Information Literacy : present and future challenges

Keeping up with the Google generation

Peter Godwin

Academic Services Manager

London South Bank University (LSBU)

SE1 6NJ

Is Health different?

• Students going out on placement far from their home institution

• Firewalls which protect health networks

• Problems of access in other libraries and from home

Finding the time

• Crowded curriculum

• Evidence-based practice

• Students who may not be academic

• Lack of IT skills

• Unreasonable expectations

• Misunderstandings

• Can lead to failures

“Only librarians enjoy looking for information. Everyone else just wants to be able to use the information and would really prefer that it was just handed to them”

(Roy Tennant, eScholarship Web & Services Design

Manager for the California Digital Library)

“Only librarians enjoy looking for information. Everyone else just wants to be able to use the information and would really prefer that it was just handed to them”

What are our users doing and what has been the response?

• Database interfaces are getting cleaner and simpler

• Acceptance by many that we need to simplify our search methods

• Federated Searching : Google Scholar and commercial Meta Searching tools

The Google Generation

• Students are used to single search boxes like Google and Amazon which give instant satisfaction

• Google is the number one search tool for most academics and students

The Google Empire

• Present market value $80 billion

• Bigger than Warner and now the largest media company in the world

• Bigger than Disney

• Only 7 years old

• But are they spreading too far?

The Google empire

• Google Print Publisher Program : includes all text of some public domain books, a few sample pages from books still in print

• Google Print Library Project : digitising contents of major research libraries – includes all text of public domain books and bib. details of works in copyright

• Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, NYPL. • Oxford: 19th century material

The Google Empire

• Google Maps : for getting to places• Froogle : for smart shoppers• Google Alerts : e-mail alerts for results from your

latest chosen topics• Google Images : Thousands of images, even for

“Information Literacy”!• Google Local : find a plumber• Google Video : testing only, some content from NBC,

Discovery Channel, Learning Channel etc. at http://video.google.com/

The Google Empire

• Google Desktop Search to search your own desktop

• Google News Search

• Google Mobile Search

• Google Directory

• Google Catalogs

• And there’s more…

“If you could use Google to just look across digital libraries , into any digital library collection, now that would be cool”

(Daniel Greenstein, University Librarian of California Digital Library)

And Google Scholar

• Launched to “allow and enable users to search for scholarly literature located across the Web” (Anurag Acharya, Google Scholar)

Not just Google

• Yahoo and MSN (MSN Book Search 150K books to be funded for digitisation this year)

• Amazon

• Open Content Alliance (Yahoo, HP, University of California, Microsoft)

Why the concern?

• Students like Google, will like Google Scholar, may use other Google services and squeeze libraries out….

• They find our databases too difficult, and don’t enthuse about Boolean and controlled vocabulary

• Our resources are fragmented and dominated by publisher concerns rather than user need

• Google Scholar begins to search the Invisible Web, formerly our own province

• The Bangor scenario : job cuts because information searching is now de-skilled and they don’t need our help

What is Google Scholar?

• A slice of Google from the open web that is scholarly, plus as much publishers’ material that Google can crawl over, display and index

Google Scholar

• GS has harvested metadata from various journal publishers so users can access from one interface. Includes many open access journals e.g BioMed Central

• Includes content from at least 29 top scholarly publishers including some from the CrossRef search pilot project, inc. Blackwell, IEEE, Nature Publ. Group, Springer and Wiley.

• Links to material in institutional repositories and new digitisation initiatives like Google Print initiative at Bodleian and JISC Common Information Environment

• Links to ingenta• Links to OCLC WorldCat and gives locations for individual items• Libraries can use SFX or other linking providers to link to their

subscribed full text

How good is Google Scholar?

• It’s still in beta mode!=under development. Means fragmented, inconsistent and duplicate records are possible

• Hard to know size/coverage /ranking of results• Not indexed by people, no authority control• Gives results differently on and off-campus• Lacks thesaurus and vocabulary based searching and sophisticated limiting

features found in specific subject databases• Access to many abstracts only, e.g. ingenta which will confuse and annoy users• Older articles often come up first (due to search algorithm)• Coverage of publishers’ output on Google Scholar does not equate with the

publisher site • Not all results are scholarly because references cited in articles may not be

scholarly• Still need to use Google as well

How good is Google Scholar?

• It’s a good place to start• Useful for old or seminal works• Useful where no specialised databases

available• Useful for grey literature and some online

government reports• Needs to be tweaked to include more open

web content

• “The underlying problem with Google Scholar is that Google is as secretive about its coverage as the North Korean government is about famine in its country”

(Peter Jacso)

How good are citations on Google Scholar?• Free and variable in coverage =Potentially useful and important but

not comparable to those in Web of Science or SCOPUS• Citations are interfiled with other records• Can be confusing to use• Records are scraped from full text taken into GS and results do not

match Web of Science, and references are sometimes incomplete• “Cited by” only includes articles indexed within its database• Items with more citations from other highly ranked sources come first• Much work remains to be done to make it a fully recommendable

resource

Google Scholar v SCIRUS

Google Scholar• Free• Started 2004• Sources unclear• Contains Biomed Central &

PubMed• Good for web documents• Raises expectations about full

text

SCIRUS• Free• Started 2001• Elsevier• Contains all Science Direct &

can link to your full text• Contains Biomed Central &

PubMed• Raises expectations about full

text• Good for web sites• Better search limiters

Google Scholar and PubMed

• Includes PubMed material but may be a year behind and therefore results in GS are lower

• Ranking method may not be ideal so find some useful articles, and use their MEDLINE (MeSH terms) for a search on PubMed

• GS has author, title and date limitation in advanced search, but how reliable?

