Soapbox: The Internet/Web Does Not Have Everything

Naomi Lederer
<Naomi.Lederer@colostate.edu>
Reference Librarian, Morgan Library
Liaison to English, Speech, and Journalism & Technical Communication

Everyone needs to know that the World Wide Web (a subset of the Internet; see Internet <http://lib.colostate.edu/howto/internet.html> for a definition of "Internet") is a tool, not the be-all and end-all of research. At our library we have had students show up with research assignments and the "fact" from their teachers that they'll be able to find, from now on, everything they need on the Web. Not true.

Students do need to be made aware that the Web is a great resource when you need some very current information--today's Dow Jones average, currency exchange rates, score in your favorite baseball team's game, news headlines, etc. Furthermore, through libraries there are increasing numbers of indexes that before were available on CD-ROM or in printed books, that are now accessed via the Web (only to authorized users); these are not "on" the Web per se. The term used to differentiate these proprietary and other directly inaccessible sources is the "invisible Web." The invisible Web is much larger than the visible Web.

However, some students seem to think that they can find EVERYTHING on the Web. They can't. They probably never will in their lifetimes either. There is simply too much information out there to have it all transferred to an electronic--and widely accessible--format.

Other issues that keep things from existing on the Web:

• Costs can be astronomical--and who is going to pay them?
• Scanning in images is expensive and time consuming (think of the millions of photographs in archives around the world),
• Copyright concerns play a major role in keeping things from being widely accessible; companies want to make a profit (there are hundreds of databases that can only be used by authorized users, so they are not available "on the Web"),
• Governments don't want to publicly display all of the information they have for security reasons and/or censorship purposes (most countries don't have a "Freedom of Information Act"--and even the United States of America, with this act, is selective about what is made widely available), and
• Private companies have trade secrets, so they want to restrict information that they make available to the public.

The following sources are examples of items not on the Web:

• Diaries/private journals kept in the 3^rd (or n^th) grade,
• Personal letters (handwritten/typed),
• Photographs from personal albums stored in attics,
• Most e-mail notes,
• Formulas for brand-name and generic items--food and non food,
• Lab notes from most experiments, and
• Recipes from everyone's grandmother or grandfather

In addition, some information and/or materials are placed temporarily on the Web (ongoing news on news sites), only to be removed within hours, never to be seen again (these sources may never return to the Web), and yet they may be viable and highly valuable when posted. Therefore, everything is not and can not be on the Web--and students must be aware of this. It might be interesting to brainstorm in your classroom other informational sources not on the Web.

Of course, students may use the Web as a resource, just not as the resource. Depending on their topic or area of interest, there may be a lot of great information on the Web to use--and they should by all means use it. On the other hand, there may not be anything, or enough, or reliable, or there may be information for which the source is unknown and potentially unreliable. Students should use a source such as "How to Evaluate a Web Page"<http://lib.colostate.edu/howto/evalweb.html> for each site they consider using for a research project. The guideline should help them eliminate marginal sources--and help them to identify more readily trustworthy sources.

It is doing everyone in society a disfavor to lead citizens (whether young or old) to believe that the Web has every piece of information that one might need. In this increasingly technologically-dependent world, it is critical that the citizens in it are finding reliable information before they start inventing, improving, building, cleaning, renewing, destroying, exploring, etc. They need to be able to critically evaluate their options, and make sure that they aren't ignoring sources that happen not to be available on the Web. The exclusively techno-reliant are, in their own way, as unreliable a source for trustworthy or thorough information as the techno-phobes who won't use the Web at all. Using the best tool for the job or information need is the only way to be certain that you get the best results.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

Page Viewed:   / Created: January 2002 / Updated: Tuesday, 8 January 2002