
Before Google, Who Knew? - bhaumik
http://www.npr.org/blogs/theprotojournalist/2014/12/20/371851621/before-google-who-knew
======
femto
I'd say that before Google, "AltaVista knew". In my experience, it was
AltaVista that transformed the web/Internet from a collection of disparate
sites to a single place that you went for answers to questions.

Before AltaVista, I used to write the URL for any useful web and ftp servers
that I found in a logbook, so I could find them again. Getting an answer was a
matter of looking up the logbook, deciding which website might have the
required information, then typing the URL into my browser. After AltaVista the
logbook fell into disuse, as locating information was a matter of typing a few
well chosen keywords into AltaVista and visiting a few of its top hits.

Google took over from AltaVista, but at the time it felt like Google was a
"better AltaVista" than something completely new.

~~~
jmnicolas
Maybe I didn't know about Alta Vista at the time, I can't remember the search
engines I was using back then, but what I remember is that every single search
was returning thousands of porn results.

Google was a revelation, it actually found things !

~~~
bsder
So did AltaVista.

And, AltaVista actually showed you a clustermap of results keywords that you
could refine.

So, if you typed in "python" you would see a clustermap of results that
included a bunch of herpetology in that cluster and a bunch of computer
science in that cluster, etc.

I _still_ miss that.

~~~
antman
Here you are:
[http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search?source=...](http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search?source=web&view=folders&skin=fancy-
compact&query=python&results=100&algorithm=lingo3g&EToolsDocumentSource.country=ALL&EToolsDocumentSource.language=ALL&EToolsDocumentSource.customerId=&EToolsDocumentSource.safeSearch=false)

~~~
bsder
You might not want to spread that one around yet. 3 links about Burmese
pythons hardly qualifies as a cloud around herpetology.

I think they should avoid using this as their tech demo.

Not being as capable as a 15 year old search engine running on significantly
less powerful hardware is kind of embarrassing.

~~~
musername
The technical capability can't be inferred from the used capacity. The
comparison is unjust.

------
Homunculiheaded
One thing that this article fails to point out is how often librarians were
wrong before Google. In 1986 there was a study[0] that showed that across the
board reference librarians were only correct about 55% of the time.

I think most people today would consider a query answering system that had an
accuracy of 55% to be an interesting curiosity, but certainly not ready for
real-world application.

It's funny how frequently we measure machine learning performance of an "easy
for humans" task and fail to compare it to human accuracy on the same data. We
just assume humans would do perfectly on it. I'm sure there are a few MNIST
digits that I would get wrong.

[0] P.Hernon, C McClure "Unobtrusive Reference Testing: The 55 Percent Rule,"
Library Journal, 111 April 15,1986

~~~
greggarious
But why were people asking reference librarians questions?

When I spoke to librarians in the mid-90s, they'd just point me towards
sources that could have an answer. It was up to me, the reader, to ultimately
find the answer.

~~~
dredmorbius
Depends on where you were and who you were asking.

At several large research university libraries, I found the reference
librarians could be downright obsessive in tracking down some questions. It
would depend on workloads and other factors, I suppose.

~~~
greggarious
This was mostly for pleasure or K-12 assignments. The sort of questions that
were very fact based.

"Do snakes poop?"

"How far away is Mars?"

That sort of thing.

~~~
dredmorbius
I was specifically thinking of uni-level questions.

~~~
greggarious
At the uni level, aren't they more supposed to help you find the appropriate
database rather than find the answer for you?

I might ask a librarian how to access back copies of a journal, but I wouldn't
expect him or her to do my lit review for me...

------
sparkzilla
I'm a bit confused by this article because Google can't actually answer the
complex questions that the librarians have received. Google's "knowledge
graph" can answer simple questions, based on scraped Wikipedia data, and the
core part of the site (the search engine) presents users with a semi-random
set of links, basically telling them to find the answer on someone else's
site. It's like a librarian that knows a little bit of info (but not quite
enough) who then tells you which part of the library to go to find a book that
may or many not have the answer to your question. A site like Quora is better
for answering complex questions.

