— Spring 1998—
Return to The Link Index

• In this Issue:

  The Internet vs. the Library
  Conference Roundup
  People & Places
  Creech to Return to U.S.
  Librarian in Cyberspace
  Join the Library-Media Network, Join LM_NET
  An Updated ECIS Library Database

The Internet vs. the Library

by Karen Coyle

    I remember the first time I saw an Internet address appear in an advertisement on American television. It signaled the beginning of a new era, one in which the general public would soon enter, or attempt to enter, what had been a digital Ivory Tower inhabited mainly by scientists and researchers. Since that moment, references to the Internet have entered our public life with unprecedented speed. Internet addresses appear in newspapers, in magazines, and even on products on our store shelves. The Internet has become ubiquitous even though less than half of our population has ever logged on. Computer hardware and software companies have produced advertising that presents the computer as the modern alternative to the library. One advertisement ended with the phrase "Now you can do it all from home." The result is that many people in the United States assume that the Internet has replaced the library.
    That is not the case.
    The Internet has much to offer the world. Its instantaneous communication is ideal for transmitting up-to-the-minute information about weather, current affairs, and scientific discovery. It is also a virtual blank page for everyone who connects; the world's largest vanity press. It is a new experiment in one-to-one global communications. It is a vehicle for the world's information markets. But it isn't a library.

Library as a Collection
    What is the difference between the Internet and a library? Perhaps the most fundamental difference, although not the most obvious, is that the Internet is not a collection of information. There has been no effort to gather on the Internet all of the key information on any topic. Nor have Internet information sources been developed to satisfy the need of particular users. Some topics are well covered, especially in scientific areas, and others are represented by a near-random sampling of the intellectual output of a field. We can trust our libraries to have consciously sought to present their users with a well-rounded coverage of each topic that the library carries; to have classics in the field as well as current texts; to have at least attempted to provide readers with an understandable view of thinking in that field.

Information Organization
    More obvious to most users is the difference between the organization of the materials in the library and the devil-may-care chaos of the Internet's information space. Some users like the adventure of finding the one gem of information out of hundreds of thousands of retrieved items in an Internet search. But not everyone has the time or inclination to go on vast journeys in search of what could be a relatively simple search in a library catalog. The lack of cataloging or classification of documents residing on the Internet means that the burden of sifting through a great deal of irrelevant and unwanted material falls on the user. The retrieval of materials by keywords in full text is much favored by computer scientists since it is essentially a computational solution. The results may be mathematically correct, but information retrieval has human qualities that go beyond the performance of calculations on language.

Selection
    Libraries perform a tremendous service to their users by selecting materials based on suitability and quality. A grade school student entering a school library is not confronted with college-level texts; the library has made a selection of materials specifically for its users. A very different selection is done in the library serving a physics research facility. No such selection is available on the Internet, where pages of scientific research, grade school assignments and personal memoirs are lumped together in a single information mass. Some Internet resources present misguided or simply erroneous information, with little accompanying matter to help the researcher estimate the veracity of the statements being made. Many people believe that all libraries would carry all information ever published in the world if they just had enough money. But even with unlimited funding the school library and the physics research library would serve their users best by presenting them with a library collection that is tailored to their needs. Any individual library is merely the starting point for the investigation of an information need, not the end point, and services like interlibrary lending mean that all of our libraries are without walls.

The Internet and the Library
    Rather than a replacement for the library, the Internet should be seen as a welcome addition to the information services of most libraries, and libraries are uniquely positioned to help their patrons make the best use of what the Internet has to offer. For example, in the U.S. we are using the Internet to distribute government information to all of our libraries. Previously, only selected large libraries received the full output of our government printing office; now every library with an Internet connection can help patrons find this information. The key word here is "help" and most people do need help finding the information they need. Placing the Internet in a library gives us the best of modern technology combined with all of the information skills of librarians and the many services that our libraries have to offer.

- © Karen Coyle, 1998 <http://www.ucop.edu/irc/staffpages/Karen_Coyle.html>
University of California Digital Library

    The author is a librarian with nearly twenty years' experience in developing computer systems for libraries. She has recently published Coyle's Information Highway Handbook: A Practical File on the New Information Order, available from ALA Editions.

Conference Roundup

    The ECIS Annual General Conference is scheduled for Hamburg, Germany, 19-22 November 1998. Once again we are very fortunate to have been able to invite two noted speakers from the fields of library/information services and publishing. The sessions will concentrate on "the role of the book in the electronic age." Karen Coyle is coming to us from the Library Automation Unit at the University of California. She is a well-known, forthright writer of articles on the place of technology within today's redefined information services. The lead article of this issue of The Link gives only a hint of her clear vision of the brave new world of libraries. Author/illustrator Laurence Anholt lives in Lyme Regis in the UK. He and his wife have collaborated on many projects and their books, no doubt, will be well known to our elementary librarians. Some of Mr. Anholt's works include Camille and the Sunflowers, Degas and the Little Dancer and The Forgotten Forest. More information on the final format of the conference will be available in the fall edition of The Link, as well as on the website pages of ECIS <www.ecis.org>, as the conference date approaches.

