It Depends Where You Look

Not all databases and search engines are created equal.

And while this sounds obvious, there are many people who don't realize that just because they can't find it, it doesn't mean it's not there, or it doesn't exist.

Digital retrieval is now largely a part of everyday life. But it depends on what clues, or tags you provide the search engine to use. And it also depends on what's out there to be searched. Not everything has been saved in the same spot.

Adam Keiper, in a recent WSJ book review of Delete, by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, discusses the theme that we're in danger of always being able to reach our past. It's a few mouse clicks away. It is healthier sometimes to forget, than it is to remember.

It seems more likely however that due to age, or trauma, we'll forget at the same rate we've always forgotten, despite an ability to retrieve vast amounts of the past with a few mouse clicks. What can be dangerous is that someone will erase, or make inaccessible that past quite easily. We're more likely to be denied the ability to find. It may not be there, by design, or neglect.

I somewhat recently tested this out by using what I've recently become a user of: library databases and digital retrieval of news items. (I have not in any way stopped saving clippings yet. Belt and suspenders.)

I searched for a known major news story from 2002. It was in all the papers, and I have all the papers. The New York Public Library has a wide variety of these databases available to users from their home computer using their library access identification number. They have an even wider variety of these databases if you actually drop into a library and log on from there. No news to some, I'm sure, but the places have changed.

I searched the available home database, provided by Gale, that held items from the New York Times and the New York Post, from 2000 to present. Only the articles that appeared in the Post came through. All kinds of digital lures were thrown at the search engine, but the one story that I know that appeared in the Times did not come through. Easy explanation. Gale didn't assemble everything. And they weren't going to, so they did what they said they would do. But you may not know this, because you may not know there was a Times story. Not finding one, doesn't mean there wasn't one.

Another database assembled by ProQuest and dedicated solely to the New York Times was even more historical and did yield the story I knew existed. A variety of digital clues lead me each time to the one story I knew appeared in the paper. This database, however, is only available by actually going to the library. No home access.

What can any of this mean? Don't take no for the first answer. Especially when you know there is one.

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