<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Saturday, September 25, 2004  

Researcher Retrain Thyself
http://www.infotoday.com/online/sep04/OnTheNet.shtml

Of the many beauties of research on the Internet, one of the most useful is the ability to comment and correct information, says Greg R. Notess, reference librarian at Montana State University. For example, most computer software documentation -- printed or online -- is not especially well written or comprehensive. True, better documentation is well-organized and goes into some depth on the program capabilities and features, but such documentation can't include all possible errors or anticipate all questions. MySQL -- an open-source database software -- offers an interactive online manual (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/) that invites user corrections and annotations. Notess says this and other features of online queries -- particularly the divers answers to simple queries -- mean researchers must retrain themselves to dig more deeply into the Web, look more broadly at the range of answers and search for the combination of resources that gives a more "knowledgeable" answer. "Much of that retraining involves looking at comments critically, to track links in both directions, to seek out divergent views, and to evaluate much of the content based on the Internet's information cycle rather than the print information cycle," he says. This has been added to the articles section of Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:15 AM
archives
subject tracers™