IMHO, the "knowledge graph" actually shows that Google is very poor at
determining the implied questions people are asking, and exposed the failures
of alogorithmic search in general: [http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-
hole/](http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/)

~~~
jyrkesh
The article doesn't even mention the Knowledge Graph. It's using just
referring to the fact that Google is still the first place you go to ask those
questions. Usually, the answer resides somewhere in the first page of results.

I asked Google "will a poisonous snake die if it bites itself?" Results
include Quora, Yahoo Answers, a Youtube video of a snake actually doing it,
and HowStuffWorks. So no "Google" doesn't know, but I'm going to ask Google
when I want to answer a question.

~~~
sparkzilla
>Usually, the answer resides somewhere in the first page of results.

And that's the business opportunity.

------
corin_
I was channel surfing on TV yesterday and flicked onto one of the Harry Potter
films, to hear Hermione saying she researched something in the library and
couldn't find a single reference - my immediate thought before moving on a
channel was that (assuming I don't have her magical skills), I would have no
idea how to research something in a library without either the internet, or
asking other people who might know where I could find the answers.

(I say no idea - obviously on a basic level it wouldn't be hard to start by
finding all books on the rough topic, reading them, etc.... but to do it with
any sort of efficiency as opposed to so slowly that I'd end up beating myself
to death with a hardcover.)

~~~
slantyyz
That's a fascinating perspective.

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, we were taught how to use a card
catalog and later, microfiche for finding stuff in the library. While I was
still in university up until the earliest 90s, I was still using microfiche
for research.

~~~
corin_
I was born in 1990 - I spent my childhood in libraries for fiction, and I
guess occasionally for extremely basic "research" for school projects, but at
an age when "research" was enough to look up a book on the topic I needed to
know about, that probably was at least partially a picture book, then borrow
that and go home with my mum...

Have fond memories of both card catalogs and microfiche, but only really for
finding novels I wanted.

------
anigbrowl
_Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it?
Answer: We couldn 't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post
Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)_

This has a strong odor of trolling to it - one wonders how many questions
directed at librarians were genuine vs. mischievous. I'm also struck by the
failure to provide an answer rather than suggest a method, eg 'use a calipers
to make precise measures of physical objects. If it is too difficult to
measure a single stamp, measure a block of multiple sheets and divide your
result by the number of sheets.'

~~~
Zenst
The other question that jumped out like that one was in a trolling context,
though probably was real in that timeframe was "And there was this typewritten
note found on a cataloguing card:

Telephone call mid-afternoon New Year's Day, 1967: Somewhat uncertain female
voice: "I have two questions. The first is sort of an etiquette one. I went to
a New Year's Eve party and unexpectedly stayed over. I don't really know the
hosts. Ought I to send a thank-you note? Second. When you meet a fellow and
you know he's worth twenty-seven million dollars — because that's what they
told me, twenty-seven million, and you know his nationality, how do you find
out his name?"

I do not feel even Google today could handle that.

~~~
greggarious
Sounds like a question for Dan Savage.

------
jrochkind1
As a librarian-programmer, I continue to find it interesting how interested HN
is in libraries/librarians.

I wonder what that's about? Seriously, I'm not entirely sure and wonder. Some
kind of nostalgia for the 'information technology' of pre-computing society?

(Personally, while I still work in libraries, I share btipling's
[[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8781169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8781169)]
general lack of optimism about the future of libraries, alas.)

------
kazinator
> "Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it?
> Answer: We couldn't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post
> Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)"

Haha!

An inexpensive caliper gauge, available in any specialty tool outlet, could
yield an instant empirical answer to within about 10 microns.

~~~
irremediable
I suspect the inter-stamp variability might be a little bigger than that.

~~~
VLM
That's how you can tell someone was trolling the library, decades later.
Because the stamps came in boxes, so a box of 10K consisting of 1K sheets was
8 inches thick so 8/1000th of an inch (all made up numbers). My wife is the
daughter of a postmaster and by osmosis she knows these things, life in a
rural post office isn't always as exciting as a Bukowski novel so this kind of
thing has been discussed. There were spools of stamps at various times so that
might be a puzzling math problem.

