I have not joined the anti-Google faction whose scratching can sometimes be heard in the wainscoting of modern librarianship, but I do wonder what the search engine thought it was about with the latest offering in the Google Librarians Centre, Tips of the Trade.
The idea of a competition for innovative uses of the search engine is interesting, though I declare straight away that I would stand no chance. The first thing I ever did with Google, so long ago and scarcely innovative, was to look for myself, and then I searched for assorted exes (the former search found a square dance caller, a maths professor and a schooner, I shall say nothing about the results of the second search, except that there was no intersection between the two).
Why then is the competetion restricted to US librarians? One can see the proximate reason, that they wish to make a video for the ALA conference in New Orleans. But with a little imagination, something like this, a way in which clever librarians could offer for the education of others innovative things they have done with Google, could surely be international in scope?
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