Librarians are the New Napoleons

As we fast become a Google Nation, it's apparent that the fundamental tenets of Search (with a capital 'S'!) are the things that will turn your web site into all-powerful revenue-generating machine. And at the heart of this evolutionary process is the humble librarian.

I realise that librarianship may not be the most glamorous art form, but, if you examine the development of the web, then you'll see that the skill of classifying and organising information is at the root of the most successful and profitable web applications — Google, amazon.com and ebay. Each of them is in the business of data classification.

Google provides you with the web links that you need, based on its ability to decode your search enquiry and present a bunch of related web pages that it has already classified. Amazon.com sells you things you never thought you needed by correlating your purchase behaviour with other, pre-classified items that you might find interesting. And ebay enables you to bid on weird and wonderful things through its ability to correlate what you're looking for with the items that its sellers have classified.

All of these businesses are built on the power of search. More specifically, they run their businesses on sophisticated classification schemes – or to use the technical term, metadata. To be a successful web business then is to act as a successful librarian. You will ensure that more people will find you and buy your stuff if you master the art of classification.

Metadata and Keywords
At this point, it's worth describing the two mechanical components of web librarianship: metadata and keywords.

Metadata is basically information about information. Whilst this is abstract to describe, it's simple to put into practise. Consider the last book you stumbled across and bought on Amazon. Amazon maximises your buying 'serendipity' by applying a very successful metadata scheme to each of its products. The DVD of England's recent Ashes victory is described within Amazon's system by a variety of metadata fields. One will be 'sport'; a subset of which will be 'cricket.' Another may be 'Freddie Flintoff.' Another will be 'electronics'; a subset of which will be 'DVD,' and so on.

So, as a cricket fan, when I look on Amazon for 'cricket' products, my search returns are likely to produce this very DVD. Further, when I click on the link and browse the description of this product I'm also likely to see a promotion for Freddie Flintoff's recent autobiography. And so I buy both of them and end up spending more cash then I'd initially bargained for. (But no matter, I'm a very happy customer!) Basically, what Amazon has done is to employ some smart librarians to sell me more stuff.

That describes things at the backend of a web system (i.e., a bunch of skilled librarians ordering content into effective metadata schemes to make things easy to find and to ensure that relevant products are presented to you at opportune times). But as a web user, I look at this process through the opposite end of the lens. I'm concerned with 'keywords,' i.e., what are the most effective words I can use to find stuff I'm interested in (and quickly!)?

Keywords can be thought of as metadata in reverse. They are the descriptions that I apply to information or products when I'm not quite so sure what I'm looking for. When I Google, I'm guessing …but my guess is usually an educated one. When I tried to find information to support an important Jimmy Choo purchase decision this Xmas (I know ziltch about ladies shoes!), I typed “Jimmy Choo, shoes, prices, discounts, UK” into Google.

Librarians are the New Napoleons

As we fast become a Google Nation, it's apparent that the fundamental tenets of Search (with a capital 'S'!) are the things that will turn your web site into all-powerful revenue-generating machine. And at the heart of this evolutionary process is the humble librarian.

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