From: GLIGOR1@xxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2003 11:36:04 EDT
Subject: Cornell vs. Google Answers
*Library Journal News Wire, Sept. 10 - It was Cornell reference librarians
versus the giant search engine Google in a showdown - well, study - to see
whether librarians' free services could compete against Google Answers, a
reference service that charges a fee. Anne Kenney, associate university
librarian, told the LJ that the librarians wanted to examine why people
would pay for a service available for free at libraries. Cornell's
librarians did better than Google's staff, "but only slightly." Kenney
says that's not a bad thing: "If for instance an outside provider can
adequately address simple reference questions at one-fifth the cost of
doing so in-house, why duplicate the service?" The complete paper is
available at <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june03/kenney/06kenney.html>.