At 09:10 PM 29/02/96 GMT, Steve Hitchcock wrote:
>>In November, Roddy MacLeod drew the attention of lis-elib to a forthcoming
>>article discussing the quality of information on the WWW (see below). The
>>article is published in Computer 29(1) 1996, pp106-108
...
>I didn't see the piece in IEEE Computer journal. Pity, as I may have been
>more impressed, if the author's thesis is correct.
I don't think that Ciolek's thesis is necessarily that print is quality, the
Web is mediocre. I interpreted Ciolek as saying that the sheer quantity of
material on the web is in danger of swamping the valuable material that is
there. Search tools like Alta Vista and Lycos simply assist in finding
documents with particular terms in them, but don't help with identifying
quality information.
Where I would argue with Ciolek is that he implies that it is necessary to
regulate publishing on the Web to ensure quality. I don't think this is
practicable or desirable - the floodgates have opened and won't easily be
closed.
What we do need are mechanisms for identifying, evaluating, and making
available quality information, making it easier for users to separate the
wheat from the chaff. The models of the Michigan Clearinghouse, and the WWW
Virtual Library, are steps in the right direction.
Just for the record, Ciolek's article is at
http://www.computer.org/pubs/computer/kiosk/01/kiosk.htm
-Alastair Smith
Alastair Smith [log in to unmask]
Department of Library and Information Studies|Voice: +64 4 495 5233 x 8687
Victoria University of Wellington |Fax: +64 4 496 5446
PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand/Aotearoa |http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/
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