Google Book Search @ Your Reference Desk
Walt Crawford has a very sensible article on Google Book Search in the latest Google Librarian Newsletter. I won't recap the article here, but I would like to share an anecdote from a reference transaction I had today.
A young women came into my office with a question (We don't actually staff the desk in the summer, we just make sure someone is always available in their office). She's taking a Natural Science course in Life Beyond Earth, and I went to her class for an IL session a couple of weeks ago. And could I help her, because while she's found a couple of articles on her topic of space elevators, she still needs to find a book reference for her paper. And we don't seem to have any books on space elevators. What to do. Well, I immediately went into Google Book Search and searched on "space elevator." Lo and behold, we immediately found a few books which seemed to have significant sections on space elevators. Checking our catalogue, we figured out which ones are in our collection. The student went away very happy.
And, not only is Google Book Search good for reference, I also immediately ordered a bunch of the books that we discovered that aren't in our collection. So, reference and collections. Thank god that it can't do instruction (or serve on committees) yet.
Posts
3 comments:
On your reference topic (not your post topic :) ), we had the major cheerleader for the space elevator, Bradley Edwards, here for a colloquium a year or so ago, Interesting guy. Unfortunately, it was recently in the news that the nanotubes might not ever work because of defects (http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060522/full/060522-1.html)
When Edwards spoke here, he brought a little nanotube yarn sample which we were allowed to touch. Very cool.
Thank god that it can't do instuction (or serve on committees) yet.
Perhaps that's what the ultimate aim of their google-computer farm is ...
Unfortunately, it was recently in the news that the nanotubes might not ever work because of defects
Maybe. That is just a study, theoretical at that. Edwards published email to a private list with some arguments on the study.
Christina, Brian, thanks for the comments. I guess if Google can come up with a product that could sit on committees for me, I might not be all that upset...
Post a Comment