On the table in front of me is 1000 sheets of laserprinter paper in two
packages about 4 inches thick so 4/1000ths of an inch for letter size 20 pound
paper.

~~~
anigbrowl
Ha, I came to the same conclusion about it being a prank before spotting your
comment.

------
btipling
I am one of those programmers who doesn't have a computer science background.
Instead I have an MLS (and an undergrad anthropology degree) and thus though
myself am not a librarian have some idea of the value librarians provide.

For one thing librarians try to satisfy the information need of a patron. This
is different than answering the question asked, which even now search engines
can't really do well yet. Google search is powerful but you're searching an
unfathomably large index and your query is a key. What librarians do is try to
understand the exact thing you want to know, which you may not even know when
you asked the question. Often a librarian will respond to a question with a
question.

A librarian will also continue to help until the problem has been solved for
the patron. They'll encourage a patron who might feel discouraged. Librarians
treat people as people, not as queries.

Librarians are also staunch defenders of privacy and information freedom. In
America, librarians are professionals with a code of ethics, which is codified
by the American Library Association. Librarians are taught the complex issues
involving privacy, the chill effect. Librarians are not in the business of
collecting your personal information or selling you advertising. Librarians
fight censorship, and they fight to protect your privacy.

Librarians are supremely excellent at curating. Go to a Barnes & Nobles and
look at the selection of children's books. Read some of them. Then go to your
local library's children's section and read some of those books. It's night
and day. Libraries are filled with amazingly valuable books that, especially
in the case of children's books, address important issues, are beautiful and
beautifully written. They're not stories about Barbie rescuing a fashion show,
they're about relatable and enjoyable characters that discover the world
around them, learning to understand themselves.

Having said all this there are considerable problems in the American librarian
profession which turned me off to it.

Librarians were slow to react to digital content, which put them at a
disadvantage on digital rights management issues. Walking into a public
library can for some be like a time warp to 20 years ago, with volumes of
books filling shelves everywhere. There's a reason for that, books can be lent
out. By sticking to books librarians haven't been the force they should have
been in fighting DRM and copyright laws that would enable access to digital
information to more people. Libraries spend considerable amounts of money for
highly protected digital content like JSTOR.

Librarianship as a profession is also one dominated by time in service type of
seniority. I wanted to be a programmer at a library. I was a programmer at a
library as an undergraduate student and there were librarians who programmed
to manage the library's website and library. But coming out of MLS the
unfortunate reality was that programming jobs are jobs that go to librarians
with seniority. I would have had to man a reference desk for a decade. And
that kind of advancement, where it isn't skill, but time spent warming a seat
that gives you political power is just not for me.

Finally, it's not clear what the future of libraries will be. Fewer and fewer
people are reading books. Libraries are very popular places, especially for
children, but in many cases libraries are just places that have a computer or
a meeting room. Public librarians don't seem to have an answer for what's to
come.

~~~
jrochkind1
I'm also a programmer with an ML(I)S, and while I do work in a library, I tend
to share your negative analysis of the 'industry' and it's future.

But I'm curious what year you had trouble finding a job due to seniority
things. In my experience from the late 2000's to now, programming jobs in
libraries are not very hard to get for interested and qualified people. If you
can make a good impression, are a programmer, and actually have an interest in
working in libraries (with or without an MLS), and are willing to move (there
are only so many jobs and might not be one in your city), I think you could
find a job in a library. (University more than public; public libraries still
don't really put much resources into in-house development, which is sad, I
think).

Whether you'd _want_ to or not is another question. The pay probably won't be
competitive with the private sector, and, as you know, the work environment
may or may not be entirely dysfucntional.

I love the idea of libraries. I don't think actual present day U.S. libraries
are succeeding at achieving their potential in a post internet world. Before
the internet, libraries and librarians were pretty much the experts at
'information retrieval', and I love the idea of "civil society" non-profit
agencies that are experts at collecting, finding, and preserving information
-- something society could use now more than ever. I don't see actual
libraries meeting the challenge though, sadly. Perhaps it's unfair to expect
to them to.

------
jstanek
It's nice to see DuckDuckGo mentioned at the end as on-par with Google, Siri,
and OnStar. I'm a little surprised they mentioned DDG in the first place, as
it doesn't have nearly the name recognition as Bing or Yahoo search.

------
brandonheato
So wouldn't the world be a better place for everyone if all the librarians in
the world posted everything to a searchable quora/stackoverflow shared
knowledge base? Instead of having knowledge fragmented and buried deep in
places where people would have trouble finding.

~~~
walterbell
_The better to obsolete you with, my dear._

The challenge of every "knowledge management" system ever invented, including
Google Answers, which paid (!) for answers.

