Michael Giberson
In the comments responding to my post Consulting the Oracle, discussion has centered around the increasing invisibility of information not made available online. In a response I speculated that, “because internet searching can give so much return for so little investment, a trip to the library or even cracking open a book can by comparison seem like a grand waste of time.”
But even being online may not be good enough for some information. Bill said in his comment that, for at least some students, if the answer isn’t on Google’s first page they give up.
So it will take more than just posting a lot of old newspaper stories, diaries, and other records online. Some historian-educator-techie will have to figure out how to get original sources good placements in the search engines.
As it is, if you want to find out more information about that Madonna painting hanging in the famous Paris art museam, Google won’t be much help.
Maybe curators of historical information should employ Google Adwords.