Data mining and information trapping

Nowadays, being “online” is simply the best way to be “aware”. For managers, journalists, politicians, students – undergraduate or graduate, for scholars, for ordinary users and enthusiasts… the list is endless. But still one question stays and disturbs every user’s mind – Is this all? Is everything we find online is everything that truly exists? This week’s session is concerning exactly the same questions and is also trying to demonstrate that especially for scholars, being online is not only inevitable, but it’s as important, as knowing how to make a simple bibliography. On the other hand, “being online adequately” is not a skill that comes with the buying of a computer, it has to be developed. Searching on the Web is not a one-way street and if you want to achieve the goal, you need not only to search it, but to know how and where to search it, in order to escape the “dead end-streets”. But let’s not underestimate the limitations that the Web “offers” because if we do, those limitations threaten to become serious menaces.

(Hidden) Advantages:

· The net is rich with specialized search services, (although many of them are trying to find a way to get their slice of the billions of dollars Google makes every year answering queries.) (Cool Search Engines that are not Google)

· Existence of other search engines, different from Google – ChaCha, Collecta, Trackle, Kosmix, Windows Live Academic (a concurrent to Google Scholar)

· Googling around the internet cannot substitute an old-fashion library research. But the reverse is also true. (Googling the Victorians)

· Explosive expansion in the reproduction and distribution of the public domain sector of our textual heritage. (Googling the Victorians)

· Search engines present a quite peculiar way of interacting with groups of texts. (Googling the Victorians)

· Communication, interaction, collaboration - connections across national, institutional and disciplinary boundaries – “sense of common purpose” (Googling the Victorians)

Limitations:

· There is always a danger of becoming jumbled mess (even with well sustained academic sources) (Subject Headings Galaxy)

· Search engines don’t work sufficiently with humanities. (The Single Box Humanities Search)

· The people designing and building these "academic" search engines are from a distinct subset of academia: computer science and mathematical fields such as physics. (The Single Box Humanities Search)

· Cherry-picking approach to reading. (Googling the Victorians)

· Blindness to the limitations of the internet generally, disheartening credulity about the information to be found there, reluctance to do the serious work among the print texts. (Googling the Victorians)

· The offline penumbra (Googling the Victorians)

· Digital tools are superb instruments for ratio – searching, researching, abstracting, refining and concluding, but not for intellectus – creating. (Contemplating Scholarship in the Digital Age)

· The differences between scholarship and quick information seeking. (The Peloponnesian War and the Future of Reference, Cataloging and Scholarship in Research Libraries)

What to improve:

· Google and other search engines are not the future but the presence of scholarly discovery. (Googling the Victorians)

· Need to encourage actively the development of digitally literate curators. (Contemplating Scholarship in the Digital Age)

· Special collections librarians to help with their skills. (Contemplating Scholarship in the Digital Age)

· Need to educate researchers and users (The Peloponnesian War and the Future of Reference, Cataloging and Scholarship in Research Libraries)

· Universal Digital Library – is it a dream?