[Sigia-l] re: the future of search

[Andrew McNaughton]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, James Weinheimer wrote:

> > 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.

[etc]

This is as silly as last time round.  I could say a good deal about this,
but it would for the most part be well off topic and fairly obvious.
Could we please not go into a discussion of James's rather reductive
definition of research.

If people want a discussion on the extent to which the web is suited to
surveying the extent of existing knowledge then that's marginally on
topic.

If people want a discussion on how as practitioners we can provide
practical support for allowing a user to know how exhaustively they have
covered the available material, then that starts to get interesting.

Andrew