What librarians can learn from Google's corporate philosophy Librarians have mixed feelings about Google. Sometimes, we think the company should be given a medal because Google Print intends to make the books on our shelves full-text searchable. Sometimes we think libraries should sue Google because its mission - to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful - duplicates the mission of the library. Even those of us who have job security and faith in the virtues of librarianship know that we're more likely to hear 'Look it up on Google' than 'Go ask a librarian.' Yet, we can compete on an equal footing if we focus on our mission and the steps we must take to be successful. The Google philosophy (www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html) presents new challenges to librarians.

Focus on the user and all else will follow

For Google, user focus means clear interface design, speed, and integrity. While most corporations have a client-centered slogan, Google demonstrates user focus. Librarians have a major advantage, though, because we are local and personal and know that the best user interface of all is face to face. Service is still key to our culture and survival. Unfortunately, librarians often fail to capitalize on that advantage. Poor design, confusing signage, book trolleys blocking aisles, inattentive staff, short hours, and complicated, unfriendly, and often outdated policies all signal that we've lost our user focus. Libraries have taken the first step by surveying users; the next step is to watch what users do and adapt accordingly.

It's best to do one thing really, really well

Google says, 'Google does search.' It constantly improves its search engine and uses its research to develop new products. But people search in order to find and read, watch, or listen to the object of their search. This may be one of the philosophical differences between Google and librarians: we concentrate not on the search but on finding. Libraries provide materials and access from many sources and formats. Unlike Google, we pay on behalf of the user for what we retrieve. But can we do it better and faster and simpler?

Fast is better than slow

Search Google for 'history,' and 3.85 billion hits get returned in .22 seconds. Research a history topic in a library and you may have to wait several minutes for a free OPAC, or reserve a computer for database searching a day before you can begin. Getting the information can take longer, if you must wait a day for a book to come back from remote storage or up to two weeks for an interlibrary loan. Google offers instant gratification. Libraries offer queues, forms, and admonitions. With some imagination it is possible for the library to be faster, since its calling card is quality of information. This is crucial in a scholarly environment.

Democracy on the web works

For Google, this means its ranking, based on links to a site, provides better assessment of relevance than something artificially constructed. In practice, it works remarkably well. Librarians are wary of ceding quality to popularity as determined by democracy. Except for best sellers in public libraries, our sources are selected based on peer reviews, author affiliation, and publisher reputation. Our users should search resources of consistent quality and relevance. Truly democratic libraries would encourage patron selection of resources, so library resources would reflect what is wanted and needed, not only what we assume users should have. Libraries should facilitate better methods of gathering collection requests than the ubiquitous web form. Information also exists in many formats, many languages, and on many levels. Users (remember the first item?) have varying needs, abilities, and skills, and what fits one user will not necessarily fit another. A democracy implies that users have a voice, even those in a minority. Democracy can work in a library, too.

You don't need to be at a desk to need an answer

Librarians know that the need for information is everywhere and have long been delivering information outside their doors via telephone reference, email, and bookmobiles. Google may be the first search engine to really think outside the computer. Google has optimized its mobile search to reply to queries with brief SMS (Short Message Service) text messages to mobile telephones in the United States, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland. Some libraries have gone this way, too, providing access to popular SMS alerts for overdue books and other library notices (www.libraryelf.com) and making book lists available for download to PDAs and other mobile devices. SMS technology is simple, and voice technology could be as simple as encouraging patrons to call your library on their hands-free mobiles for driving directions. Google seeks to be omnipresent, and we should continue to be.

