Cindy Hill of Sun Microsystems summed it up best by listing the risks involved in KM strategies when the holes in end-user information literacy skills are not filled or addressed. It appeared that we re getting better at describing the actual talent involved in searching. There was a clearer differentiation between what info pros could do and what could reasonably be expected of an end-user. The age of huge search results is ending as the algorithms for displaying results get smarter at least for the average Joe. The quest for increasingly larger databases of Web page indexes is a race that, if you win it, you lose.
More pages seem to coordinate to lower results satisfaction.
Mary Ellen Bates super searcher extraordinaire did her usual superb job of showing the best in tips and tricks from super searchers. She made it clear both through example and metaphor that there s an emerging and unbeatable split coming between those search engines and services that want the mass market and those that serve professionals and market niches. Education D. Scott Brandt s track on end-user training and teaching was equally successful. His session on teaching the Internet in 50 minutes was standing room only. It s clear that we re entering an era where language needs to be addressed.