Article on libraries and Google

I recently had a friend and he was asking how my course was going. I said the usual platitudes (enjoying it, hard work, etc). He then said, 'Why are you doing it? I can use my laptop to get all my information?' Not as if none of us haven't heard this said to us before is it? So what should my responce to this be? Well, the most obvious one is ignore them and ban them from my social network (even take them outta Facebook.
Or I could read Stephen Abram article called Waiting for Your Cat to Bark - Competing with Google and its Ilk.

The articles is in 3 stages and looks at the advantages and disadvantages of search engines and libraries, and the final part looks at how libraries an utilise search engines. The first article deals with Googles advantages and disadvantages. Next months looks at libraries, and november conclude it.

Abram's article looks at Google's slow uptake on social software (though as they bought Blogger and Writely, this is somewhat far of the mark (in my opinion). Though I must admit I agree on his final disadvantage of Google, in which he writes:-

So far, Google does local (communities, neighborhoods, clubs, etc.) poorly. Libraries were pretty good at this space – so far good libraries have a handle on that local connection – physically and psychologically. Can this be sustained? If Google and its ilk start setting their landing pages to default to a local page (for example toronto.google.com) to dominate local advertising, will our local institutions, like newspapers, schools, and libraries, be ready?

Anyhow, looking forward to next months follow up. but check it anyway.