Collection Development for My Random Life.

Really interesting presentation of web page data. The interpretation of the data is interesting. For example PSU has 80% of users residing mainly on the top level pages perhaps due to their emphasis on everything being 3 clicks away while OHSU has a longer tail that people interact with webpages that are “buried” on the site which seems fine for their needs.
There is a call for benchmarking data for the different types of libraries since there seems not to be anything specific for libraries as unique webpages as compared to commercial websites.
Web statistics are fuzzy and getting the data is a real challenge.

I had a student say they didn’t realize all the time it took to find a good website and for that matter evaluate a website. I think there is a big convenience factor but I am starting to wonder if it is just smart time management by students. Teachers very rarely ding students for bad research (or at least as far as I can tell), so students feel they can get away with it and for that matter do. So what is the incentive for students to spend the extra time finding the best resource when in their world any resource is just as good as another and nobody seems to dispute that but librarians.

Another encounter with a patron was amusing in this regard. We were looking for specific financial information and having trouble locating it. He was about to give up and leave. I told him to hold on a minute, let me look at another resource. I was able to find exactly what he was looking for plus even more related material. This impressed him greatly. He thanked me for having the “cojones” to stick with his search.

Perhaps more students need “research cojones” to stick with their searches for information. I would love to print up stickers for teachers to handout to students who do good research that say “I have research cojones!!!”

This is blowing up on the librarian blog-o-ga-ga-sphere… some engineers spun off from Google and formed the search engine Cuil!   I like the visual layout but I wonder if graphic heavy websites (especially those associated with advertising) may have an advantage. It was fun to “google” or would that be “cuil” your name in it.

I wonder if ever it will come the day when the search engine algorithms become open source and then the user can just choose the visual  interface that fits their own aesthetic and needs — and not have to worry about if they are receiving the best results from their search engines because it is not “google”.