[HN Gopher] Ask a Librarian
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Ask a Librarian
Author : Tomte
Score : 143 points
Date : 2021-10-17 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ask.loc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (ask.loc.gov)
| shellback3 wrote:
| My wife's mother was a head librarian and 'Ask a Librarian' is
| her motto. Thanks for the link.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I've been married to a qualified Librarian for 20 years and I can
| say first hand that it's not about the information, but the
| skills required to find it. You and I can spend hours trying to
| hunt down a worthy well cited resource on a topic, whereas a good
| Librarian can find it in minutes. Then there's the cross
| referencing skills, the cataloguing skills, the ability to digest
| information and produce an accurate summary... It's a whole heap
| of data and information management skills not just confined to
| books.
|
| Being a Librarian is one of the world's oldest professions, and
| technology is a long way off replacing them.
|
| Also, support your local library!
| DantesKite wrote:
| Technology is probably 10 years away from replacing them.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Google has deteriorated over the past 10 years. I think that
| librarians will remain relevant.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I can easily say that my life was changed by the reference
| librarian at the public library branch near my home in Camp
| Springs Maryland. She was the first person I had met in my
| young life who seemed to actively enjoy finding out new things
| like I did and I could never bring a topic to her where she
| could not overload me with material to check out and take home
| and read or listen too. She even arranged to have a NASA
| training film on robotics screened in their multipurpose room
| because at that time I seriously felt that being an astronaut
| was my dream job and I was looking for information on what I
| could study/learn/do to become an astronaut.
|
| The internet is great and all, but nothing beats talking with a
| librarian for finding solid information on a subject.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > it's not about the information, but the skills required to
| find it
|
| Absolutely, and I'll add that it's about finding high-quality
| information. Anyone can find stuff of unknown provenance and
| accuracy in a moment, but finding accurate, valuable (expert)
| knowledge often is impossible or exceptionally time-consuming,
| and often I lack the expertise to evaluate what I'm reading.
|
| I'll just throw an idea out here: I'd _love_ a search engine
| built by librarians, only of credible, valuable sources. I don
| 't mean recreating a curated listing of links, like old Yahoo,
| but a curated search index built of only credible sites: For
| example, Nature, Science, the NY Times Science section, and the
| like (other journals, etc.), not influencers blogging and
| YouTubing their opinions (that includes excluding Hacker News),
| or even casual blogs of experts. Yes, you'd miss some things,
| but I usually don't need to see everything, just something -
| imagine doing a search and knowing everything you find will be
| credible, expert information. (It could also be a big help with
| the disinformation curse.)
|
| Is it feasible? I think yes: The curators would only have to
| make decisions site-by-site, not article-by-article, and only
| once for each site. Most high-credibility sites in any field
| are well-known, at least to practitioners, and there aren't
| that many of them.
| billiam wrote:
| I think the main problem with this approach is the UX: that
| all the things we want useful information to be are pretty
| hard to do in a text search phrase: What makes librarians so
| great is that you don't walk up and just say "Byzantine
| empire tax rates" to them, you have a conversation about what
| you're trying to do, with tons of context, and all their
| amazing experience.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I've thought that it's a mistake for me to try to learn
| information management from programmers. They seem to mostly
| have a bunch of code-solutions to those problems but don't
| really have much insight into the workflows and mindset that is
| needed to truly handle information in a good and principled way
| (it seems that they often just want to manage their personal
| notes).
|
| Maybe that doesn't make sense. So here's an analogy: if you
| wanted to type really fast, who would you ask: a programmer or
| a stenographer? Sure, the programmer might have the income and
| idle inclination to invest in fancy keyboards and to spend some
| time on text/code snippet management, but the stenographer is
| the only one of the two who really _has to_ be able to type
| fast in order to be able to do their job.
|
| I started an information management course on Coursera, hoping
| that I could apply some of that stuff to my own interests.
| However I aborted it since it didn't seem relevant to me.
|
| Would have been nice to learn how to properly organize
| information. Maybe I should start with organizing physical
| documents.
| rackjack wrote:
| > You and I can spend hours trying to hunt down a worthy well
| cited resource on a topic, whereas a good Librarian can find it
| in minutes.
|
| This is kind of a silly question, but do just say to a
| librarian something like, "I'm looking for a book on
| implementing compilers." And they'll give you some? And when
| you finish those, can you say "Wow, I really liked so-and-so
| book, and I'm especially interested in so-and-so optimization.
| Do you know any books on that?" I've basically always worked
| out what I needed on my own, so I'm not sure how to talk to
| librarians.
| sushsjsuauahab wrote:
| I think their skill lies in being able to filter the entire
| library's contents down to a handful of best guesses. If you
| ask them "give me all the books whose main topic is
| compilers", you might have too large of a result set, and
| maybe they would prompt you for a more specialized keyword
| that they can use to further narrow down the results.
|
| I suppose it is better than brute-forcing an entire shelf of
| books :)
| moab9 wrote:
| it would work about as well as asking the old Radio Shack
| staff for help.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Yes, and they'll find the authoritative books. Of course a
| general reference librarian is most helpful to a general
| audience. If you are a professional developer, you want a
| specialist reference librarian, for example, one in computer
| science.
