Our group had an interesting discussion about the Buckland’s writing on redesigning libraries (acquisition, storage, delivery, and searching being key changeable features) and how the rise of Google may have an impact on it. We found that it helps acquisition and storage because, through features such as GoogleScholar, we can retrieve documents without having to store them on shelves and most often for free. In general, electronic databases are positive because they don’t take up space, but Google is particularly easy for patrons to use.
Google and all its additions make searching easier because of their format. Yet, we discovered, it could also make it harder because patrons may not be searching the right way and, because Google is more convenient than going to the library and asking a librarian to search, they may be getting the wrong information. Furthermore, if a patron sees a librarian using Google, they may be apt to think “Why am I asking a professional when they are doing the same thing I would be doing?”. It seems that Google and Amazon as well as other user friendly search engines get a bad rap from librarians. We had all heard librarians cautiously “own up” to using these sites, as if they were embarassed not to be using the more complex databases.
