Google, it's there but it's not

Yes, rather cryptic isn't it, saying something is there in Google but it's not? The thing is that librarians see this regularly, someone messages us, or stops by the desk, and says they are looking for a certain article or book, but can't find it. It then turns out that they were searching in Google, and perhaps saw a reference to the article in Google, but not the full text of it, or they saw a mention of a newspaper or a book, but again, the whole thing isn't there.

The librarian will then suggest looking in our databases, looking at our journal and newspaper list perhaps to find out if we have access to a certain article or journal, or our catalog to find a book. If we don't have it, we'll suggest using our interlibrary loan service. The point is that the library supplies a lot of added value to our online pages that simply isn't in Google. That doesn't make Google a bad thing, but it is what it is, namely a service pointing to things that are online somewhere - but it can't take you behind publisher or vendor restrictions etc. We can, because we pay for that access for you. So if we suggest not relying solely on Google but that you work through our pages instead, we're really just trying to help, not just hush you up!