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Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age

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Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age Bruce A. Shuman LIBRARIES UNLIMITED, INC. Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age This Page Intentionally Left Blank Issues for Libraries and Information Science in the Internet Age Bruce A. Shuman 2001 LIBRARIES UNLIMITED, INC. Englewood, Colorado Come al solito, per mia moglie ed i bambini . Copyright © 2001 Libraries Unlimited, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. LIBRARIES UNLIMITED, INC. P.O. Box 6633 Englewood, CO 80155-6633 1-800-237-6124 www.lu.com ISBN 1-56308-805-3 Contents Contents Preface . ix 1—Ecce Internet! Capabilities . 1 Overview . 1 What Is the Internet? . 1 Where, Exactly, Is the Internet?. 3 What Is the World Wide Web? . 4 How Big Is the Internet? . 6 How Important Is the Internet? . 10 History: The Internet’s Birth and Development . 17 Demographics: Who’s on the Web? . 22 Capabilities: What You Can Do, Find, Visit on the Web . 26 E-Mail and the Internet . 32 Notes . 35 2—Caveat Internet! Potholes, Hazard Lights, and Glare Ice on the Information Superhighway . 37 Overview. 37 The Times, They Are a-Changin’ . 37 Modern-Day Luddites . 40 Not Dodge City; Who’s in Charge, Here?. 42 Hazardous Driving Conditions on the Infobahn . 46 Drowning in Data: Information Overload . 51 Truth and Accuracy: Information and Misinformation . 52 Change in the Workplace . 54 Change in Us. 56 Access Issues: Haves and Have-Nots . 61 Information Overload . 63 What About Children? Filtering and Censorship on the Web . 66 Notes . 74 v vi Contents 3—Libraries and the Internet: Collaboration or Competition? . 77 Overview. 77 Library Luddites . 77 Who Needs Libraries? Who Needs Librarians? . 80 The Role of the Reference Librarian . 87 What About Books? . 88 Internet Capabilities in the Library . 91 Internet Filters: Access Denied . 98 The Dark Side of the Internet. 103 Internet Access Policies . 105 The Internet As a Free Forum . 106 Proliferation of Information . 108 Notes . 112 4—Netizenship: Legal and Ethical Aspects of the Internet . 115 Overview . 115 Netizens: Rights and Responsibilities . 115 Legal Issues on the Net. 117 Copyright: Deciding What’s Fair . 117 Privacy on the Net. 122 Ethics and the Internet . 126 Identity Theft; Information Theft; Security on the Net. 127 Privacy . 129 Electronic Security . 132 Public Data . 133 Holes in Security . 135 Spam, Glorious Spam. 138 Cookie Monsters and Electronic Footprints. 139 Electronic Eavesdropping. 142 Notes . 144 5—Internet Resources for Libraries. 145 Overview . 145 Sites, Sites, and More Sites. 146 Recall Versus Precision . 147 Effective Search Strategies for Web Information Finding . 147 The Internet As a Reference Tool . 149 A: General Web Search Engines and Meta-Search Engines. 154 B: Basic Reference Sources Online: Essential Web Tools . 162 C: News and Entertainment Sites . 166 D: Financial News and Information Sources . 167 E: Sports Sites. 169 Contents vii F: Travel Sites. 170 G: Food/Nutrition Sites . 171 H: Health/Medical Sites. 172 J: Technology Sites . 174 K: Children’s/Parents’ Sites . 175 Book and Other Library Media Shopping Sites . 177 Entertainment Sites and Chat Rooms . 177 Notes . 178 6—Preserving the Past: Anticipating the Future . 179 Overview . 179 Preserving the Past: Archiving the Web . 179 The Future? . 185 Forever Free? . 191 Planning: Getting the Future You Want . 193 Notes . 196 Appendix A: Selected Glossary of Internet-Related Terminology . 197 Appendix B: Alphabetical Index of Web Sites . 201 Appendix C: Bibliography: Libraries and the Internet . 205 Index . 223 This Page Intentionally Left Blank Preface V The Internet is, by far, the greatest and most significant achievement in the history of mankind. What? Are we saying that the Internet is more impressive than the pyramids? More beautiful than Michelangelo’s David? More important to man- kind than the wondrous inventions of the industrial revolution? Yes, yes, and yes.1 V An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.2 V The real voyage of discovery comes not from seeking new landscapes but from having new eyes.3 V The Internet; Don’t just get onto it—get into it!4 A Confession Preface Let’s begin with an embarrassing admission of truth, and get it out of the way. So here it is: The term Internet does not appear once—not even once—in my previous work along similar lines, titled Foundations and Issues in Library and Information Science.5 And what accounts for such an egregious lapse in up-to-dateness? Ignorance? Carelessness? Inadequate scholarship? Perhaps any or all of the above apply, granted, but I prefer to think of such an omission as blatant and convincing evidence of the swift currents of change at work in our information professions. To illustrate the rapidity