Recently I was looking at some of the searches that had brought visitors to ⌘f and noticed “if i was a librarian how would i search” was among them. this kind of clicked with something that’s been rattling around my head the last few days about a couple of personal search experiences I’ve had recently. reflecting on these two recent quests for information i’d be forced to answer that question, “about the same as you do now but you’d feel really weird about it and lay up at night thinking about what it means“.

Tinfoil hats

J. just got a new job that will be taking him to Argentina often. after celebrating a lot, the first thing he did was renew his passport. this means he had to trade his perfectly serviceable old passport for one of the fancy, creepy new passports embedded with an RFID chip.

(Actually, before I get into the story proper, can i just add as an aside that in some ways the RFID chip is the least creepy thing about these new passports? it’s fairly obvious that they were designed under this Administration full as they are with over-the-top patriotic imagery. actually, they are pretty hilarious. well, hilarious probably until you have to present these overwrought, childish documents at a border…”really, my passport design was not conceptualized by a large committee of extremely patriotic, but not terribly sophisticated, fifth graders”. Also, if that space image at the back was intended to do anything but send the message to me that, yes, indeed, they are watching me, Enemy of the State-style, I would be surprised…)

Okay, so, yeah, RFID chip…

We found a lot of stuff online about how to disable the chip (use a hammer) but j. didn’t really want to do that. In theory, there actually isn’t anything all that objectionable about having border officials be able to use this chip to get at your info — could make things more efficient? — and, really, since he’ll be traveling a lot for work, he just didn’t want to make his life any more difficult than it had to be. But, at the same time, no one should be particularly happy with the idea of walking around with a document in their pocket that is transmitting their personal, identifying information to any miscreant with the skillz to sniff it…which apparently isn’t that hard.

So he asked me to make him a Faraday cage (really, a Faraday pouch) to carry his passport in. Basically, something that would block the chip as long as it was in there but have the passport remain functional at borders. Yes, yes, we both know that it is possible to buy such a thing but we’re DIY-kinda people, plus broke, so I set to work finding out what kind of technology was necessary. Would I need to get some kind of metal mesh? Sheets of some specific kind of metal?  Would the metal need to be continuous around the passport or could it be joined with a seam at the side that was only fabric?

So.  I googled it.  My library probably has some books that could answer these questions with authority.  we do, after all, have a physics department and a wonderful science librarian.  But I’m not a physicist.  I probably couldn’t make use of that authoritative book, too technical.  Maybe there’s some book out there that explains these things in lay terms for tin-foil-hatters like me but, honestly, the idea of searching for it was pretty unappealing.  I just wanted some answers quickly, plus this seems like the kind of thing the Web should be great for.  And it was!  I found a bunch of tutorials.  All the tutorials called for using aluminum foil, some with duct tape.  I got to work and made a nice little pouch for him.  Got some great suede-like material for the outside and lovely silver satiny stuff for the lining.  Sandwiched some aluminum foil between the layers.  It came out great.

But will it block the chip from transmitting his info?  honestly, i have no idea.  I just found these tutorials that looked good and went with it.  but there’s no reason in the world i should think these people know anything about constructing effective faraday cages.  From what I know about RFID it seems to me it should work, but I don’t really know that much.  As a librarian, I can think of a lot of ways I could go about confirming that the tin foil would be sufficient.  I know how I could find sources with more authority.  I know why I should, especially in this case where one “go ahead and use tin foil” tutorial could have easily begat all the others giving that nefarious sense of consensus that can happen so easily on the web.  the point is, in this case, and in plenty of others, I simply didn’t.  So, how does a librarian search?  Well, I certainly found some great tutorials (passport rfid block DIY worked really well, btw) but I didn’t, really, find everything I was looking for because I was lazy.  So, yeah, a librarian searches like everyone else from time to time.

Snake Oil

I couldn’t breathe in June and July.  It became, basically, the only thing I thought about.  Because when you can’t breathe, it turns out, you’re pretty distracted.  Somewhere along the line I was finally diagnosed with asthma (yay, treatable!) but managed health care being what it is, there were a couple of weeks between my diagnosis and my appointment with the doctor who could get me some medicine to treat it.  I think, in that two week period, I probably read every webpage with the word asthma on it.  And not just “the good stuff”.  I didn’t just go to MedlinePlus and call it good.  I read every post in every support group.  I read every crazy screed out there: why i probably didn’t have asthma because doctors misdiagnose, why i shouldn’t take treatment, etc, etc.  And this behavior?  Pretty much the textbook example we use with students when we want to all agree on the kind of information you shouldn’t get on the web.  I have confidently (and now I fear smugly) said “Reading the biography of your favorite movie star is probably a fantastic use of the Web, reading information about your medical diagnosis, probably not” to more classes than I care to remember.

Because, you know what?  The web was a terrific source of medical information for me.  Even the crazy stuff.  Especially the crazy stuff.  Because I get, what, ten minutes with the doctor?  Immersing myself in the entire range of dialogue about my diagnosis - from the authoritative, high-quality, physician penned articles to the emotional, superstituous, unreliable rantings of an asthma-sufferer who has not gotten the help she needs from the medical community - allowed me to really zero in on the questions I wanted answered when I finally got to meet with him.  If I’d stuck to the information I found when I consulted the “good” sources I honestly wouldn’t have had any questions for him.  All the predictable, “mainstream” questions were answered pretty well by the authoritative sources.  Also, reading all the out-there stuff that you end up finding whenever you dip into a subculture on the web really did give me more confidence in my own experience of my condition.  I had a really satisfying visit with my doctor because I went in deeply conversant in the culture of my diagnosis.  Not just the fact, but the feelings.

The bad information was good.

I like to think that every librarian, that every educator, knows that “bad” information can be good.  A growing number of us have started to think differently about the concept of website evaluation - putting the idea of the checklist in the junk heap where it belongs.  I think if we look at our own web searching experiences outside of our professional duties, if we look at how we search when we’re not librarians - when we’re in a hurry and a decent looking tutorial is preferable to a physics lesson or when we’re sick and scared and looking for solace in others’ experiences - we will have to acknowledge that sometimes a website that fails completely all the tests for quality we can throw at it is exactly what we need.  And we should listen to that arrogant voice that says “yes, but I can use the bad website because i know the right way to use it.”    Because that voice will remind us to focus more on the nature, limits, and character of the information need, rather the fixating so completely on the source outside of the context of the need.  It can remind us that “searching like a librarian” is about something much more sophisticated and important than knowing the best sources or knowing the best search strategies.

What will I say next time I’m in front of a class trying to come up with an example of something you wouldn’t want to use the web for?  Um.  I’m thinking I just won’t.  To do so would mask the subtler truth, the messier reality.