeking behavior. The survey findings indicate that 84 percent of information searches begin with a search engine. Library web sites were selected by just one percent of respondents as the source used to begin an information search. Only two percent of college students start their search at a library web site. In fact, only 16 percent of respondents had ever used an online database and only 30 percent had ever used a library web site. Yet, 72 percent had used free search engines like Google. The report concludes, “…the majority of information seekers are not making much use of the array of electronic resources (online magazines, databases and reference assistance, for example) libraries make available to their communities.”

In other words, despite all our marketing attempts, very few of our patrons are logging on to library databases. We know the need is there; how many times have you been approached by a patron who's “looked everywhere for this, even on Google!” and come up empty-handed? In every instance, when I've shown students, or book club members, or investors how easily they could find exactly what they need through a library product, they are amazed and delighted. Clearly, there is a need for online services other than Google, but why aren't people using them?

The free stuff conundrum

It used to be a truism: people don't expect to get quality services for free. Yet according to the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project study (www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/ PIP_College_Report.pdf), 55 percent of users completely agree that Google provides worthwhile information, compared with only 31 percent for library databases. Free search engines are the first choice for research for 80 percent of the respondents; the online library only for six percent. Furthermore, respondents do not trust purchased information more than free information. Information that costs money to obtain was cited by only one percent of respondents as a sign of reliability, and 93 percent said they do not trust information more if they pay for it. Ninety percent of respondents are satisfied with their most recent search for information using a search engine.

This is deeply challenging to librarians, authors, and publishers. Library online services are the product of hard work by well-educated specialists. Yet, the general public seems to believe that what they find on Google is just as good.

Perhaps we need to emphasize just what patrons are missing by relying on the free Internet alone. How many complete Dave Barry or George Will columns can you get free from Google? How many complete dishwasher reviews from Consumer Reports? How many free investment analyst reports? Sure Mapquest or Anywho will let you look up an address, but how many free web sites let you search by first name and area code alone?

We know that databases cost libraries thousands of dollars every year, and they are worth every penny, but our patrons do not. Instead of merely describing them as “free,” we should remind patrons of what this service can do for them and that quality database access is a privilege they get for belonging to such a forward-thinking community.

Libraries equal online searching

For most of the general public, online searching is what you do instead of using the library. Remember that infamous commercial that touted home computer use as an alternative to jackbooted, tyrannical librarians? How often have we heard a patron say, “Well, I couldn't find it on the Internet so I decided I had to come to the library.” For most patrons, libraries are the antithesis of the online world. They have no idea that most libraries and librarians have been online far longer than they have.

In the popular mind, libraries equal one thing: books. Despite hundreds of glowing articles touting libraries as the destination for audios, videos, DVDs, etc., and despite many, many patrons actually checking out and using nonbook materials through their libraries, as the OCLC report confirms, books are still what patrons associate with libraries.

“Database” is a scary word

One of my vendor reps laughingly reports that when he tells friends he sells databases, they ask, “Oh, you mean like Oracle?” “Database” means something complicated and techie to most people, not something they'd be likely to use. (See John Kupersmith's web site and presentation “Library Terms That Users Understand” at www.jkup.net/terms.html.) We need to find ways to describe our online services that sound appealing and familiar, such as “e-collections,” “electronic library,” “24-hour library,” “desktop library,” etc.

Judging from the layout of their web sites, librarians and vendors have a misplaced faith in the strength of vendor brand names. Many a library arranges the databases alphabetically only, with no annotations. Do we really expect patrons to know what “EBSCOhost,” “WilsonSelect,” and “General Reference Center Gold” can do for them?

Vendors need to know that no one recognizes their brand names. People have short memories and shorter attention spans, so vendors should make product names clear, short, and intuitive. Google works partly because it's easy to remember. WebMD and FindArticles.com are both easy to remember and intuitive. Most library database names are neither.

Librarians need to make databases easy to find. Group them by topic and link to them from multiple places on your site. I'm always amazed at the number of libraries with “database” pages with no links to “Homework help” or the teen page, or Internet guides, or recommended reading lists. Most users don't care about format. They want to be able to find all the health sources in one place, whether they are magazine articles, web sites, books, or ebooks.

Keep it simple

You would think that some vendors don't want anyone to use their products. Every year, our state library runs Try-It! Illinois, a two-month free trial of hundreds of databases. There is a login to access the list, but then the individual vendors can set up additional logins. The smart ones allow users to go directly from the Try-It page, while some insist on adding complicated, hard-to-remember user IDs and passwords, often for each database. Guess whose products patrons are more likely to try? Guess which ones libraries tend to buy and which ones we never look at?

You would think some libraries don't want anyone to use their products. A school library in our area hands students a list of 21 online database subscriptions, each with its own password. Surprise! No one ever uses them. Why are they saddled with such a clunky system for remote authentication? School ID cards have six digits, but many vendors will only set up automatic remote library logins of 12 or 14 digits. The school has never bothered to explore a different numbering system. The thousands of dollars spent on e-databases go to waste, and the students use their pretty cards to scribble down URLs found surfing the web.

Our patrons don't share our threshold for “simple” and “easy to use.” We may feel library product searches are more rewarding, but they are definitely more cumbersome. For the patron with a fairly simple question, it's just not going to be worthwhile to remember lengthy library URLs, barcodes, and passwords, or to skim through five different databases. We need to advocate for simpler access: intuitive URLs, federated search tools, and streamlined web page organization. If barcode authentication is the only way to provide remote access, for example, how can we make barcodes easier to remember? Some libraries issue a barcode keychain tag with every library card, making it more likely patrons will always have their barcode handy. The Southeast Massachusetts Library System (www.myowncafe.org/register/tabid/103/Default.aspx) allows patrons to register their own four-character passwords in lieu of using library barcodes. We need to look for more such creative ideas.