   ECIS Special Event for Librarians. Plans are well in hand by the Committee for this three-year event to be held next in 1999. Readers of The Link will remember the last such conference held in Munich in 1996, which by all accounts was an extremely worthwhile event. The proposed theme of the next special subject conference is "International School Libraries: Beyond the Year 2000". It will be hosted by the British School in the Netherlands in Voorschoten, The Hague, 14-16 May 1999. The success of the previous event depended largely on the participation of volunteer presenters, experts from among our ranks, who were willing to share a few of their professional secrets and successes in international school librarianship. This is your weekend. Please contact Ken Vesey (e-mail: kvesey@stjohns.be) or Krysha Papillon (email: kpapillon@teaser.fr) as soon as possible if you are interested in leading one or more of the sessions. Program details will be published in the fall.--V. Locke


International Association of School Librarianship Summer Conference
    There is still time to register for the IASL Annual Conference, to be held 5-9 July 1998 in Israel, at Bar-llan University. In addition to what will surely be a great conference, if past IASL events are any judge, there are a variety of social events and study tours in and around Israel. The conference highlights will include the second annual International Forum on Research in School Librarianship, as well as workshops, presentations, and discussions on the whole range of issues of interest to librarians in International Schools. Further, detailed information can be obtained on the IASL website at the University of Iceland <www.rhi.hi.is/~anne/iasl.html>, on the website set up by the Israeli organizers <www.biu.ac.il/HU/bi/kenes.html>, or by contacting the conference Secretariat at: Dan Knassim Ltd., P.O. Box 1931, Ramat Gan 52118, Israel. Tel:972-3-6133340, Fax: 972-3-6133341.--R. Barter

In Celebration of Children's Literature 15-17 July 1998 Gorham, Maine (USA)
    Join the 17th summer of celebrating children's literature with a gathering of authors, poets, illustrators, storytellers, university faculty, librarians and teachers. This institute explores the realm of children's books and ways to share literature with children. It is designed for teachers, librarians, consultants, curriculum directors, media specialists, principals and parents. It is for people who care about joining children and books. This summer's featured faculty includes Ann Turner, David Wisniewski, Jennifer Justice, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Charlotte Agell, Kevin Hawkes, Nick Heller and Alice Mead.

For more information, phone (207) 780-5326 or E-mail: dschorr@usm.maine.edu or write:   
        In Celebration of Children's Literature
        University of Southern Maine
        305 Bailey Hall
        Gorham, ME 04038
        USA
or visit the Children's Literature Website at <www. usm. maine.edu/~coe/pdc/cele. htm>.

Eileen Ferreira (e-mail: eferreira@ash.nl) from the American School in the Hague wanted to spread the word on this conference which she has attended more than once and found to be very worthwhile. -- Ed.

People & Places

   Richard Barter has been named Head Librarian at the International College of Beirut beginning with the academic year 1998-99. Kelly McHenry is coming from Seattle (USA) to serve as librarian at the International School in Amsterdam to fill a vacancy in their upper school library. Joyce Agyare has been announced as the 1998 recipient of the SIRS/ECIS Information Exchange Award. Joyce is librarian at the Hermann Gmeiner International College in Ghana. She will spend two weeks in Florida visiting local schools and looking in on the inner workings of SIRS in Boca Raton. Congratulations, Joyce, and a special thank-you to the other applicants. The choice was a difficult one this year.

Creech to Return to U.S.

    When author Sharon Creech won the Newbery Medal for Walk Two Moons in 1995, it felt like someone in the family had received the honor. ECIS member school TASIS England has been proud to count Sharon among its faculty for many years. At the end of the current academic year she and her husband Lyle Rigg will end their careers in international schools and return to the United States, where Sharon will no doubt be able to devote more attention to literary pursuits while Lyle assumes duties as headmaster at the Pennington School in New Jersey. One of her latest projects is a novel which is loosely based on her family's experiences at TASIS in Lugano, Switzerland. We certainly look forward to reading it! Best of luck to both Sharon and Lyle.

Librarian in Cyberspace

John Royce (e-mail: 100272.410@compuserve.com), former editor of The Link and frequent contributor to the newsletter since, is librarian at the Internationale Schule Hamburg. He is scheduled to present a paper "More than Surviving-Thriving in the Information Age" at the 1998 IASL Conference in Israel. John has assumed the role of "Librarian in Cyberspace" for this issue.

