“Organizing the Internet”

Citation

du Preez, M. (2004), "“Organizing the Internet”", Online Information Review, Vol. 28 No. 4, pp. 315-316. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410553868

The purpose of this fall 2003 issue of Library Trends is to describe some of the main efforts people and institutions have embarked on to organise the Internet. The articles, representing an integrated set of diverse ideas, have been contributed by some leading educators, librarians and researchers.

The first article, by Bertot, focuses on selected issues libraries face in service and resource delivery, management, organisation, professional development and assessment in the networked environment. Franco's article, “Gateways to the Internet”, is concerned with librarian‐produced portals or a portal with a high level of librarian participation, while Jerry Campbell examines portals from a more theoretical perspective. He discusses the Scholar's Portal project and essentially describes efforts to create specialised subject portals for researchers.

There are a number of Web publishers who are blatantly ignoring intellectual property rights. This means that a discussion on copyright cannot be avoided when publication activities or use are being discussed. Rebecca Butler addresses these issues when she discusses the implications for organising the Internet from the publishers' and the users' viewpoints.

Notess and Fletcher pay attention to government information that is available on the Internet, as well as the creation of the Firstgov portal. Ways to uncover sources that search engines cannot see are addressed in Sherman and Price's article, “The invisible Web”, while Spink addresses emerging Web search patterns.

Two articles, those by Hunter, Crowston and Kwasnik, focus on specific organisational aspects such as metadata standards and access issues that are based on document structure and content. Hunter provides an overview of key metadata research issues that are expected to improve the usability of the Internet. Her review of metadata search engine research is of particular interest to the end‐user. Crowston and Kwasnik address the issue of vocabulary control by discussing the possibility of improving information access through the identification and use of document genre as a facet of document and query representation.

By discussing Web‐based organisation tools and techniques that could support learning, Descy focuses on the construction of Web learning environments that contain safe sites for students such as WebQuests, Pathfinders, Treasure Hunts, Scavenger Hunts, and Tracks. Descy is of the opinion that, by constructing these sites, it should be possible to guide each step of the students' Web experience to assure that they reach the information they need with little chance of going astray.

The articles in Organizing the Internet are well researched and discuss a variety of practical applications addressing information organisation on the Internet. The articles should also be of interest to librarians, educators and researchers and as such can be recommended to all persons involved in organising information on the Internet.