|
| IME the specialist librarians are generally at university
| libraries, but they will answer respectful questions from the
| public up to a point (they aren't going to do a research
| project for you), especially those in public universities.
| For example, I was looking for a history of a specific time
| period of a certain country. There were books available, but
| I couldn't discern the credible from the nonsense, the fringe
| from the consensus from the advocate for a specific theory or
| cause, etc. I emailed the specialist librarian for that
| region of the world at an Ivy League school; they had a PhD
| from Yale in the field, and of course could immediately tell
| me everything I wanted to know, and even generously shared
| more recommendations.
| anotherevan wrote:
| I've been married to a librarian for 28 years and concur with
| everything you've said.
|
| She is in charge of digital services and staff training in our
| public library service, two things that changed pretty rapidly
| in the last eighteen months with branches being shut, then
| open, then shut but you can shove loans out the door, to open,
| then shut again, etc, etc.
|
| From our dining room table she has been single-handedly[1]
| orchestrating postal deliveries of loans and access to all
| sorts of digital resources. During our extended lockdowns
| people said receiving a box of books, DVDs and such in the mail
| was like Christmas.
|
| Many of us have a passion for technology, but she loves
| technology because it helps her in her passion for the
| community.
|
| [1] I say single-handedly in jest because she had a dislocated
| wrist last year. There was huge coordination of many staff and
| services to make it all happen. It sounds good, though.
| blakesterz wrote:
| The LoC is great, and so is your local library! Public and
| Academic libraries all have some kind of "Ask A" service. They
| are a great resource!
| yummypaint wrote:
| Library resources are the best information finding tools that
| hardly anyone uses. I frequently see even grad students who
| should know better futility trying to google for relevant
| academic papers.
|
| Use the subject headings! They are assigned by real humans who
| actually understand the content! It's night and day vs whatever
| web search engines are doing these days. If you have never used
| these kinds tools before to discover new information, give it a
| try, you will be pleasantly surprised.
|
| It's incredibly refreshing for every result to be a long form
| exploration of the topic instead of mindless clickbait copied
| from Wikipedia intro sections.
| tasogare wrote:
| I'm a grad student and I don't know what you are talking about.
| The local library software is not better than Google Scholar,
| in fact it's only good when you know what you want to find
| already and there is a paper version in some of the libraries
| of the university (top-3 of the country). Otherwise GS and Sci-
| hub are doing the job very fine.
| suchow wrote:
| The parent comment says that, of all the information-finding
| tools that hardly anyone uses, library resources are the
| best, not that library resources are the best information-
| finding tools; there's no contradiction between what the two
| of you have noticed.
| chillpenguin wrote:
| I think you misunderstood one or both of the comments. The
| original commenter was saying that for certain use cases,
| the library tools are far superior to typical web search
| tools. Then the other commenter was saying they disagree,
| saying that the library tools are only good if you know
| exactly what you want, and how they prefer Google Scholar.
| math-dev wrote:
| I wanted to come and say the same thing
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Maybe there is more to it that you're missing?
| chuckee wrote:
| I have a question: Librarians are fiercely protective of reading
| privacy, and don't want to hand the information on who borrowed
| which book to the police. Yet they still record that information.
| Why? Wouldn't it be better to, for example, require a cash
| deposit equal to the value of the borrowed books, possibly in the
| form of some token? And if some books were too expensive, you'd
| still have the option of presenting some personally-identifiable
| ID. But the record of what you borrowed would be destroyed after
| you returned the book.
| lwf wrote:
| Most libraries do _not_ record that information once material
| is returned. See SFPL:
|
| > 10. The Library does not maintain a history of what a library
| user has previously checked out once books and materials have
| been returned on time4.
|
| > 11. When fines accrue on a user's account, the Library does
| maintain records of items that have been borrowed but returned
| after the due date, or are still outstanding on the user's
| record. When overdue materials are returned and all associated
| fines are paid, the information associated with the library
| card number is deleted.
|
| > 4 Library users may choose to opt in and enable My Check-out
| History. By doing so library users choose to give explicit
| consent to the storage of their Check-out History from the opt-
| in date. Library personnel will not access or release Check-out
| History unless required by law to do so. Library users may opt
| out of this service and delete Check-out History at any time.
| (Noted - November 30, 2011)
|
| https://sfpl.org/about/privacy-policy#text-40586
| thebeardisred wrote:
| Immediate thought I have after reading through some of the
| comments:
|
| Sheesh! How many of us (myself included) are partnered to
| librarians. =)
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| If your question is history-related, /r/AskHistorians is great
| too:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/
| paulpauper wrote:
| this has to be the most heavily moderated sub I have ever seen.
| all the comments show as deleted .
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| It is, but at the same time - _when_ you get an answer, you
| can be sure it is of a high quality.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| For those interested in Linguistics, there is also Ask a Linguist
|
| https://askaling.linguistlist.org/questions/
| leeoniya wrote:
| I drink and I know things.
| hikerclimber1 wrote:
| Everything is subjective. Especially laws.
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