The Google Blog recently published an interesting post that contextualizes the media hype surrounding Michael Jackson’s death against the terms the world was searching for in the Google index on June 25, the day he passed away. R.J. Pittman, Google’s director of Project Management (but ostensibly one of his employees) notes that the demand for information about Jackson and his death was so sudden that “Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a “We’re sorry” page before finding the articles they were looking for.” The post’s accompanying graph, which shows how searches for MJ dramatically spiked in about thirty minutes, is an interesting way to see how quickly we wanted information on the King of Pop.

The Google Blog’s post also provides a link to their Hot Trends for June 25. Pittman shows this page so we can see just how often the Google index was searched with a phrase such as “michael jackson rushed to hospital.” I particularly like the fact that the second-most popular search for the day is “michael jackson dead 2009” – showing that when it comes to celebrity deaths, many of us hold to the saying, “once bitten, twice shy”.

But what’s more interesting, I think is, is the number of Michael Jackson-related phrases that made it to the top 100. 26 of the 100 most popular searches on June 25 were directly related to Michael Jackson and 6 more were directly related to Los Angeles-based media. Dozens more made requests for other news outlets, as well. Pittman doesn’t tell us in this post exactly how many times information was requested on MJ, but that fact that 26 different permutations of the subject made for the most popular retrievals of the day calls to mind how important the Google-verse has become to ready reference. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it reveals just how adept this search engine has become at retrieving useful data.

Search Trends on the death of Michael Jackson, June 25, 2009 (my markup)

But at the same time, it reminds me of the difficulties we (scholars and professionals) have when contending with the giant Googlebot. Google really can be everything to everyone sometimes, but this can blur the boundaries between what might be useful and what might be peripheral to a student’s research. At the time that the world was demanding their MJ fix through Google, I was putting the finishing touches on some library materials to help teach students how to access scholarly materials via Google Scholar and Google Books. And now, after contemplating the Hot Trends page this evening, I’m finding it difficult to reconcile the fact that I can help some one to create an effective Google search strategy for post-human feminism and sci-fi film by using the same search box they used to search “jeff goldblum is watching you poop” (no. 68 on the Hot Trends list, above).

That’s not to say that Google is bad or that popular culture is bad – I love both. But perhaps it highlights the need for information professionals to show people how to wade through all the flotsam and jetsam that exists out there in the Internet. Google and other indexes may have brought the world to our fingertips, but we could all use a little help organizing it and determining its utility.

This week I sat in on my first Halifax Library Association board meeting.  I’m its new treasurer, and while I have very little experience in the treasury (aside from a failed experiment in a B.Acc programme – i left that due to sheer boredom), I’m a glutton for titles and letters and acronyms.  So, I was more that happy to sign on and take part.  My first official act will be to finally pay my membership dues; my second act will be to hound you to pay your own.

As a group, we sat down and hashed out some ideas to improve membership and programming in the coming year.  Although nothing is “shovel-ready” just yet, I think we have some exciting things in store for the fall.  Right now, we’re planning on a “library pub crawl” in September to attract some of the MLIS students at Dal’s School of Information Management.  I’d like to find a way to get the NSCC programme as involved in this as Dal’s MLIS programme, so we’ll see if anything can pan out there, as well.  At any rate, this will all be followed by some extensive evening tours for the entire membership, which will hopefully always finish at a local pub.

One thing that we did discuss at length was the idea of having regular, informal gatherings for the membership to socialize and to discuss whatever the night’s topic might be.  It may be a fund-raising event, or it may not, but either way, it would be a chance for the locals to get together and catch up on their lives and on things going on in the workplace.  The member who mentioned this idea was invoking the HLA’s tradition of holding regular networking meetings before it was called networking by having regular get-togethers in someone’s home, sort of like a “brown bag lunch, except with drinks”.  There is some merit in this: since the larger regional and national library associations have cornered the market on formal professional development, it may be a good idea for the HLA to stick to what it does best – getting like-minded people together.

I have to say that I think the informal-gathering concept is very appealing.  The fact is that the HLA had been doing this for years, and it is known for its roots in social networking.  And given the popularity of unconferences and Camps nowadays, a regular librarians’ meet-up might work quite well.  I’m drawing some of my inspiration for this from the wild success of Halifax’s Third Wednesdays meetup for anyone in the community who is interested in tech, the internet, people and social media.  The 3W meetup started small, but through word-of-mouth promotions has turned into a monthly event that packs a local pub full of professionals who are there to talk and listen and share a pint and talk some more.  Given the sheer amount of libraries in town and the fact that peninsular Halifax does have a bit of a knowledge economy to back up its ship-building, government and military sectors, I think we could organize a similar ongoing event for the local librarian/information professional community.

What this would take is commitment to the cause and an understanding that the event remains informal and social.  This is something that would be about communicating and building relationships..   At any rate, we’ll see how it all pans out – there’s always more to follow.

So the Internet is awash in green right now as thousands (dare we say millions?) show their support for.. . something.. in Iran.  Thanks to the development of micro-blogging networks like Twitter and tumblr, words from and about Iran continue to make their way from the middle east to the west.  And no matter how uninformed some of those words are and how uninformed we the audience may be on the subject, we’re still colouring our icons and pictures and avatars green to be part of this movement.

Not many people in the west fully understand what the movement is about, myself included.  But despite this ignorance, many people in the west are now showing off hues often reserved for St Patrick’s Day.  A close friend of mine just moments ago chided me for the doing the same, especially because this show of support doesn’t adequately reveal my knowledge (or ignorance) on the subject.  I admit it: I’m a fairly intelligent person,but I don’t know much about what’s going on in Tehran. Yet, I’m still showing green in my icons.  I do know that all Iranian presidential candidates had to be vetted by the Guardian Council and therefore even the moderates had to at least deign support for the theocracy’s state apparati – this should make us critically question the protests and the movement’s ends to a certain degree, let alone our green hues.  But on the other hand, if it were not for Twitter, and if it were not for the colour green, would so many people in the west have even thought twice about the recent Iranian election and crackdowns in Tehran?

I don’t like asking questions like that, because they sometimes presume that the lowest common denominator is the best way to appeal to the senses.  Twitter, for sure, is not a news agency by any sense of the imagination.  And a million people wearing a virtual green in June is hardly reason for anyone else to join in – this is not a popularity contest or a fad, especially when a toxic mix of politics, values, and faith has stirred into violence.   All the same, what we’re seeing with Twitter right now is an opportunity for people to start listening and talking about the 2009 Iranian elections.  Yes, if Mir-Hossein Mousavi had won the election, he would still have become Iran’s president under a theocratic Guardian Council.  But if some one on our friends lists has painted their profile picture green, then we have been afforded an opportunity to ask if they fully understand what is going on in the state if and they know who the colour green represents and what political system that colour green’s candidate operates in.  And then, we should ask ourselves the same questions.  This is, in short, a chance for an uninformed society to act and become informed.

Face it -  we in the west, especially anyone who grew up in after the late 80s, have only a vague idea of the history and current nature of Iranian politics and culture – both its religious and secular sides.  How many of us actually gave serious thought about what’s going down in Tehran before our friends starting showing green? The fact that all candidates had to at least deign support for the Guardian Council is important.  But what matters just as much for us in the west is that although we’ve realized we don’t know enough, we’ve also been given an opportunity to learn more.  Let’s run with it.