At Co.EXIST, Jessica Leber pits the algorithms of digital giants Amazon and Goodreads against the ultimate recommendation engine: librarians. Leber details her experience with the Brooklyn Public Library’s BookMatch program, in which real librarians respond to patron’s requests for reading recommendations based on other books they’ve enjoyed. While online services get smarter by the minute, it’s hard to imagine anything replacing a human approach to either the search or the written response itself; a hybrid approach, however, offers a compelling argument for the continuing value of librarians and online tools alike.
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