At a party recently, I was talking to a group of graduate students and the subject of research came up.

They had no idea that there was any difference between subject and keyword searching, and were shocked that I could give them examples to show that keyword is not the best search type for every situation.

Our patrons don’t know some of the stuff that we do, even the highly educated ones. We need to meet them on their level. It is fantastic to meet people who want to learn about the differences between subject and keyword searches, but most of them don’t care and won’t ever pay attention.

Maybe it’s time for us to worry as much about ease of use and accessibility as we do about education.