Google Scholar is increasingly becoming a subject that an academic librarian cannot afford to be ignorant about.

I have been recently thinking of the types of expertise academic librarians have and how recent trends in academic librarianship have made things harder.

Every librarian worth his salt knows that despite the rise of web scale discovery services, Google and Google Scholar are often the go-to tools of researchers.

Almost 4 years ago in 2010, I posted A few heretical thoughts about library tech trends.

Is known item searching really a big issue in Web Scale discovery?

In my last post, I mused about blue ocean strategies and how libraries should consider spending time focusing more on blue ocean strategies.

Curious about academic librarianship in Singapore as a career?

Library web scale discovery systems are great. They break down the silos between books , articles and other content types. They provide the "one-search" box experience that our users claim to want. But problems exist (See my overview - 8 things we know about web scale discovery systems in 2013  and outstanding issues ). In my experience, one of the most sticky issues is the question of getting relevant results.

I like to question why. I don't believe the status quo or the way things are is always the best that is possible. I ask why. I agitate for change. I try new things.  But after over almost 7 years of working on various projects and initiating various changes,  "the way things are" have started to slowly shift to what I had a hand in deciding or at least help guide thinking in - in some areas at least.

As part of a new goal to start reading sources outside the library world for ideas, I have been reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant and I must say it is surprisingly insightful.

I blogged 8 things we know about web scale discovery systems in 2013 , an attempt to summarize the current consensus after 4 years of web scale discovery service use in libraries and hundreds of research papers and presentation.