Sometimes I feel like I have one of those big "i" signs above my head. You know, the ones above information desks at stores, airports, libraries, etc. It seems like every few weeks I get a random email from someone asking me to answer technical questions about some product that I linked to in my linklog. I'm not talking about questions on things I know a little about, like Mac OS X or Drupal. They're usually questions along the lines of, "I have a Pocket PC thingamabob connected to my Red Hat box but the machine isn't detecting said thingamabob. Help me! Your product isn't working."

What's up with these people? After exchanging email, I often find out that some of them haven't even tried to contact the vendor they bought their product from. Now, I know that customer service and technical support can really suck with some computer hard/software vendors, but it's pretty crazy to think some random blogger will know how to answer your questions. Alright. Maybe I do try to answer the questions that I can, which probably turns out to be like 50% of them. The problem with being a librarian is that you do want to help people find answers to questions. So I do spend time doing a few Google searches to see if I can point them in the right direction. But I have to stop doing this.

People should be careful who they ask questions of. I'm always surprised when I see that people don't seem to care about authority. But I shouldn't be. My office mate tells me that my problem reminds her of something she often read in library literature. Users will prefer the path of least resistance when it comes to finding information. This can mean asking someone nearby for help, even if they are not an expert, rather than physically going to a reliable source. In the Internet era, this means going to Google, thinking they can find everything they need answered there. Another office mate recently pointed me to an article in the NY Times about libraries in the age of Google that confirms what many librarians know to be a trend in the decline of information literacy. People look to Google as a replacement for the library. When the answers aren't there, very often they simply stop looking.

The answers are not all there, and when a person publishes a weblog, that does not make her an instant authority. I, for instance, am just some random guy who happens to be a helpful librarian. But imagine if I was a malicious jerk who gave bad advice. Here's a meatspace analogy. I know of at least two times when people in their cars stopped to ask me for directions to places deep into Brooklyn, after which I pointed them in one direction only to realize that I had steered them wrong. Oops. My bad. (Make a mental note never to ask me to help you get somewhere. It's perhaps one of the things I'm worst at.) But it's the same thing with asking a random weblogger and sometimes with going to Google. Just because they're there, doesn't mean they know how to answer your questions, even if they try to.

A related problem that information professionals see with Web users is that there are so many resources in the deep Web -- within individual databases, within digital libraries -- that are not accessible via Google or Yahoo!. The level of indexing on these sources only hits the surface. This is a major concern when people stop their information seeking at this shallow a level and never seek out an information professional who will help them get more deeply within relevant sources or who will help them consult print materials that are not now and may never be found in digitized format. In the Times article, Joseph Janes thinks most books published before 1995 fit into this category, but tons of other ephemeral materials do as well. The problem is not just with authority. You also simply can't find everything on the Web.

I know this is not news to you, my regular readers (all 5 of you or whatever). But the problems of finding authoritative sources and finding deep-web information seem common enough that I still get random inquiries in my inbox. I don't know what else to say about this, except that in the 50% of instances where I don't know the answer, I am going to stop simply saying, "I'm sorry. I don't know the answer" or "Ask your question of the vendor here: (insert url)". In addition, with each response I'm going to also include a poem or quote from an artist I find interesting. If I can't answer the questions, at least I can make the process interesting for myself and maybe turn someone on to a new artist. Each random question will be like a little bell that will remind me to spread my love of art in the world, rather than merely being an act of random cluelessness.