Chat, email, in person, telephone - which customer is greener?

I don’t think that the official Google product  bloggers have been reading the recent posts in the biblioblogosphere about how we prioritize our reference questions -David King’s Ask-a-Librarian Services Need a Reboot and Meredith Farkas’ Separate but not equal? posts for example.

….but … It looks like the Google bloggers have just declared the library reference desk “ungreen” compared to google, Powering a google search :

Not long ago, answering a query meant traveling to the reference desk of your local library. Today, search engines enable us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant, without leaving home. Tools like email, online books and photos, and video chat all increase productivity while decreasing our reliance on car trips, pulp and paper.

I’ve said before that I think we should be working to make sure that our information format brand isn’t presumed to be only print books. Maybe we also need to work hard to ensure our “query answering” brand is not “in person”.

To me immediate, personal and professional service is our real business edge and if we are going to survive we will need to make sure our funders realise that we can find information quicker, better and more humanly than search engines…’cause we can, right?

(Note to self: 1) practice to ensure that my search skills are tiptop and I know about *all* reference resources 2) Work out how to ensure that our funders, clients…and competitors… realise the great service that we offer comes as more than “walk up to the desk”. )

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