of such change, consider that the H. W. Wilson Company’s periodical index, Library Literature,6 which did, for most of the twentieth century, a very creditable job of indexing the written output of our professions by author and subject, didn’t even list the subject heading “Internet” until the 1992 annual volume, and in that year, devoted only a scant two columns (approximately one page) to subject indexing of articles concerning the new communications technology. Considering, therefore, that my prior work has a 1992 publication date (but the writing of it was actually completed in 1991) and had to sit—decaying as all information does—while the publishers readied ix x Preface the manuscript for press, perhaps I may be excused and forgiven for any per- ceived oversight. But maybe Library Literature is not an apt example. Turning to a more general popular periodicals index to underscore my previous point, I refer to the latest volume of Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature7 that contains a total of 19 pages of Internet and Internet-related headings and subheadings, including: Anonymous messages, Backup storage services, Consumer informa- tion, Educational use, Electronic mail, Fees, Games, Government information, Hate speech, Investment use, Laws and regulations, Library use, Marketing use, News, Personal information, Political use, Programs, Scientific use, Security measures, Shopping services, Traffic, Travel use, and Unauthorized use. Addi- tionally, there are See Also links (cross-references) to such related topics as Bookmarks—Internet, Chat rooms—Internet, Collaborative filtering tech- nologies, Extranets, Electronic mail, Instant messaging—Internet, Internet2, Intranets, Next Generation Internet, Push technology—Internet, Internet pro- tocols, Internet search engines, Internet servers, and Internet service providers. Other search services abound with Internet references. FirstSearch (an auto- mated indexing service) in early 2000 listed 4,480 records in response to the search term “Internet.” When a limiter restricting recall only to items in the English language was placed on the search, the total was still 4,277, and even when the time period was limited to the years 1998-2000, 1,251 records were still remaining to be viewed. The rise of the Internet is one of the most astonishing developments of this or any other century, compared by some writers in importance to the capture of fire and to Gutenberg’s printing press, and yet, in some ways, it came about as an unintended consequence of the efforts of a group of scientific researchers to exchange information more quickly. Many technological inventions have, in fact, had unintended consequences, whereby nothing remotely like it was anticipated by those who created it. As a solitary example, some 3M engineers, looking for a new good adhesive, failed in their efforts, but instead developed an inadequate result into today’s ubiquitous Post-its® or sticky notes. Another singularity of the Internet is that it has become, for the most part, a government- free zone, and thus uncensored, despite having been created under the auspices of the national government. In this sense, the free Internet can be seen as an unintended, but welcomed, consequence of government action. After its general acceptance, the Internet has made life far more con- venient for a great number of people, in the United States and pretty much all around the world. How many people? The total number of users grows every day. Estimates vary, and even recent figures are likely to be out of date a month or two later, but the sheer number of Internet users grows continually and exponentially. Back in the early 1970s, there was no such medium of communication, and what was to become the backbone for the Internet started out as basically some computer scientists on different campuses who wanted to set up their computers to exchange and share information easily—a diversified Preface xi network for communication with one’s “invisible college,” people who share common research interests but are geographically distant from one another. It took only a couple of million dollars to set up the initial network, and it involved about 40 users. The Internet that people think of today, however, began about 20 years later when the government opened the Internet to commerce and the general public with about 100,000 users, initially. To put that figure in per- spective, there are more than 100 million users in the United States today, with more than 200 million, worldwide. The growth rate of the number of people using the Internet is stagger- ing in comparison with other technological breakthroughs of modern times. The Internet took less than five years to catch on with the general public, whereas radio took 6, VCRs 8, television 9, cell phones 10, cars 18, and air- conditioning 22 years.
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