BS: Just how good is the net?

Subject: Just how good is the net?
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 16 May 01 - 03:35 AM

I'm having to do some research around using the Internet. My philiosophy being you should use the correct information source to answer your question be that web, CD Rom, journals, books or even posting questions to Mudcat or asking friends. Does anyone know of any authentic cases in industry or commerce where companies have STOPPED using online in preference to other resources?

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 16 May 01 - 04:41 AM

What I tell students is CHECK THE PROVENANCE. Anyone can have a web page and post any rubbish (see my posts to Mudcat for instance!). Just as you'd rely on a standard text by an expert in the field rather than a story in a shock tabloid newspaper. Look for websites with respectable origins, academic or whatever. If commercial ones, do they have an axe to grind? Would you believe a company annual report or an independent observer?
The example I use is: The typical web site owner is a male US high school student. He may call his website "The world's greatest science fiction collection" but he may only have six Isaac Asimov paperbacks on a shelf, there's nothing to stp him making that claim. The University of Texas may have a Science Fiction Collection of over 100,000 volumes. Which do you use as your source.
Sorry to go on, come to my session next Wednesday afternoon in the Library PC suite to hear it all over again!
RtS (old fart pretending to understand new technology)

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: paddymac
Date: 16 May 01 - 05:26 AM

Yes, it takes a bit of judicious discernment to effectively use the net. I think of it as a good place to get started on a project. One of the problems is that there doesn't yet seem to be an accepted convention for citing net sources. Perhaps a bigger problem is the ephemeral nature of web content availability.

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: GeorgeH
Date: 16 May 01 - 05:37 AM

"It's easier than ever to obtain the wrong information"

G.

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 16 May 01 - 05:47 AM

Thanks for the comments so far but it's not so much the cons of using the net I'm after but the fact that I've heard some companies have actually reduced their use of the net because of it's drawbacks. Some of these trends seem to originate in the USA so I wondered if anyone knew of any reports or surveys that back this up?

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 16 May 01 - 06:14 AM

Leeds University (UK) produce a good guide to citing web sources it is here:
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 16 May 01 - 06:36 AM

Thanks Roger for an excellent link that altho' not answering this question solves another workload problem that will impress the head man...The wonders of Mudcat!

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 16 May 01 - 07:31 AM

Again from an academic perspective, I tell my students pretty well the same things as Roger, although I also point out that more 'traditional' information sources can also be full of rubbish (just because it's in a book or journal doesn't mean its right and certainly doesn't mean it'll be balanced!)

Thanks for the link Roger, that's just the kind of thing I've been looking for.

Brian

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: GUEST
Date: 16 May 01 - 04:22 PM

It's so bad that the consortium that developed the web when speed dropped about a factor of 10 from what it was prior to making it public, and most was garbage, they abandoned it and develped a new one that's hard to find anything about. They don't want outsiders to know much about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Burke
Date: 16 May 01 - 04:57 PM

For years & years college & university librarians had to struggle with moving students from using Readers Guide to Periodicals to more appropriate indexes. Librarians & faculty had to point out that rarely was Reader's Digest an appropriate source in citations.

There is some wonderful stuff on the internet. Digital Traditions is a good example. There is a lot of garbage. There are many traditional print sources, especially journal indexes & encyclopedias, that are made available at a cost through the internet. Electronic information resources like Lexis/Nexis transformed business & law research well before the internet was around. GUI web interfaces have sure make them easier to use, even though they are still extraordinarily expensive to business customers. The connections to the paid sources are transparent to our students so they frequently don't realize that what they are dealing with is not 'the internet' as most think of it.

No one who understands what they are dealing with should stop using the internet. Anyone seeking information needs to know the difference between what google is searching vs. say Britannica Online or Lexis/Nexis. It's part of the education process that has always been needed, but not always done successfully.

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 May 01 - 05:10 PM

It's probably all a question of perspective. I do not consider the web to be any more, or less, inaccurate that some of the newspapers we see. I can only offer the advice I got years ago. See all. Hear All. Believe nowt!

Make your own mind up is probably the best summation of the sentiment. Don't know if this helps or not but I think the internet is as believable as any other source of public information;-)

Cheers

Dave the cynical Gnome

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 May 01 - 06:41 PM

the WWW has only been in most of the public's eye for 5-6 years now...as time passes an AMAZING amount of stuff will be there....even now we have 'The Gutenberg Project' and various universities and libraries and places like the Smithsonian doing online projects...

if someone simply 'says' that X is Y on some page, it would be silly to believe them...but if scanned details are posted by reputable sources...why not?

There are VERY many details that folks have no reason to lie about, and often this is information/discussions that by their very nature libraries and universities can not easily deal with...(some guy in Texas knows how to roast an Armadillo and posts the info....and YOU can have that knowlege with a 'click'...special uses like that)

look at the musical info you can get HERE...just wait a few years...you ain't seen nothing yet!

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Sarah the flute
Date: 17 May 01 - 03:36 AM

As someone who (at an early...well ok not that early age ) first used online services with an acoustic coupler for the phone and a teletext printer (no VDUs around) I am aware of the limitations and find it curious to find that to get really good commercial information once again you have to pay thru the nose as you did in the 1980s. Those databases remain highly indexed and as has been said you have to know your way around it. But does anyone know of any companies or institutions that are favouring printed journals/CD Roms/informal information sources in preference to the web or who are decreasing their use of it in given situations.

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: SeanM
Date: 17 May 01 - 04:52 AM

I think for that kind of information, you might be better suited checking out something like The Wall Street Journal, or perhaps something like Wired.com. Not so much a matter of this discussion riling up the 'Dear God! It's not FOLK! BURN THE HERETIC!!' crowd, but more along the lines of I really don't think we can help you here - beyond something like the above.

You sound like you really need an authoritative study on this trend - and it may or may not exist. The above sources and similar sites would be your best bet for finding business related moves regarding the net.

M

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 May 01 - 05:09 AM

I occasionally do contract work for my previous employer, doing background investigations for the U.S. government. We are not allowed to use the Internet as a source of information, so I have to drive 30 miles to view the computer at the bankruptcy court and the county courts - the very same databases I can access by Internet. The Internet and in-person information information is exactly the same in these particular situations, but that doesn't matter to the U.S. Government.
-Joe Offer, mostly retired-

Subject: RE: BS: Just how good is the net?
From: GeorgeH
Date: 17 May 01 - 07:01 AM

OK, a serious comment . .

As far as I am aware there is no move away from the web by the commercial sector, although different companies policies on how much to make public do vary widely, and an increasing number use "private login" areas for an increasing amount of their information.

Also, as the web has become more commercial there has been a growing tendency to see it as a source of income; "why publish that for free when we can make money from it" - essentially the IT industry (formerly the "computer geeks") has become more "commercially aware" - the one trail which Bill Gates can accurately claim to have blazed.

"Guest"'s stuff about a high-speed secret Net is a good example of the non-attributed garbage which clogs the web. (I guess he's talking about IPv6 services which are certainly not secret . . )

The probem is that it's so much easier to obtain huge volumes of information now that it's difficult to refine the results. And the "alternative" can so easily be drowned by the "mainstream". Simply using the web to access well-accredited, familiar (and usually "establishment") sources does rather defeat the idea of an "open to all" information system, but evaluating the accuracy of anything else can be . . tricky!

I'm certain many Research Papers have been written on all of this, and that many, many, many more will be in the future.

G.