[Sigia-l] re: the future of search

[Fiorito, David]

You assume that research is academic.  I did all of the research I needed to
buy a new cordless phone on the web.  I also researched everything I needed
to know about section 508 of the ADA on the web.

So there are some things that can be "completely" researched on the web.
Research ain't just for PhDs.

Cheers,

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: James Weinheimer [mailto:j.weinheimer at jlw-dmg.net]
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 3:15 PM
To: Peter Merholz; SIGIA mailing list
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] re: the future of search


> > Nobody does "research" on the web. They may want to pretend to
themselves
> > that they do, but they don't. You can certainly get some interesting and
> > useful information very quickly, and you may not, but let's not delude
> > ourselves into thinking that anybody is doing "research". A thesis
demands
> > much more than a couple of Google searches! Or at least, I hope it will
> for
> > a few more years!
>
> This smacks of academic snobbery to a disturbing agree.

"Snobbery" should not be confused with statements of fact. What is research?
It is finding all the relevant material on a topic. *Nobody* should believe
that all the relevant material is on the web. Perhaps some of the material
is, perhaps none of the material is, but certainly not all the material is
on the web. Also, does anybody believe that when you search, e.g. communism
in Google, or all the search engines, that you are getting all the
information on communism on the web? If you do, I'm afraid you are sadly
mistaken. In traditional bibliographical retrieval systems, you will get
everything, or cross-references to everything. That's how it works.

The web makes things easy, supposedly. Research is not easy--at least not at
this time. Maybe it will be someday, but not yet. And we should remember
that without quality (i.e. consistent) description and organization of
information resources, research is absolutely impossible. To believe
anything else is only kidding ourselves. Perhaps this is snobbery, but
information retrieval is too important to confuse with "snobbery".
Perhaps this is a good point to mention that there is a "Code of Ethics" to
librarianship, which I believe, should be broadened to include all of
information retrieval, since I believe it is very pertinent. It's at:
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/ethics.html

Some faculty members are concerned that some of their students were doing
their "research" on amazon.com! Does trying to change this attitude
constitute "snobbery" or is it actually trying to help the students learn
the error of their ways?
In this way, this entire discussion goes beyond "snobbery" to simple
statements of fact. Just because you find a few pages, semi-randomly, that
might more or less answer your immediate question does *not* mean you are
doing research. You may be finding information, but I'm sorry--it is not
research.

James Weinheimer


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