[11159] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
recommended reading: Clifford Lynch, Scientific American (March)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Fri Mar 21 20:45:45 1997
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 11:08:32 -0600 (CST)
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Clifford Lynch gets it right, again, in an article in the current
Scientific American (March) extraordinary as much for its brevity --
"Internet" articles by others tend to be interminable -- as for the depth
of his insights.
The Internet is _not_, Lynch asserts, "the world's library for the digital
age" -- it is _not_ "designed to support the organized publication and
retrieval of information, as libraries are". The Internet is -- but is
nothing more than -- "a chaotic repository for the collective output of
the world's digital 'printing presses'", says Lynch.
There are those, here as elsewhere, who would disagree with this view. The
Internet has its staunch defenders -- some overly so -- and its fiercest
critics generally are not well - informed about it.
But Lynch is neither. He is a computer scientist _and_ a librarian, a past
president of ASIS, the director of the University of California's MELVYL
system, and he teaches at UC Berkeley's new School of Information
Management and Systems. He is no ignorant Internet critic, and neither is
he a starry - eyed digital information apologist.
Lynch has a deeper agenda in this article than any mere discussion of the
Internet. "The librarian's classification and selection skills must be
complemented by the computer scientist's ability to automate the task of
indexing and storing information," he says, "Only a synthesis of the
differing perspectives brought by both professions will allow this new
medium to remain viable." This because of "information overload", and
because current Internet search engines don't work very well. Also because
online "genre" classification and metadata indexing are not yet what they
ought to be.
But there is even more to this:
Lynch distinguishes between "human classification skills" and "automated
indexing and searching strategies", saying -- in what I myself feel is a
prescient statement heard far too little in Internet discussions -- that
the choice of either "will depend on the people who use the Internet and
on the business prospects for publishers".
Enter the users! Lynch himself has grasped this insight for a long time.
Too few others online, still, understand what he is talking about here. He
talks about the need for _some_ users to get "quality rankings" of
resources, and the need of some _others_ to avoid this: "communities of
scholars", for example, he says, may need "an organized collection -- a
digital library", while other groups may prefer "an uncontrolled
democratic medium".
But, "the decision to opt for a given information method will depend
mostly on users," Lynch contends, suggesting that for some users
information collections will resemble "a library" -- a "structured
approach", "building collections" -- while to others information will
"remain anarchic", with imperfect although more rapid and less expensive
access provided courtesy of "automated systems".
I rarely have read any short article which more completely summarizes the
current state of both digital information and library affairs than this
one by Lynch -- although Lynch himself generally is dependable for
producing these -- and I highly recommend it to readers here. Anyone
interested in the Internet or in digital libraries or in general
librarianship simply has to read it.
It is worth noting that Lynch himself is troubled by the dichotomy which
he describes: he worries that a split is coming, between "low - cost
computer - based indexing" and "users willing to pay a fee" who can
"sustain the tradition of the library". Enter the "information - poor"!:
an old issue (Thomas Childers) coming back with a vengeance now with the
imminent domination of the Internet by the mass - marketing industries,
the use of simplistic and bandwidth - gobbling "graphical" user interfaces
and applications, and the corresponding development -- in frustration --
of a higher - speed and generally more sophisticated "Internet II" by the
academic and research community.
This last is largely Kessler talking now, not Lynch: I imagine that
Clifford would not go this far -- but the logic of his argument does. His
closing statement in his article reads like a clarion call from Lewis
Mumford (_Technics and Civilization_) rather than any analysis by some
overly - careful computer scientist: "social and economic issues," Lynch
says, "rather than technological ones, will exert the greatest influence in
shaping the future of information retrieval on the Internet."
But we need vision _now_, and Lynch's article supplies it. The Internet's
technical development is not over. But its development era dominated by
technology is. Now we have users drawn from the "general public" and users
who are "international" -- both very new items for online digital
information -- and the Mass Marketing juggernaut already is rolling along
toward all of us. If issues like Internet II (see _ConneXions_ magazine,
Dec 1996, v.10 n.12, ISSN 0894-5926) and the possibility of a split
between the "information rich" and the "information poor" are to be dealt
with successfully, we are going to have to pay increasing attention to
Lynch's "social and economic issues".
The full text of Lynch's article -- along with other excellent
contributions by digital information luminaries such as Michael Lesk,
Marti Hearst, Bruno Oudet, and Brewster Kahle -- may be found online at,
http://www.sciam.com/
and in the pull - out "Special Report" entitled "The Internet: Fulfilling
the Promise", in the print version March 1997 issue of _Scientific
American_.
Jack Kessler
kessler@well.sf.ca.us
