Based on some research or something, people like to use search engines. According to the numbers, they search and search and search, millions and millions of times a day.
On the most basic level, people feel satisfaction when they enter some search terms, like bison and orgy and get back some results. Oh, I'm so clever, those people think, because I put two words together and found all this stuff.
And those people think librarians are idiots because when they come into the library talking about bison orgies, we tell them we can't find anything in the library about that. You must be an idiot, the people think, because I just went to Google and typed that in and found all sorts of stuff.
We have a woman who calls all the time and does this exact thing. "Robert," she'll say (to someone named Robert, since that's not me) "type in 'the magistrations of love.'" And "Robert" will type it in and find nothing, and when he tells her that, she becomes a little sad.
But this is the most important thing: Robert doesn't find nothing; he finds nothing relevant to his understanding of his customer's request. He probably found a hundred crappy links.
Librarians understand that finding one million results might mean we found nothing related to the request. But the library customers (bless their little hearts), think that one million results are better, in every single way, than fifty results.
More is more.
Dennis Miller said, two of shit is still shit. But where is Dennis now? The world has forsaken his pithy wisdom for a double helping of turd stuffing.
People love searching because the search tool never judges. Since the goal of the search tool is to show ads, the customer is guaranteed to find something, anything. For example, I just googled the keywords, masterlink gorge lambchop toboggan hero polygon timeshare, and still got a hit.
But in the evil library, we often send customers away empty handed. We should learn from the search tools and always give them something, anything. Every information desk should keep a paperback copy of how to make balloon animals or Dave Barry advice or a dvd of Le Déclin de l'empire américain. And we can smile and hand them that thing that can fill their time until they die. Because that's all anyone really wants.
Sweet, sweet death, where all our fines are waived.
