Cybrarian Interview: Sandra Singh, Suite101.com

SS: Your typical stuff. I read SearchEngine Report, CNET, ZDNet, Scout Report (I believe they just lost their funding), Searcher magazine, professional journals, etc. I also have a husband who is a research genius (he's the Business and Economics Librarian at SFU) and who forwards me relevant materials when he comes across them.

GD: What are some of your favourite Internet searching tools, sites, or resources?

SS: For Web searching, I tend to use three: Google is my first stop - I like it because of its hypertext ranking (though it could be a bit more sophisticated) and its no-payment-for-placement mandate; NorthernLight is usually my second stop because they're big and they actually run an automated classifier on their indexed sites - though I really don't appreciate that they charge money for their special collections materials; Fast (alltheweb.com) is usually my third stop because it is so big.

For browsing, I tend to start at Librarians Index to the Internet (lii.org) because the resources are all extremely well evaluated and they index by subject (like us), making it really easy to navigate.

GD: What, in your opinion, makes a quality site?

SS: Professionally, when looking at a Web site I look for a few main things:

1. I need to have someone who is an expert in their area (thus, I always want to see credentials);

2. I want to see contact information;

3. I want to know who they are affiliated with organisationally so I can anticipate any biases in the information;

4. I want to see sources cited (so I can verify the legitimacy of their information);

5. I want to see dates (so I know how current their data is); and

6. I want to see few grammar and spelling errors (how can you trust someone who is so sloppy as to not check their spelling?)

Otherwise, when doing research I always use Internet-accessible databases via my library such as EBSCO Masterfile, which provides full-text to thousands of journals, or CBCA, etc.

GD: What do you think when you hear people say the Web is, in some senses, rendering librarians obsolete? Does it bother you? What can libraries offer that the Web can't?

SS: Really, the Web isn't rendering librarians obsolete. Librarians work with information and are commonly referred to as Information Professionals - I don't think any of us see information becoming obsolete.

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