"Full-Text Search Capability Not Without Problems, Scholars Say"
by Phil Ciciora, University of Illinois News Bureau
From the Article:
The perception that plugging a few keywords into Google will yield a universe of relevant information is somewhat mistaken, say Kathryn LaBarre and Carol L. Tilley, professors of library and information science at Illinois.
[Our emphasis] “There’s a lot of excitement about the availability of full text,” LaBarre said. “But the perception often is, ‘If you have full text, why do you need to do anything else other than providing good search capabilities?’ Well, it turns out that full-text search isn’t always king, especially for something iterative like folklore literature.”]
Ed. Note: Well said Professor LaBarre and thanks for saying it.
According to the scholars, the result is that too often the value of providing systematic, reliable and meaningful access to the contents of the texts is negated. Libraries and archives themselves play a role in this negation when, in an effort to save time and money, they are forced to rely on “good enough” records to provide access to the resources in their collections.
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.