“Sounds like a scam to me,” I tell her with a kind smile.

“I’d like to sign up for the free toothpaste anyway,” she says.

“Okay,” says I.

About 8 minutes later she says in an exasperated voice.

“This is a scam. This is a complete scam!”

I pause. And then say, “Uhm, did I tell you that about 8 minutes ago?”

She looks a little embarassed — and then says, “Well, yes.”

The moral of the story? Sometimes you need to let folks come to their own conclusions. Give them some guidance, but let them proceed along the path more warily.

And in the end, they may end up trusting you more.

Phil Shapiro, Public Geek
Takoma Park Maryland Library

Not sure “mountaineering” is better than orienteering since few mountaineers head out without knowing which exact peak they want to climb. But I like that it incorporates the idea of finding local maximums, if that’s implied by it, and the idea of getting off the plains quickly.

At any rate, I think the important point of calling it orienteering or mountaineering is to get away from the idea that a one-step leap is always desirable in searching online and to better understand how users actually search rather than how search engines might suggest we should search.

It’s admittedly a bit of a stretch. I would say though that even when on familiar ground, natives often encounter unfamiliar circumstances. In navigating through them, they rely on a multiplicity of (often tacit) strategies.

In the case of the example Anne Zelenka quoted – refinding the article you knew existed, when you started you already had a destination in mind and thus orienteering would be the correct metaphor.

However, in many cases, users won’t actually know the exact destination when they start looking, hence, I believe, even using the term orienteering is misleading.

For situations such as these, a term closer to mountaineering might possibly be more appropriate.

Within a specific search space, there may be a number of solutions with differing degrees of “rightness”. And, for a complete solution, a user may even need something from each.

If we imagine the sources of ‘rightness’ to be peaks above the plain of clutter or noise then a good ‘mountaineer’ will be able to get off the plain quickly. They understand the paths and signposts that will take them to other potentially higher (or better) solutions and are equipped with the language needed to get there faster.

To continue the metaphor, someone who is good at this type of search is able to get off the plain of millions of potential answers and quickly climb to the apex of a potential solution. From the “top”, they will recognise other potential solutions on the horizon and be able to evaluate them and judge if they are “higher” – i.e. more correct. Additionally they are often able to climb “slopes” in different parts of the “map” and use these differing viewpoints to effectively weight the strength of the final solution.

In this world, Natives, especially lazy ones, may only know their own neighbourhoods and may only be happy in their known world and thus would be poor ‘mountaineers’. They may jump on the logo emblazoned cable car every time.
Immigrants, on the other hand, may have all the skills needed to quickly become very good at ‘orienteering’ or ‘mountaineering’ and may just need to learn the language or how to read the map.

Exactly. This is a key point rarely discussed.

Agreed. That’s part of what I’m driving at here:

http://jonudell.net/talks/lib2020/talk.html

The other point you make that I think is crucial is not only evaluating the information you do find, but what you don’t… there’s a real (human) tendency to stop searching once you’ve found a minimally satisfactory answer (as you say, the first page of search results, or Wikipedia). Seems to me this has a potential to normalize our collective thought towards a common denominator–not necessarily the LCD, but certainly reinforcing the majority view over the minority.

We have an unprecedented variety of information and opinion available in the cloud… can we design search tools that help us to maximize the value of that collective resource? And/or, how can we teach those kinds of critical thinking skills?