Figure 2. Janine searches the library database using information she found in Google.

As an example, this video clip shows Janine plugging the name of author Lisa Fine into her school's library database. She found this name using Google to determine the Library of Congress subject headings she could use when searching for similar sources. Janine recognizes that the library categorizes sources in certain ways, ways not always consistent with terms she would use for searching. Doing preparatory searches in outside search engines like Google, then, becomes a crucial component of her use of the library.

Janine explained this search as an example of a source where the subject designation is very specific--including terms she does not think she would initially use when searching:

And see, in that case, I look at that classification and I'm just like I don't know how likely it would have been that I would have thought to search on "women clerks Illinois." I mean, it's a really great resource, the book that I'm looking at, because a lot of the stuff she's saying, she's focusing on, you know, women clerical workers in Chicago during the period that I'm interested in. But the stuff that she's saying is . . . relevant to women doing clerical work nationally. But [points at screen] the chance that I would have picked "clerks" as a key word . . . I would have picked "women" and I probably wouldn't have picked "clerks." I probably would have picked "clerical workers," "secretaries," "stenographers," "typists" and then the "Illinois Chicago history." . . . I never would have thought to focus on a city like that, and so, that's what I'm saying when . . . I crab about the library subjects.

For Janine using Google does not mean using online library resources less; it means using them more productively. For Adrian, however, as the next example shows, Google becomes a gateway to other commercial online resources rather than her library's online database.

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