Organizing Web Information (was: Something Missing)

[Mark Gooch]

On Thu, 11 Jul 1996, Temple Hoff wrote:

> There seems to be great amount of work out there dedicated to the idea of 
> indexing, cataloging, and organizing the Interent.  While I don't what to 
> devalue these valient efforts, I would like to make one observation.
> 
> It won't work! (And I don't say this often in the realm of technology!)
> 
> I don't mean to say, stop what you're doing.  These reference lists and cataloging 
> attempts are good bandaids for now.  But they will never be current enough, accurate 
> enough, complete enough, or easy enough to provide the research power you and your 
> patrons will want.
                                   <snip>
I don't think we are trying to catalog every resource on the Internet 
just as we cannot say that every book, etc. is cataloged.  Besides, we 
wouldn't necessarily want to catalog everything.  What we can do (and I 
understand that Temple is NOT trying to discourage us from it), though, 
is to catalog good Internet resources.  One of the criteria to be considered 
when cataloging a resource is whether it is a rather stable site.  For 
example, for us as a law library Cornell's Legal Information Institute is 
a wonderful, stable site which I would not expect to change its URL 
frequently.  This is an obvious candidate for a site which we would want to 
catalog. At the other extreme, we probably wouldn't want to catalog the 
Political Top 10 site which started this whole discussion due to the 
commercial factors which have been mentioned about it.
 
> The problem is that at the root of each scheme is the idea that the data must 
> be organized and controled.  The books must be on the shelf in a certain 
> order. This is not the case on the Internet, or anywhere in computer 
> science.  Rather than attempting to organize data on a disk when we know 
> the computer will be constantly moving things around and changing 
> things,  we allow the computer to haphazardly store bits of data 
> everywhere and charge the computer with finding it when it is needed.  
				<snip>
With the advent of online catalogs we are able to provide access to 
information resources without such strict organization or control.  We 
are no longer required to be able to know the exact LC subject heading, 
exact title, author, etc.  In addition, cataloging Internet resources in 
conjunction with an online catalog would allow the library to be opened 
almost 24 hours a day.  When you think about it people come to the 
library because they know (or at least we hope they do) that we can 
provide tools which can help them locate good information sources.  One 
of those tools is the catalog.  By including Internet resources in our online 
catalogs which are accessible 24 hours a day, they suddenly have SOME of this 
access at their convenience.  Getting back to my Cornell LII example, if a 
patron wants access to the U.S. Code when we are closed, they could locate the 
record in our catalog for the LII, go to that site and be able to access the 
U.S. Code at 2 a.m. if they wished.

				<snip>
> We must instead have super search engines, intelligent search engines,  
> that will find what you want, whatever you what, not from a premade 
> list, but by searching everywhere availible at the instant you hit the 
> search button.  

I would still totally agree with this need for "super search engines."

> When it comes right down to it, noone really wants an index of sources to 
> dig through to find the answer to a question.  They just want the 
> answer, or maybe lots of answers.

Yes, but sometimes they need the guidance that a library can provide 
through its carefully chosen and designed tools.  Referring back to 
Temple's initial post (because I just love his descriptions of the 
various types of people) there are a variety of persons out there needing 
different levels of guidance during their information quests.

Mark


-----
Mark D. Gooch 
Government Information Librarian
Bartunek Law Library 
Cleveland State University
(216)687-5579  Voice	(216)687-5098  Fax 			  
http://www.law.csuohio.edu/lawlibrary/

          "Out the Token Ring, through the router, down the fiber,
                     off another router, down the T1,
                  past the firewall. . . nothing but net"
                   
                    --Dave Owen cited in Internet World