Librarians and Google Scholar

• Many libraries are including GS among their recommended search engines

• E.g. University of California did a detailed study of usage. Great disagreement between librarians there. Led to decision to put link to GS on their library front page in Search & Find section of Library Website

What is else is happening to Google Scholar?

• Libraries which use a link resolver to make their resources available will be able to include a link to these resources for their users as part of Google Scholar results.

• Since Feb 2005 28 libraries in US have taken part in a pilot. The Library authorizes their link resolver company to give Google its holdings, and Google highlights links in Google Scholar result pages. All free at present.

• University of Michigan agreement linking Millennium with Google, May 2005

• LSBU expect to add links next summer (we use Millennium)

The Library alternative response

• Using a meta search facility offered by the library management system providers which:

• Searches across our library catalogue, databases and web concurrently

• Avoids need for searching several databases, and learning their foibles

• Appears to give ready results

Meta searching – the reality

• Clumsy• Slow• Can’t limit to peer-reviewed content• Can’t always limit searches to similar databases• Compares badly with Google/Google Scholar for ease of

use• Cannot offer advanced search options because of differing

search options on databases• Poor control over result ranking : either does it separately

or not at all

• “In the library world, we spend a remarkable amount of time and energy larding up our search interfaces…after we’ve built the ultimate stretch Cadillac..we proceed to “educate” the user..and we’re incredulous when Johnny turns to Google instead of to the awesome nuclear engine we’ve constructed”

(Tod Miller “In defense of stupid users” LJ, 130 (5), 58,

March 15, 2005)

Are we moving with the Google generation?

• Federated searches give only a “good enough” result for students• Is it a retrograde step ?• Jumble too much together and blurs the traditional emphasis on types

of materials • Limited ability to do more complex searches. E.g.incompatible

databases linked together• We want to be able to cut down results after search e.g. Edinburgh

University by type and year.• Could have related items “If you like this, you will like that”• Finding good stuff is about what you don’t search as much as what

you do search• Should we be fixing the users or the system?

Are we moving with the Google Generation?

• We need to meet the user, where we expect them to be” (Jakob Nielsen)

• We must be where they are, and they are used to one box

• Make it as simple as possible to cut down on guidance

The future

• Federated searching may be obsolete because it will be replaced by better e-content integration : Metadata Harvesting and Link Resolvers

• Link Resolvers use OpenURLs to link from databases to any subscribed fulltext.

• Librarians are developing consortia to develop Open Source Integrated Library Systems because of dissatisfaction with commercial products

• Open Archives Initiative has developed a protocol for harvesting XML-formatted metadata. If all e-content providers used these open data standards libraries can harvest the metadata from various places, searchable from a single interface. e.g. OAIster project searches 458 institutional repositories

Redlightgreen

• This is an example of a huge database of library catalogues that is simple to use and includes reviews, references, bookshops

How does this affect our Information Literacy teaching?

• Google Scholar at present requires guidance on what it does and does not contain

• Google itself will work better for some searches and should be tried too

• Meta searching tools work better with more experienced searchers

• More advanced searching at higher levels will still require additional searching in particular databases to get the best results

How does this affect our Information Literacy teaching?

• Provides us with new tools to recommend to students, which they are more likely to use

• Forces us to reconsider use of Web search engines alongside our own databases

• Importance of the Web search engines varies across the disciplines

• Google Scholar coverage better for science than arts at present

• Meta search and Google Scholar work better with definable scientific subjects than “softer” subjects with more indistinct search terms

Becoming Information Literate is a process

• Students need to be given time to learn and develop their information literacy

• The old concept of cramming all “about the library” is dead

• Is there a framework we can use?

SCONUL Seven Pillars framework

Information skills

• Recognising need for information

• Distinguishing sources and access

• Constructing search strategies

• Locating and accessing

• Comparing & evaluating

• Organising, applying and communicating

• Synthesising and adding new knowledge

Challenge of levels

• Need to realise that students learn step by step and that skills are cumulative

• Feel free to use my framework at http://www.lisa.lsbu.ac.uk/006_services/staff/benchmarking.htm

How does this affect the information literacy of our users?

• Recognising need for information >gives them better control over the mass of information

• Distinguishing sources and access>allows narrowing down by source and facilitating access to other collections

• Constructing search strategies >requires greater need than ever for formulating good keyword searches

• Locating and accessing >facilitates access through one box, and less need to learn different search interfaces

• Comparing & evaluating>needs better ability to evaluate and interpret results found

• Organising, applying and communicating>leads to more e referencing and ability to pull off references from the screen

• Synthesising and adding new knowledge>the world is your OIAster

“Our role as gatekeepers is important, but…we should be worrying more about the quality of the gate than checking the credentials of each person who passes through”

(John W.Chapman, University of Minnesota Libraries)

“The most effective way to draw users to high-quality research is both to help users to formulate Google searches and to think critically. That’s our future.”

(Richard Sweeney, University Librarian, New Jersey Institute of Technology)