This is something that a librarian definitely follows. Research is huge for our campuses, especially teaching effective research skills to teenagers.
Google Knol is trying to be an alternative to Wikipedia (which I guess means competitor, but Udi Manber says they’re not competing).
Basically Knol is like a bunch of blogs but the blogs are signed with the real people’s names. People then vote on the best and the best show up earlier in searches. The goal is to get more authoritative sources writing and sharing in one location, powered by a Google search (although a funny part of the Knol site says “Who needs a search engine? Ctrl+F” Funny stuff.).
I could see myself writing about young adult authors and books, which I will probably tackle in the future. Most of the knols are medical-related since university sources were used for most of the beta articles.
Just like anything Google, the design still looks ugly to me. But this does look like an interesting endeavor. They say that they’ll let the search algorithms do their thing and not promote knols unfairly. Knols will just be that good that they beat out Wikipedia search results, which are almost always in the top ten (if not five). It’ll be nice to not have it open to the University of IThinkIKnowWhatI’mTalkingAboutButNotReally that Wikipedia is. But how can we trust that these people claiming to be experts are reliable.
We may just still have a use for librarians.
A friend of mine criticized all libraries (it was a broad statement one Sunday evening) that they were just storehouses of paper and were obsolete. Encyclopedia Brittanica is feeling the pressure and is changing from a subscription model to an ad model. But because the encyclopedias are behind the times, does it mean libraries are?
Follow me for a day. We’ll have some fun.
Semi-related posts:
Libraries are obsolete? I would dispute that, as would the shelf of library books I have checked out.
[...] ← Google Knol [...]
You can imagine my strong reaction, considering what I do all day at work.
It’s good to hear encouragement from non-librarians!
My stacks of library books (hailing from two different libraries) vote for the librarian also. As does the credit card that pays my overdue fines. As does the minivan which can get to and from the library almost without a driver. As does the adventurer who uses the internet mostly to reserve books at the library. Or to email her favorite librarian to ask what to read next. Who had her last birthday party at the library.
I will also say that the local public library, we recently discovered, underestimated demand for library cards and ran out before the end of their fiscal year, resulting in their denying a young adventurer his very own library card until the new fiscal year begins. Obsolete? Not just yet.
I was joking!