    First, a book. In Secrets of the Super Net Searchers: The Reflections, Revelations, and Hard-Won Wisdom of 35 of the World's Top Internet Researchers, (Cyber Age Bks, 1996. ISBN: 0-910965-22-6) author Reva Basch interviews 35 librarians, independent research professionals, educators and technology buffs. It's a reassuring text because their secrets are very open secrets! When it comes to the Internet, the main message seems to be this: there's an awful lot of information out there and a lot of it is truly awful; what you are looking for may not be found, even if it is published somewhere on the net. Even the experts concur.
    These super net searchers don't just use the Internet a lot. They learn from what they are doing: when they perform a search they know what they are looking for and they have some idea of where to look and how to look; they are super searchers not because they know the answers but because they know what questions to ask.
    Much of the information these experts find is a result of the net's communication potential: they seek out newsgroup and usenet FAQ (frequently asked questions) sheets and, if the answer they seek is not there, they may post a request for help. Much of the time they get an answer, such is the goodwill of net users.
    When they perform a search, the experts, on behalf of their clients, may face a choice: a short but expensive search through the commercial databases with a high chance of success, or a possibly long and possibly unsuccessful trawl through the net using one or more free directories, search engine or meta-search engine.
    Super searchers are aware that the net is constantly changing and constantly developing and that search engines have different strengths and weaknesses; it is worth getting to know how different search engines work and where they worm out their information, the better to appreciate those strengths and weaknesses. Basch's interviewees stress that one should get really familiar with at least two or three so as to use the right search engine for the right job, and it is worth coming back regularly to check for new features.

Personal favorites
    My own favorite search engine is Alta Vista in its advanced mode <www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=aq&text=yes>; it's a powerful tool with some interesting restrictors. But if I don't find a good site in the first 30 or 40 hits, I turn to Inference Find or Northern Light. Both of these are meta-search engines: that is, they search lots of other search engines from a single interface at a single URL. Both feature a handy device of grouping hits into categories or folders, indicating the type of sponsoring institution (commercial, non-profit, government, educational, etc.) or geographic origin.

    Apart from the category name, Inference Find <www. inference.com/ifind/> offers only the title of the web page, with the URL shown when the mouse-pointer is positioned over the title on the computer screen. The advantage of this is that one has an entire screen-full of web-page titles to scan, and this may reduce the amount of scrolling needed before success is achieved; Inference Find also scores because duplicate hits pulled up from the various search tools linked to the meta-search engine are merged and displayed under one heading.

    Northern Light <www.nlsearch.com/> offers much more information on its screen, including the first few lines of the page, the date of posting, and links to the folders. This search engine limits its searches to the web, but also searches its own collection of "special documents," a database of articles from newspapers, magazines and journals. One can inspect article summaries and download them at reasonable prices with a money-back guarantee, or simply use the database as an electronic index to periodicals in one's own library. These are my current favorites. By the time this article is published, I may well have different favorites. And so may you!

Join the Library-Media Network, Join LM_NET

     Randi Pegnetter (this year on leave from the American International School of Zurich) has written in to remind us of a good tip for "wired" librarians. Are you feeling remote from colleagues or tired of waiting to recharge your batteries before the next conference? The LM_NET may be just the thing for you. The LM_NET is a listserv (from "list server"), a professional discussion group for school library media specialists which operates via e-mail. School librarians the world over (but mostly in the United States) post questions on a variety of issues on traditional and new media and use the forum to exchange ideas. These postings are forwarded to all subscribers of the list, who may answer with useful tips or information, or simply monitor discussions which interest them. "It's really interesting to read all about the things school librarians talk about and need help with," Randi writes.
    Many may already be familiar with the listserv LM_NET, but there are bound to be many more who still need to acquaint themselves with this invaluable tool. To subscribe to LM_NET send a message to e-mail: listserv@listserv.syr.edu. In the first line of the message, type: SUBSCRIBE LM_NET Firstname Lastname (substituting your actual name, for example, "SUBSCRIBE LM_NET Melvil Dewey".) Get ready for a deluge of mail as this is an extremely active listserv. Subscribers can temporarily suspend their membership to LM_NET (for example, during school holidays) or cancel altogether. Complete instructions and frequently asked questions can be found at LM_NET Online at <ericir.syr.edu/lm_net>.
    If the idea of an e-mail box overstuffed with library media messages is unattractive to you, you can access the information in another way. The internet search engine DejaNews <www.dejanews.com>indexes usenet news groups and listservs including LM_NET. If you, for example, would like to find out what people are saying about your automation software package, use the power search option, limit the group to "schl.sig.lmnet" and type in the relevant keyword. Only postings from LM_NET containing your keyword will be retrieved. You can read as many or as few messages as you like! Try it out. It's an easy and inexpensive way to stay on top of what's new in the profession.

An Updated ECIS Library Database

    Helen Thomas, Senior School Librarian at the Munich International School, is soliciting information for an updated version of the ECIS library database. This useful collection of data on international libraries makes it easy to contact colleagues with questions about computer programs you may share, magazine jobbers, book suppliers, equipment, software, or any other matter which might be solved by consulting with professional colleagues. It also serves as a useful tool in measuring your library services against other schools with similar enrollments. Please add your local information to this useful database by requesting a questionnaire from Helen at Tel: 49 815 1 366.255, Fax: 49 8151 366.279, or e-mail: 100425.3655@ compuserve.com.