[WEB4LIB] Re: Drake Equation for the web

[Jerry Kuntz]

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Tuesday, September 29, 1998 8:24 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Drake Equation for the web


>This is very amusing.  However, a couple of questions.  Are all of these
>factors multiplied (e.g. are you using x for * )?
Yes--the factors starting with f are fractions. (You can start with 400
million as a value for Wp)
>But surely not all
>good information is well-designed or even accurate (after all, a book on
>creationism is "good" if it contributes to a broadening of access to
>viewpoints), and the definitions of  quality and utility are wide open to
>interpretation.
Sure, it's subjective, but I'd still maintain that "good" information is
well-designed and accurate.
>Furthermore, in libraries we have used "cataloging" very
>narrowly, and primarily with reference to one paper-based format (otherwise
>known as "the book").  You don't catalog all magazine articles housed or
>transmitted into your library, for example--you rely on other tools for
>this access.  So "the catalog" proper is only representative of a certain
>type or level of access to a certain type of data.  The concept of what is
>"worth cataloging" may not port well to the Internet;
If it doesn't, then the whole concept of web guides--subject
directories--should be dismissed, because what they're doing is
"cataloging". Yet obviously they have been found valuable by users.
BTW, developers of topical web guides might be further encouraged by adding
another factor to the equation, fs, where fs is the fraction of items on a
specific topic (as calculated by the number of categories in your favorite
subject thesaurus (say, 40,000 for Yahoo or 70,000 for LCSH). [and now I'm
being really facetious, since all subjects aren't equal].
Jerry Kuntz
Ramapo Catskill Library System
jkuntz at rcls.org