recent discussion of WWW cataloging?

[Boyd R. Collins]

Actually, I see as many trends in the opposite direction as I do in the
automated direction.  For instance, the Infofilter project is a
librarian-directed project to review pages that many members of this list
have joined.  The attempt here is to review Web sites using objective
criteria and emphasizing the practiced human judgement of librarians.  It is
true that this approach is much more labor-intensive and slow that automated
indexing and this may account for the much greater visibility of the
automated indexing projects.  No librarian or group of librarians or other
human indexers can compete with the speed of automated systems.  But the
quality of the approach will, I believe, eventually lead to some return to
human judgement in these matters.  The need is not for more access points to 
"information", but for specific entry points to quality information and that
takes human judgement.  The McKinley is another and much more prominant example.

>
>There are of course countertrends, e.g. clearinghouses for more limited
>subject oriented guides (e.g. http://www.lib.umich.edu/chhome.html),
>but it seems to me we're seeing a definite shift away from independent
>evaluative guides and towards automated or self-evaluative web
>indexes.
>
>Is this impression of trends in fact correct?  Is there recent literature
>discussing trends in web search facilities?
>
> JQ Johnson                       office: 115F Knight Library
> Academic Education Coordinator   Internet: jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
> 1299 University of Oregon        voice: (503) 346-1746
> Eugene, OR  97403-1299           fax: (503) 346-3485
>
>


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Boyd R. Collins, Automation Manager, The Libraries
Mansfield University                        
Mansfield PA 16933                
(717) 662-4668                      
(717) 662-4993 FAX                
bcollins at epix.net
home page: http://www.mnsfld.edu/depts/lib/index.html