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Introduction to Reference Work, Volume I, 8th Edition by William A. Katz |
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Introduction to Reference Work, Volume I, 8th Edition by William A. Katz |
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Happy Onliners
The “information fatigue syndrome” is familiar to any reference librarian and to much of the public. The uncontrollable mass of data plunges the individual into black moods. The restless, the irritable and the anxious are products of over online exposure. Not so, claims a social scientist at Carnegie Mellon. Dr. Robert Kraut finds the Net enables people to be more, not less social. Frequent use of e-mail reinforces his point. Cyberspace is for the gregarious who enjoy an information rush.
Carnegie Mellon University is the number one wired university in the United States – or so finds a poll of 1,300 schools by Yahoo Internet Life (October 2001, pp. 100-102). Carnegie scored straight A's for infrastructure, student resources, Web portal, e-learning, tech support and wireless. Others among the top five: Stanford, Georgia Tech, Dartmouth, and MIT. At the bottom: Minnesota State at Mankato. The next 100 are listed with the first 100 on the magazine's Web site: (www.wiredcolleges.com)
Medical Sites
The reference librarian as mediator can be a matter of good or bad health, or even life and death. According to a RAND study (sponsored by the California Health Care Foundation), the top rated six online general medical Web sites give complete and accurate information only 45 percent of the time. Specialized sources do little better. Accuracy was measured by comparing the judgment of several panels of experts with what was found on the net. Reference librarians have a duty to be experts, if only in terms of caution, when using any online medical site.
Free Founders
The full text online for fee magazine is a standard Net achievement. They, and their ancillary indexes are thriving. Not so the more democratic free titles. This side of one-person zines, individual efforts are falling away. Why? Lack of advertising. Subscriptions for print or digital magazines rarely are enough financial support, or as one media analyst puts it: “Finding subscription based revenue is a rough go.”
Porno Projections
When will someone ask a reference librarian: “What's a good online pornography site?” Probably not soon, but things change. Libraries may have to follow large corporations, which distribute and produce porno. “As pornography is reframed…unexamined assumptions about the nature of the business and its customers are being called into question,” claim two professors. They offer a refreshing, realistic viewpoint of a ubiquitous subject. See: Blaise Cronin and Elisabeth Davenport, “E-Rogenous Zones: positioning pornography in the digital economy.” (The Information Society, Jan.-March, 2001, pp. 33-47.)
Brick and Mortar Book Stores Return
After five years of impressive growth, (more than doubling each year since 1996) the online bookstore has fallen behind local bookstores. Why? It is primarily because discounts online are cutback or eliminated. If you happen to enjoy browsing in a store, rather than online, this is just fine.
Daily Arts News
There are numerous Web sites that comb newspapers for daily news, or call up only one paper's output. Some sites concentrate on sports, business, science etc. The arts and humanities are represented by Arts & Letters Daily (www.aldaily.com). Here are links to newspapers, wire services columnists, and magazines. From 100 to 150 brief summaries of the daily material is found in each issue. In one number there are links to Isaiah Berlin, Martha Nussbaum, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gustav Klimt, to name only a few. Sophisticated, intellectual, timely and much needed in a rapidly blander and narrow world of media.
The Next Net
What happened to the second Internet? It is now in its working experimental stage. Under the name of “Abilene”, the prototype is being built and fed by 180 American universities, 60 companies and, to be sure, the government. Aside from speed the system has methods for improved video conferencing, distance education and related areas. What this means for popup advertisements is not clear. For in depth coverage of the next Net see Abilene (www.internet2.edu/abilene) and/or Internet 2 Project (www.internet2.org).
Style Manuals: Quest for Confusion
Librarians, professors, students and mystery lovers appreciate the delights of navigating various style guides from the Chicago Manual of Style to the American Psychological Association's delight. The latter has grown from a humble seven pages in 1929 to over 400 today. Rumor has it the various groups will come up with a single manual. This, our expert believes, will violate three of academe's most sacred principles: culture (each group believes itself superior); control (format expertise separates the beginner from the tenured professor); and confusion, which need no explanation. For a delightful essay on all of this see M. Garrett Bauman's “The Devilments of Style” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 9, 2001.
E-Books in Libraries
Curious about which libraries offer e-books? The answer is at a Web site maintained by a Kansas librarian, Chris Rippel (skyways.lib.ks.us/central/ebooks/index.html). How likely are e-books to succeed? Check a research study at a University of Rochester librarian's site (www.cofc.edu/cdconference/charleston.ppt). Ms. Susan Gibbons finds people generally like e-books. Current sales figures, though, are not encouraging. A mere 3 percent of the public is likely to buy one. Sales will go nowhere until someone comes up with a better way to read than turning to a computer screen.
Will They? Won't They?
People will pay for Net information when they really need it. Well, maybe. No one is quite sure. Fee success depends on how badly the online information or entertainment is wanted. A Pew Internet and American Life study in the fall of 2001 found that only 12 percent of Web users would pay for content online. Still, that translates into one to two million adults. The others (about 50 percent of those queried) try to find an alternative free site when a much used site asks for a fee. Apparently few think of turning to the library. (The New York Times, November 19, 2001, p. C7).
Worst Web Winners
Few days go by without another “best of” web sites articles, or, for that matter, book. Seeking relief? Try www.worstoftheweb.com where several experts in such matters search out the most banal, pointless or sincerely terrible sites. A new horror is listed each day. Examples: The world RPS society dedicated to the promotion of Rock Paper Scissors; the Prime Number pooping bear; Obscenities too cute to be nasty (stuffed animals and such); and Doggy Bag, “the best pooper scooper in the business”.
Digital Songbirds
A common enough question concerns who wrote what song, and/or where can I find the verses for said masterpiece. Today the query is likely to go digital. Enter a keyword in a search engine and usually an answer appears. Younger people, ask how they can download the stuff of MTV. Try Music Net (www.musicnet.com) which has up to 100 hits a month for $9.95. Libraries pay more. Anyone looking for free music on the Net, via the old Napster style, can turn to networks such as Grokster (www.grokster.com) and MusicCity (www.musiccity.com). A summary of good and bad points of such sites will be found in Yahoo Internet Life, March 2002, pp. 71-73. A major point; “It's time to face the facts: The battle for music on the Web has been fought and won. The five major record labels, which control 80 percent of the world's music copyrights” have defeated the illegal trade of MP3s.
Another for Women
Yes, women are better than men for finding what they want on the Web. A study from 2001 to 2002 by Jupiter Media Metrix (and reported in The New York Times, April 11, 2002, p. G3) found women spend an average of 7 hours online. Men spend 10 hours. Women find more in less time because they go to the Web with a purpose such as shopping. Men tend to browse, often with no goal at all except to kill time.
Mobile Multimedia Menace
“Without the media I'd be empty. The radio, the Internet, the mobile: I'm sure I'd die without them.” This comment from a teenager indicates the media obsession. It is a challenge to libraries according to a City University (London) research group. Can information professionals learn anything from media menace? Let David Nicholas and Mike Chivhanga give you their ideas, e.g. see Library Association Record (February, 2002, pp. 102-103).
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