LJ Talks to Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? - 1/22/2009 - Library Journal - 0 views
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Lisa Spiro on 22 Jan 09Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world's information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. So how could libraries, in turn, think like Google? Some libraries act as platforms for community content creation (one of my first efforts in hyperlocal community journalism, GoSkokie.net, made with the Medill School of Journalism, is now run by the library). In how many ways could a library act as a platform for the community to inform itself by providing tools and training for content creation? How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I'd really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?