Regarding the continued growth of the Internet and the future role
of librarians, I want to share a quote I picked up from a recent
Peter Lewis article in the New York Times (Sunday edition:
12/12/93).
... woe to the individual executive or computer novice who
wants to tap directly into the rich depths of the Internet.
Despite all the recent hyperbole praising the Internet as the
precursor to the national data highway, establishing a direct
connection to the Internet is about as easy for a novice as
traveling a muddy road on a pogo stick, with traffic signs
written in Unix.
And once connected, Lewis notes that retrieving information is not all that easy
either:
... For example, a company might want the text of the recent
North American Free Trade Agreement and an analysis of its
impact on, say, the automobile industry. Such information
exists on the Internet, but one is likely to hear a giant
sucking sound as the Internet user is drawn ever deeper into
the network in search of it.
It seems to me that Peter Lewis and company should begin to
appreciate the work that many of our colleagues are now doing to
make better sense of this information, and that more of these folks should be
drawing on the skills of information professionals when attempting to mine this
rich resource.
- Blair Kauffman
University of Wisconsin
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