Laurabelle's Blog

Today I turned in my Digital Reference Assignment for LIS 521. The meat of this assignment was answering nine questions for the Internet Public Library. In the course of writing up my little report of my IPL experience, I started thinking about Google Answers and how different it is from the IPL, even though they provide roughly the same service.

Last year about this time, I considered becoming a Google Researcher, but at first I didn't have time, and then they stopped taking on new Researchers. Now I'm glad I didn't do it, because Jessamyn hated it, and I think I would have hated it too, once I found out what reference service was really like. Jessamyn explains Google Answers really well, so go read her stuff, because I'm not going to repeat what she's already said better than I can. Go on, I'll be right here when you come back.

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Righty-ho. I think Jessamyn's got it right that the money is a big issue. It's so much of an issue that I would rather spend my researching time for the IPL and not get paid a cent than get paid for the same work. You've got that right, I'd rather work for free. Part of that is simply the fact that customers of Google Answers don't pay what a Researcher's time is really worth, so if I'm going to be donating my time, I want it to be known that I'm doing it for free.

The other problem I have with the Google Answers dynamic is that I don't want customers. I serve patrons instead. My argument in this case touches on something we talked about in LIS 550, about the definition of a professional. One definition is that a professional is an expert who prescribes a solution to a dependent client. I'm a librarian, the one with the expertise in the field of information-finding. When a patron approaches me, either in person or via the IPL, s/he implicitly trusts my knowledge and judgment to locate the best, most thorough, most authoritative sources. A patron may ask me for something substantive, either an answer or sources, but what I'm really delivering is not a good but a service.

On the other hand, if I'm serving a customer instead of a patron, suddenly the customer is always right. The product is more important than the skills required to achieve it, and moreover, the customer will get upset if s/he feels the product is unsatisfactory. The paradox about this situation is that the customer is asking an information professional precisely because he does not know how to find the answer himself, so how does he know what can be found and whether the IP has done a good job or not? It's ridiculous to subject ourselves wholly to the judgment of people who, by their own admission in coming to us, know less than we do about the skills of our profession.

Before anyone gets upset, I'm not advocating complete disregard for patron opinions. I'm all for asking questions like Is this what you were looking for? or Is there anything else? to confirm that the patron is satisfied. However, asking those questions and assuring the fulfillment of a patron's needs is different from not getting paid at all if the customer decides (after he's already got the answer) that it wasn't quite good enough.