Consciousness of disinformation

[Jim Hurd]

	An interesting question.  Do libraries also make clear that many
of their books contain a lot of nonesense too? My favorite used book store
here in Bloomington is named "Caveat Emptor".  I would be very fearful of
any Library that contained only "The Truth". 


On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Robert J Tiess wrote:

:I'm simply curious as to whether not any of the libraries on
:this list have made any sort of concerted effort to alert their
:patrons as to the potential for informational inaccuracy or
:disinformation on the World Wide Web.  Do you attempt to
:raise any consciousness, or do you assume the patrons
:may know or discover this on their own.
:
:I'm not saying, of course, this is a primary task for librarians,
:or even what librarians should be focusing on.  Indeed, with
:all the informational sources these days, tracking good,
:dependable information is a challenge in itself, compounded
:by the impermanency of Internet URLs.  As a library technician,
:I work every day with librarians who rely increasingly each
:day on the Internet as a source of information.  They are
:quite aware of this issue and go first thoroughly through
:the in-house collections first before resorting to cyberspace.
:
: We also ask our patrons to exercise their critical thinking
:skills and common sense and to be mindful before citing any
:Internet sources.  Since we introducted Internet access earlier
:this year, more patrons are coming in each day and
:conducting their research mostly via the Internet, so the
:issue has not waned in importance; it has increased.
:
:				Robert
:				rjtiess at juno.com
:
:Library Technician, Webmaster
:Middletown Thrall Library - www.thrall.org
:
: