Summary of Responses-Libraryvs.Internet, quite lengthy

[Cynthia_Kahn at superiorconsultant.com]

This message is cross-posted.  Sorry to anyone who receives a duplicate.  If you
are interested in more information, please contact me and I'd be happy to share
articles or my experience.

Thank you to everyone who replied to my question.  We needed to justify and
explain the library to management against the belief that everything is
available (free) on the Internet.  I posted this question to Web4Lib and
SoloLib.  I am compiling the results from both Lists.  In the end, the Library
staff submitted a report to the CIO of the company with our ideas.  It included
many of the short and longer answers supplied by our colleagues and a table we
created comparing the Internet with Library Services with the following
categories:  quality, time/productivity cost-effectiveness. I felt it was well
received and the company has no immediate plans to eliminate the Library.

Links
See Karen Coyle's "Why the Internet Doesn't Replace the Library" at:
http://www.dla.ucop.edu/~kec/texas_table.html

The Smartest Little Company in America
Author: Buchanan, Leigh
INC. Online. Issue: January, 1999, page 042
http://www.inc.com/incmagazine/archives/01990421.html

The Changing Role of the Corporate Librarian
Author: Kevin Davis
Knowledge Management. December 1998.
http://enterprise.supersites.net/kmmagn2/km199812/fc1.htm
(Home page for Knowledge Management: http://www.kmmag.com )

Dow Jones White Paper comparing Dow Jones to the Web:  http://lp.dowjones.com/

Title:  "Jumping off the Disintermediation Bandwagon: Reharmonizing LIS
Education for the Realities of the 21st Century" -      URL:
http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~jdownie/alise99/
Author:  Stephen Downie

The Canadian Council of Federal Libraries also has a short piece on
"Demonstrating the Value of Libraries" at:
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/cfl-cbgf/liaison/1996/96-5/value.htm

Articles
Title:  Myths About Electronic Learning Resources:  Addressing Some Commonly
Held Misconceptions Related to Access and Use of Electronic Information
Author:  Jennifer D. Burke, SREB Librarian and Staff Associate  (I have this and
would be happy to forward it to anyone interested)

Title:  I
-------------- next part --------------

?m as made as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore . . .      a
little fun with the web-challenged . . .
Author: by Stephen Abram      (This was especially helpful-really like the
snappy comebacks!)


Short Answers
If a company has a communications network, why does it need a CIO?

Why do people buy maps?  They have all the roads they need...

Why do people use cookbooks?  They have all the ingredients for a good
meal.

Why do people buy TV Guide?  They can change channels all they want.

"People just do not have the time to do their own research ---esp. upper
management."

If the company has e-mail why do we still need telephones?

if the company has a fax machine why do we still use the post office?

If the company has a Web site why do we still need sales reps?

Now there is a PC on everybody's desk why do we still need a IS department?

We still need libraries because "everything" is not on the Internet.  Not even
Bill Gates can afford to digitize the sum total of human knowledge.

And we need librarians because--as chaotic as the 'net is--librarians are
trained to find information, and to determine which source--print or
electronic--is the most appropriate to retrieve what is wanted.

I gather yours is a special library.  I'm sure you've used services like Dialog
for some time.  I've found that knowledge of thesauri and search terms helps to
narrow a search, thus saving time and money while producing the results the
client needs.

Is it too facile to respond with--If we have dictionaries, why do we need
English teachers or Editors?

Primarily because the Internet in very few ways resembles a library.  A library
provides a clear, standardized set of easily retrievable resources. People use
the word in so many ways. (and very loosely)

A popular statement you've most likely heard is that the Internet, as most have
realized with use, is like a library with all the books on the floor. The are no
standards, no reference librarians.  The key isn't libraries, it is librarians.
Maintaining a physical library may not be the best solution.

Obvious:  Everything is NOT on the Internet; authors are still publishing in
books and non-e journals
Not so obvious to non librarian professionals:  the Internet is so disorganized,
that it is time consuming to find good information.  Information on the Internet
is not peer-reviewed -- quality and credibility are variable.

The Internet just provides access to hundreds of thousands of places to find
data.  It does not determine which of these places provide the best, most
authoritative, most correct information nor does it filter the wheat from the
chaff.  That's what the librarians do.  And not everything is online.

The Internet is like a mountain of knowledge.  Anyone can start climbing it.
It's so much easier if you have a guide.  Librarians are the mountain guides.
They know the best route to the top.  They can save your life in an emergency.
They have all the survival skills you need, like where to find water, and how to
fix a rope, or jury-rig a workaround. You might not think you need one until
you're half way up.  It's a bit late at that point.  So much better to take a
guide with you from the very beginning, don't you think?

Longer Answers
Well, first of all he needs your skills and experience. Usually we can find the
information in instants compared to their own attempt.
One person spent an hour searching the Internet and then gave me the task. I
looked the information up in a book in 30 seconds. By the way - they had their
own copy of the book!  This is very typical.
But you don't need 'A Library' - The company needs YOU.
An information specialist saves the company 96 hours annually per employee alone
collecting info.
Everybody can cut down a tree - but few have the experience as craftsman to
manage a forest!  (Sometime the tree falls on the layman person though)


Being a non-librarian technology specialist in a public library, I have seen
very very clearly the importance of the expertise of the library staff.  I'm
pretty good with technology in general, and as such can usually find what I'm
looking for on the Internet (if it's there, but that's a separate point).  The
librarians (even many of the non-reference librarians) I work with routinely
astound me with their ability to find information for which I would not know how
to begin a successful search.

The two most fundamental problems with using the Internet as a source of basic
information, as I have encountered them, are:

1. Lack of authority.
In an environment where publication of information is extremely low-cost,
everyone gets to publish.  The accuracy, authenticity and authority of this
information cannot be readily verified.  This is generally not true of
conventional publishing, where the publisher can be held accountable for
inaccurate information. For example, if I were so inclined, I could readily
publish the complete works of William Shakespeare, with every 100th word
arbitrarily replaced with an antonym.  Such a change, while radically changing
the content of altered dialog, might be subtle enough to be undetected.  It is
exceedingly unlikely that I would be able to find a publisher who would print
these altered works, particularly one that would willfully declare that they
were the original words of Shakespeare.

2. Lack of concision.
While it may be fairly easy to isolate Internet-based sources of information on
well-defined topics (such as, for example, breast cancer research) through the
use of existing, third-party search engines, finding a concise citation of the
history and legal ramifications of Miranda rights without already knowing of an
appropriate site is not likely to be easy (searches for "Miranda Rights" on two
popular engines, Yahoo and AltaVista, turn up over 2000 hits each, from a wide
variety of sources.  The first AltaVista hit that regards the Miranda Rights in
question is #6, from a website run by an attorney specializing in defending
individuals charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, which lists the
questions an arresting police officer must ask the arrestee, with no discussion
of the significance or history of the questions).

Since the Internet is "buyer beware" on the accuracy of the information and a
printed publication at least has the publisher to stand behind it, I only use
the Internet as my last choice for finding information. I can find information
faster using our in house materials than I can looking through pages and pages
on the Internet.  Just a thought.

I haven't had this problem where I work. I think where I work they see the
Internet as part of the reason they need a librarian. For example, a lot of
employees here are members of professional associations. These associations have
their own databases. We need someone to catalog them or list them and annotate
them so we know what we have access to. They see a lot of value here in
cataloging Internet resources. We aren't to that point yet but it is one reason
we have looked at new library automation so
ftware.

1. SAVE ON HUMAN COSTS (salary): The concept that the information professional
serves as the intermediary for ADVANCED and URGENT searches. In other words,
when the clock is ticking and a deadline is looming, the librarian/digital
librarian can deliver professional information-seeking services to all levels of
your company.
Example:
If an engineer making $120,000 a year decides he needs some information on a
patent or a schematic, does the CIO want the engineer to be wasting his time
toodling around the Internet trying to find the information? Why not use the
digital librarian (who probably works for less than $120,000 a year), who will
know exactly where to search? And when minutes matter, the librarian will come
through.

2. AVOIDING THE HIDDEN COSTS OF THE "FREE" INTERNET: Everything might be "free"
but it'll end up costing a lot if your information is BAD, or INCOMPLETE. Many
of the best information can only be had at proprietary online databases or
research companies. With the added cost of these sites, you need an information
professional (digital librarian) to retrieve these quickly and effectively.
3. LOWER TRAINING COSTS: By having a librarian on staff, you are already
guaranteed a staff person who is highly trained in information retrieval.
4. LIBRARY: It's a little more difficult to justify the physical concept of a
library; and here is your opportunity to push for expansion instead of a budget
cut. The role of the librarian is changing from "keeper of information" to
"provider of information." As the corporate librarian, you might propose to him
your plans to provide education at various levels -- hands-on training,
new-employee training, brown bag lunches, workshops. Part of the problem is that
staff generally don't know what the library can provide them. Don't get left
behind. You can do a lot of workshops on ADVANCED search engine strategy and
whatnot.

Don't be petty about things like "we need the journals if we accidentally lose
'net access" and things of that nature. Talk about how it will be a benefit to
the bottom line.

Action Plan
Pick out some significant reference books that you use regularly.  Show him that
the info in them is not on the net.  Pick out some key journals in his field and
show him that they're not available free on the net, if at all.  Ask him if it
isn't more efficient for an expert to do the research for others?  If he thinks
that programmers can do research as well and as fast as librarians, then suggest
that if everybody can do everything, how come he doesn't allow secretaries or
librarians to write programs?  Both are professions that take education and
experience.  Sure, I can type pretty fast, but that doesn't mean I'd be a very
good secretary.

Have the CIO look up some basic terms on the web including finding the
definitions of Xenophobia (not a terribly difficult term) or locate the snail
mail address of a small supplier.  I had a faculty member at Florida State LIS
remind us constantly "why would we want to spend 10 minutes looking something up
in a book when we can spend 2hours looking for it on the web?"  And don't forget
the classic flick "Desk Set".

Package a small demo showing a search typical of what company employees might do
contrasted with the same search as the librarian might do it. Presumably the
results would combine material from both the Internet AND the library. Or
perhaps there would be more need for the librarian than for the library.....

BUSLIB-L-The "Everything is on the Internet" question was a discussion on
BUSLIB-L.
***************************************************
Information on the 'Net is free, but you get what you pay for.       This was,
by far, the most popular response and refers to the issues of credibility and
validity.

Information is not always free (Dialog, copyrighted articles) Numerous responses

Thousands of citations, abstracts and full text journal articles are not
accessible to the standard search engines (HotBot, AltaVista, etc.) Numerous
responses

The VP for content management at IBM estimated, at the 1999 SLA Winter
Conference that about 1/100th of 1 per cent of all information is in electronic
format. Thanks to S.Abram for this one.  Look for his forthcoming article on
this same topic in LMQ.  Thanks, Steve!

McLagan (president and CEO of Newsedge, Don McLagan) says that the average
professional will spend about $427 worth of his or her time a month Web-surfing
to obtain information that would cost about $31 from an organized information
service like NewsEdge."      T.Miller, Information Today, 15:11:60  Thanks,
K.Burhanna!

If every employee accessed the Internet, the average Forbes 500 company would
lose 472 person-years of employee time this year.  Complete article at
www.newsedge.com/about/president.htm Thanks, D.Sharp

W. Crawford and M.Gorman's book, Future libraries : dreams, madness & reality
     American Library Association, 1995    Thanks, D.Bigwood

A summary of criteria for evaluating web resources is available at
www.science.widener.edu/~withers/evalout.htm
     Thanks, D.Shumaker

When someone high up in management suggested that the information center could
be dispensed with because "everything is available on the Internet" the reply
went something like this:  "everyone has a calculator on their pc, does that
mean we can dispense with the accounting dept?" Attributed to several sources,
including George Plosker

Several people suggested something like the following (this wording is courtesy
of P.Clements):  I would pick some journals or publications that you know (or
would guess well) have contained valuable info. in the magazine/article and show
them this (by illustrating that info or similar could not be found on the
Internet -- then ask them to consider what decision or action they would have
taken without having that info. and would it have turned out as well as it did
-- information missed can often lead to bad decisions or even ill informed
decisions.

...And my own small contributions:

An attempt at archiving the Web resulted in a collection of two terabytes of
data.  In comparison, the Library of Congress contains about 20 terabytes of
text.       B. Kale, Scientific American 3/97

The Internet was not designed to support the organized publication and retrieval
of information, as libraries are.  It has evolved into what might be thought of
as a chaotic repository for the collective output of the world's digital
"printing presses."  Clifford Lynch, Sci Am, 3/97

The Library of Congress is not actually available on the Internet.  The UC
Library collections are not actually on the Internet.  What you will find is an
equivalent to a card catalog.  Once you locate the record for the book you need,
your library will be glad to arrange to borrow a copy for you.

The Internet is just one of many tools in our information-resource toolbox. Our
highly-developed skills lie in knowing which tools to use to respond to a
specific request.

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