Government information in the Google Age

An interesting seminar at the British Library on 2 November.  The event was co-organised by CILIP’s Government Libraries and Information Group, SCOOP and The British Library.  A number of good points were raised throughout the day, but the comments which really struck a chord with us were:

• An emphasis on the speed and frequency of change affecting those who produce and use government information - Natalie Ceeney reminded us of just how much change there has been at The National Archives over the last four years, much of it in response to the challenges (and the opportunities) posed by the Google Age.  Of course, it’s not just government information that is and has been changing, the rest of the information world has been equally affected.

• The World Wide Web is 15 years old in a week or so - on the one hand, 15 years has flown by, on the other, the scale of change is incredible in only 15 years.  The way we interact with each other, with our employers and employees, with business and with government has been completely transformed.  Many of us can easily remember the world before the Internet, but we just forget how far and how fast we have travelled.  I’d add mobile telecoms as another important driver for change (or perhaps it’s just another facet of the Google Age).

• The ‘Google Age’ is potentially a real challenge to the concept of information literacy.  How many people really understand the strengths and the weaknesses of Google?  The percentage of people who use only one or two keywords to search, and who never bother to use the Advanced Search functionality is scary - Google indexes only the first three levels of content so the many websites which require the user to drill down four or five levels contain vast amounts of content that will never be found by the average user.  In a world where people default to Google when searching for information there is a real risk that we will lose the skills to find and evaluate information effectively.

All in all, much food for thought and a real reminder of how much the information landscape has changed in a relatively short time.

Melanie Goody & Luisa Jefford