Category: ‘puters

are advertiser-supported search engines really giving us the answers we need?

Posted on by jessamyn

Search Engines: Clogged with Commerce and Begging for an Upgrade asks whether our search engine results are being clogged with for-profit sites at the expense of solid information. For commerce sites can afford good design, placement and Googleability. Can your local community-based center?

“The consensus opinion across all these sources is that families should seek local, community-based programs that treat the whole family, not just the teen. And luckily, plenty of community-based programs are available…. I was stunned to discover that none of this information appeared when I searched on the phrase ‘troubled teen’ at Google and Yahoo, even when I waded through 100 search results at each site. Instead, I was confronted with a staggering number of listings all pointing to one commercial option: coercive residential treatment centers (RTCs) that include boot camps, wilderness programs or behavior modification programs.”

google as giant digital library? not quite.

Posted on by jessamyn
A sane article on the whole Google vs. The Library thing. There’s some good thinking here, although I would argue that the NYTimes’ paraphrase of the issue as “A few research librarians say Google could eventually take on more of the role of a universal library.” could more accurately be stated — based on their own quotations, as “A few research librarians say Google could eventually take on more of the role of indexing a universal library.” [NYT, randomwalks]