What's so different about the net?

[weibel at oclc.org]

In response to Carlos  McEvilly's thoughtful questions:
(much good detail omitted for the sake of readability) 


  > 1) Question of catalog's usefulness -- if we users can
  >    get directly at an item through a variety of methods,
  >    including traditional as well as emerging kinds of
  >    access points, why should we want to go through an
  >    itermediary step of accessing a catalog entry?  
   
Surrogate records -- catalogs, abstracts, finding records --
are valuable in and of themselves: they afford the means to
constrain seaches and sharpen the relevance of search terms.
This will be increasingly evident as the size of the web grows,
and  result sets grow to unmanageable size.  Without the
structure of surrogate records and the added value of human-coded
description, the retrieval problem will get worse much faster. 

  > 2) The "What is a document?" problem ... But what is a  main page? 
  >    Who decides what is THE main page for a site?    
   
The problem of what constitutes a "Work" is not new with a net, and yes
it will cause problems... already does in conventional catalogs (there
are more than 130 manifestations of the work "Humphrey Clinker" in the
OCLC online union catalog, for example).  This is not a reason to throw
up our hands and not try to organize the material... quite the
opposite.
   
  >   ... these are realities of the current Web. 

But not necessarily the Web ofthe future, when we will have document
repositories of record, formal naming of resources that will support
graceful migration of records and resources themselves, and perhaps
more robust linkage.

  > 3) Ephemeral nature of material -- cataloged today, gone
  >    tomorrow.  

My guess is that libraries will select more stable resources, of
demonstrated value.  It will be a who-do-you-trust game.  If you are
surfing for  probably fine.  If you need to access important links in a
scholarly research thread, a library catalog may be better suited.


  > 4) Competition from non-librarians for the task of 
  >    organizing, and helping users find, information   

Yep... Tony Barry said this in another way.... Advice to be ignored
at our peril.

  > This whole question reminds me of the people who every
  > year have to be pulled out of the 13,000 foot high New
  > Mexico mountains after they set out unprepared for a high-
  > altitude hike. 

I like this analogy... but I apply it in the other direction.  When the
ad hoc catalogers start running into issues of scope of a work,
duplicate records, authority control, error correction, they might
start feeling a little short of breath.  The library community has been
grappling with these issues for a long time;  we don't have all the
answers, but we're  ahead of the pack in my estimate.

My crystal ball is no clearer than those of many others, whose opinions
are very different.  But it will not matter what we *believe*  about
what will happen.  Those who add value will prosper.  Gentlepeople,
start your engines.


stu

(who wishes he had some RL mountains to get lost in now and again)

    
Stuart Weibel
Senior Research Scientist
OCLC Office of Research
weibel at oclc.org
(614) 764-6081 (v)
(614) 764-2344 (f)
http://www.oclc.org:5046/~weibel