As a question regarding technology I am wondering if other lirbarians are finding it harder and harder to make the web dance to thier trickier questions.
Maybe I am just out of the reference habit but it used to be that by running a complex SQL string, something with lots of ANDs, ORs, and NOTs along with the judicious use of truncation and parenthesis, I could pretty much always find any answer I wanted when I wanted it.
There are so many dead ends on the web now, so much purchasing power tied into the search engines that I am finding it increasingly difficult to get answers with the facility that I once did.
Databases still function well and they are a terrific source of information of course. The web works for so many timely issues and immediate answers though and it seems as if commerce (the need which opened up the web to begin with) has made the actual use of the web more complicated.
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Good point. Even with the most specific search phrases, more and more I find myself pushed to the 6th, 7th, and 8th pages of the search engine before I get to anything relevant. Ads and unrelated material clog up the first pages in a way that they didn't used to. It's incredibly frustrating.
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