roundtable: Re: New way to label information on the Internet

roundtable: Re: New way to label information on the Internet

Re: New way to label information on the Internet

Karl Beiser (beiser@saturn.caps.maine.edu)
Wed, 20 Dec 1995 23:15:51 +0000 

Message-Id: <9512210409.AA55288@saturn.caps.maine.edu>
From: "Karl Beiser" <beiser@saturn.caps.maine.edu>
To: communet@elk.uvm.edu, communet@elk.uvm.edu,
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 1995 23:15:51 +0000
Subject: Re: New way to label information on the Internet


> From:          Brent Wall <brentw@freenet.scri.fsu.edu>
> 
> ...Second, I sell the Web to my folks here in Leon County as a productivity 
> tool.  To wit:  if you need info on x, do this or that web search. I do 
> this all of the time, and, frankly, the results are less than 
> spectacular.  For instance, we wanted to look for government reports and 
> technical journal articles on privatization.  After searching Lycos, 
> fedworld, among others, the search was less than satisfactory.

Question:  How can something be huge yet tiny?

Answer: When viewed from the perspective of one tiny mind (yours, 
mine, anyone's) the Web looms so enormous in the foreground that it 
it blocks our view of the alpine dimensions of the 99% of 
human knowledge off in the distance, residing exclusively within 
a mountain of print-on-paper.  Depending on the area of interest, but 
true of most areas, what is currently online and freely accessible is 
both substantial and impressive, and little more than the a handful 
of snowflakes at the tip of the iceberg.  This will undoubtedly 
improve over time, particularly through public- and non-profit-sector 
efforts, but if in two decades the balance between free online and paper 
is better than 20% vs. 80% I will be much surprised.


> I try to sell the web to my folks as a productivity tool.  As a part-time 
> academic I tend to look to a variety of professional journals, but most 
> are not available on the net.  Thus, a serious literature search is still 
> a very iffy enterprise.
> 
> Where are we on serious literature searches on the web, Curtis?

As a productivity tool, the Web is great in some disciplines -- 
computing and telecommunications come not unexpectedly to mind -- and 
not so great for others.  It is a place to look, potentially part of 
the answer to some queries.  Given a choice as an academic, would you 
expect to find all you need on a given topic in a randomly chosen 
professor's office, or in the campus library?  You might look in the 
office first because it is closer, on the off chance that you will 
get lucky.  But probably more will have to go into the search.

Part of that "more" is spelled $$.$$.  There are a myriad of online 
research tools that support very serious inquiry.  People make a 
living assembling and maintaining these tools.  They are available 
only to those who can pony up the fee, or whose institution has seen 
fit to do so.   The only trends I see that might substantially lower 
the barrier to broadly available online research tools: 1) emergence 
of a workable approach to mass-market, micro-sales of information -- 
pennies and nickels per transaction, but spread over enough millions of 
transactions to make publishers happy; 2) development of competing 
research tools by libraries, government agencies and similar entities 
that cause publishers to compete on features and price in niches that 
they may have had to themselves previously.

Just $.02 or so on the question...


 
Karl Beiser                      
Maine State Library
POB 2145
Bangor, ME 04402
beiser@saturn.caps.maine.edu

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