University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Improvements needed for better subject access to library catalogs via the Internet

Drabenstott, Karen M.; Cochrane, Pauline Atherton

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/360

Description

Title
Improvements needed for better subject access to library catalogs via the Internet
Author(s)
  • Drabenstott, Karen M.
  • Cochrane, Pauline Atherton
Issue Date
1994
Keyword(s)
  • Subject access
  • Online library catalog
Abstract
"Online library catalogs (and other information retrieval databases on the Internet, we might add) present an obstacle course which Ed Krol (1992) in The Whole Internet: User's Guide 6- Catalog has aptly called ""Stalking the Wild Resource."" Krol thinks that ""friends, network news and mailing lists, and the Archie, Gopher, WAIS, and World-Wide Web services . . . [will help you] find the resource of your dreams"" (p. 279). We are not so optimistic. The rest of this paper documents why optimism is in short supply. We are not usually so pessimistic, but until the library and information professions confront these obstacles head on and become determined to correct them across the board, the Internet will be no more than direct access to the Library of Babel. We will end this paper with some messages to the systems designers of online library catalogs and Internet services like WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers) and Gopher."
Publisher
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Emerging communities : integrating networked information into library services [papers presented the 1993 Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, April 4-6, 1993]
ISSN
0069-4789
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/360

Owning Collections

1993: Emerging communities: integrating networked information into library services PRIMARY
30th Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (1993). Edited by Ann P. Bishop.