Progressive Wednesday

How to Search Progressively, Part I

April 3rd, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

Problem:

(Editor’s note: All numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in the book The Search.)

To quote Steven Battelle in his exhaustively well-research tome, The Search, Google is “holding us by the thoughts.” Most of us have become nearly addicted to the big four search engines — Google, Yahoo, Windows Live Search, and Ask.com — to find factoids, businesses, background information about blind dates, news, bloggerific commentary, and, yes, pornography. Unfortunately, these search engines, and all the information we tacitly provide them about ourselves and our interests is “a goldmine of information” (2). Battelle also notes that “all search engines mine click-stream data to present ads that attempt to match your stated intent,” and we believe there is some reason to be concerned since “an individual’s digital identity is immortalized and can be retrieved upon demand” (12, 13).

When a company, especially one that’s gone public, has a credo like “Don’t Be Evil,” they’ve set a standard, like New Hampshire and their “Live Free or Die” motto, that they can’t live up to. And so, we bring you seven disconcerting and downright freaky things about Google (and other search engines):

• If you punch your land-line phone number into Google, your name, address, and a map of your house’s location all appear. (I read about this in The Search, and well, it works.) To quote Battelle, “while this kind of information is public, it [was not] widely available… [and] the very fact that it [was] so much trouble to find such information has, in effect, muted that information” (190, 191).
• Because search engines can alter their algorithms so as to rank what they believe are the most relevant results, they can drastically impact “search-dependant online businesses” (158, 164).
• Google has broken trademark laws (181).
• Google has apparently adjusted results based on location of IP address to protect itself against litigation (184, 185).
• Gmail, Google’s free email service, shows users ads relevant to the content in the emails (194). This means, of course, that Google’s computers are essentially reading your email. Even if the computers can’t really understand what we’re emailing to Great Aunt Mildred, this factoid gets filed under K for “Kinda Creepy.”
• Google Desktop Search is “a program that indexes your entire hard drive” (196). Again, Google is learning what you have on your computer. Yahoo and Ask also have similar services.
• According to an article on Salon.com: “when you search for something at Google, it saves your search terms and associates them with a cookie that is set to live on your machine for 36 years.” This cookie keeps track of the searching made on a single computer, and not for individual users. It must be noted that other search engines use a similar tactic to track searches.

On the other hand, and this is a big other hand, Google donates tons of the greenbacks through their charity service (named Google.org, appropriately enough).

And frankly, we need search engines, and we really seem to need Google, for all its potential faults. (Look for more on a way to use Google without really using Google in a couple of weeks.)

- - - - -

Make Progress:

Okay, we’ve got four excellent and efficient ways to change the way you search, and we’ll go into each one, one at a time, over the next couple of weeks. Remember, our suggestions can’t be perfect, because there’s no perfect solution to any problem that we can find. Nonetheless, these ain’t half bad, my brothers and sisters.

.

1. Ask a Librarian

No, really, ask a librarian. The Internet has opened up a new way for folks to seek the help of dedicated, reference-obsessed librarians. And in our experience, librarians are the “information experts,” not search engines, not Wikipedia, not even us.

According to a 2002 study conducted by Google, “85 percent of search-engine users examine only the first page of results.” Librarians are more likely than average users to use advanced search features, and librarians have access to databases that aren’t on the Web. Librarians tend to be more careful than average Internet users to verify the authority of web-based information. Librarians can also help users ask better questions to help them find the particular information they’re after, avoiding the easy pitfall of searching for vague, ambiguous, or broad terms.

Libraries are still bastions of enormous amounts of useful, authoritative, variegated and reliable information, and they ultimately are better than Google when it comes to gathering, discovering, and processing information. Because of this, by using librarian aided searches, you can help keep libraries up and running, and librarians employed. So use it or lose it, yo.

Another New York Times piece pointed out the following:

Many students seem to lack the skills to structure their searches so they can find useful information quickly. In 2002, graduate students at Tel Aviv University were asked to find on the Web, with no time limit, a picture of the Mona Lisa; the complete text of either “Robinson Crusoe” or “David Copperfield”; and a recipe for apple pie accompanied by a photograph. Only 15 percent succeeded at all three assignments.

Librarians, with capes and capital-Ls emblazoned on their chests, to the rescue. So where should you go for this kind of web-based help? Well, even if you don’t live in Ohio, you can go to KnowItNow.org, a 24/7 live chat with librarians with specific areas of expertise (during non-business hours, you’ll chat with a general reference librarian). In order to use the service, you’ll need to enter an Ohio zip code. Allow us to lend a hand: here are zip codes for the big three, followed by three towns whose names, we’re embarrassed to say, make us giggle:

• 45225: Cincinnati
• 43210: Columbus
• 44114: Cleveland

• 43747: Jerusalem
• 44413: East Palestine
• 44073: Novelty

There’s even a Know It Now toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. But you’re not still using IE, right? Right?

There’s also a similar (and in my experience, a superior) library-search tool based in Western New York: AskUs247.org. They directly state that “patrons or students of non-participating libraries may still use the service.” To that, we say a resounding, booty-shaking, “Boo-yah!”

Many universities and other library systems offer similar services so you might want to check closer to home if possible. This is because reference librarians might point you to specific books or journals or databases that you can only access if you’re a member of their library or library system.

In our experience, librarians have even emailed us further information after our chat session had ended. Like we said, these are a dedicated, at times delightfully obsessed, group of people.

You can also ask the Library of Congress, for crying out loud.

The moral of the story? We needn’t be hooked on Google.

Share This

   Internet, tools    2 Comments