You can make money without doing evil

When Google went public, CEO Eric Schmidt said evil is what founder Sergey Brin says is evil. Originally, the choices were less difficult. Text advertising is less invasive and annoying than banner advertising, and the user experience comes before making a service profitable. The choices are more difficult now, as Google has to choose between having its services filtered altogether in some countries or offering a filtered service. The demands of being a public company necessarily privilege profit over user experience. Most library money comes from tight institutional budgets, and some libraries sell services to supplement their budgets. Many could market their services or mine their collections for profitable publishing opportunities, using their collection strengths to add revenue to improve services and resources. That would not necessarily be evil, but it would generate a small portion of our operating expenses. Restricted budgets or not, money is determined by institutional priorities. It would be beneficial for libraries to think about hard choices in order to optimize the user experience.

There's always more information out there

Google discovered that indexing only HTML missed information that exists in PDF, Word, and other file formats, and it added the capability to search inside them. People search the web for things to buy, so Google indexed mail-order catalogs. Books are next up, and millions are being scanned for Google Print. When Google discovers a way to give its users access to EBSCOhost and other commercial databases, libraries may really be at the end, not the beginning, of a user's search. Information is not confined to print, nor to a certain scholarly or intellectual level. Despite the availability of thousands of free, high-quality government and academic web sites, few libraries maintain more than a token number of Internet links, and too few have enough information to serve as effective guides for users. Video, music, and image collections are often seen as secondary to print, despite the impact that they can have in showing people new worlds or new ways. There is always more information, and not all of it is reviewed in Choice or Booklist or the Times Literary Supplement; it takes effort to find it, and if we do not make that effort we are depriving our users of material they can use, just as Google would be if it had ignored PDF and other difficult-to-index formats. Broadening the scope of a library's collections is an effective way to supersede Google's strategy, since the library exists to be a permanent repository for users.

The need for information crosses all borders

Google has leveraged the efforts of many volunteers to translate its interface and has made its search engine focus on all languages, not just English. It also offers translation tools, though imperfect, demonstrating that given the choice between partial access and no access, access wins. How many libraries only look at, and conduct outreach in, the dominant language of their country, ignoring material that would be accessible to bi- or multilingual clientele whose numbers are increasing in every city and town as the village becomes global? Few libraries are active in seeking out information published abroad, or in acquiring translations or original language resources that could be understood by a sizable portion of their patrons. Many libraries offer a sampling of multilingual content for a subsection of their users and should further optimize selection for their local readers.

You can be serious without a suit

For Google, a suit means formality and hierarchy, which stifles creativity. In the library context, this means teamwork, collegiality, and openness must replace hierarchical systems that cramp initiative and imagination. How many libraries encourage staff development and training and seek to make paraprofessionals colleagues rather than clerks? How many invite and encourage paraprofessionals to serve with professionals on committees and in drafting policy? How many abolish committees altogether in favor of direct communication and assignment of responsibility? How many librarians come out from behind the reference desk to assist patrons instead of waiting to be approached?

Great just isn't good enough

Another Google motto is 'Never settle for the best.' This never-stand-still philosophy is vital in the competitive world it lives in: imagine being Google founders Larry Page and Brin and seeing Microsoft in your rearview mirror. Libraries are still ahead of Google in the race to organize the world's information, but Google is certainly catching up rapidly. If we are complacent, we will lose. Libraries are seldom defined in business terms or use business process reengineering exercises, and they have only recently begun to develop tools like LibQUAL+ to assess the quality of the services they provide. However, libraries have always had a service culture that has driven the best of them to innovate and develop and improve services. By looking at excellent libraries and continuing to employ business tools like total quality management (TQM), the profession can refine what it does well. Libraries have a long and honorable history of organizing and making the world's information accessible. If Google had not been invented, librarians might have tried to create something very much like it. We should be pleased to have such an inventive and well-financed partner join us, one we can learn from as we compete with it, one that can learn from us, and one that is willing to partner with us as Google has with Google Book Search. Competition is good for the consumer. In the case of the library, users are our consumers, the people we exist for and for whose descendants we build and preserve our collections. We are up to the challenge.

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Frederick Nesta (nesta@ln.edu.hk) managed academic and special libraries in New York and London before becoming University Librarian at Lingnan University in Hong Kong in 2004