Untangling the Web

Is the Internet like a Library?

by Keith C. Ivey

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he Internet is often compared to a library, especially in discussions of access for schoolchildren and for the poor. But the comparison is not all that useful, and there's now a backlash from people pointing out the differences. Mainly, they're distressed that there's so much junk on the Internet.

Ways the Net is less reliable than a library

If you're not careful in trying to use the Internet as you would your local library for research and fact checking, you can run into problems.

Authenticity

Citing "the Internet" as the source for a fact is about as meaningful as saying you read it "on paper." To make a judgment about the validity of information, people need to know where it came from. Was it on a third-grader's personal Web page, in e-mail you got from a marketer, on the CNN Web site, or in a peer-reviewed article from a scientific journal?

In a library, part of the judgment has already been made for you. A staff selects the books and other publications, so people can't just come along and put whatever they want on the shelves. Besides, most of the publications in a library come from major publishers, who exercise editorial control over what they publish. On the Net, you have to do your own selecting.

One of the places people are used to looking for authoritative information is books. Most research requires books, and -- for reasons of copyright, logistics, and commerce -- books are scarce on the Internet. Students and scholars must still use it as a supplement to, not a replacement for, the library.

Accessibility

For readers, the Internet is less democratic than a library: It's open mainly to people who can afford computers and subscription fees for online services and who aren't intimidated by (or contemptuous of) computers. For writers, however, the Internet is more democratic: You can put nearly anything on the Web for a few dollars a month, and you don't have to convince any editor, publisher, or other gatekeeper that your work is worthwhile.

Signal-to-noise ratio

One consequence of this greater freedom for writers is that rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, scams, pornography, and just plain drivel are common and have given the Internet a bad name. But critics go too far when they say that the Net offers nothing but junk.

The term signal-to-noise ratio (borrowed from electronics) is sometimes used when discussing this situation. The signal is the information you want, and the noise is the worthless junk. For example, a Usenet newsgroup that has many off-topic and repetitive messages and few useful ones has a low signal-to-noise ratio. By choosing your sources carefully, however, you can keep the ratio high.

Stability

In a library, publications are removed only when they're outdated (or stolen). On the Net, documents come and go overnight and are constantly changing. A useful site that you find today might be gone tomorrow because someone changed Internet providers, graduated from a university, or just got tired of keeping it up.

What's good about the Net

The Internet has some things that used to be found only in the library. For example, if you want to read Shakespeare, then the copy you get at the library or the bookstore is preferable. But if you want to find a quotation or analyze Shakespeare's use of a particular word, the searchable electronic versions you can find on the Net will serve you better.

For works that are made for looking things up rather than reading straight through, the electronic versions are almost always better. Why do you need a printed ZIP code directory that's out of date as soon as it's published if the U.S. Postal Service provides a database on its Web site (http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/)? The same goes for legislation and Supreme Court decisions.

Libraries increasingly lack the funds to buy updated reference books every year, but online references are continually being updated. Rather than use your library's 1993 movie guide, you can get information on even the latest movies from the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com).

You can also find things on the Internet that you could never find in a library: interactive discussion groups (Usenet, e-mail lists), personal Web pages, businesses (bookstores, travel agents), technical help on software (from companies or user groups), advertising. The good, the bad, and the serendipitous -- and more of it than you could imagine on your own.

Good sources of information may become more common on the Net as the mechanics of online payment are worked out. It's not surprising that there's no good encyclopedia available free on the Web, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica has a subscription-based service at http://www.eb.com. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal's Web site (http://www.wsj.com) is accessible only by subscription.

But some respected publishers have made the full text of some of their products available free on the Internet, either as a way to sell advertising space to others or as a way to attract visitors and thus advertise themselves. For example, Webster Dictionary (http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm) allows you to search Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) free.

Editor & Publisher offers a directory of more than 1,400 newspapers that put many articles, or even their full text, on the Web (http://www.mediainfo.com/emediajs/ media-types.htm?category=newspaper). It includes the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com), the Washington Post (http://washingtonpost.com), and the Times of London (http://www.the-times.co.uk).

Less an institution than a medium

Instead of comparing the Net to a library, maybe it's better to say it's like the medium of print. It includes information of all levels of quality, from authoritative statements to unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods.

For example, even though the line between "legitimate" newspapers and sensationalist tabloids has been eroding recently, the New York Times isn't the same as the Weekly World News. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine isn't the same as a flyer touting the latest miracle weight-loss pill. A book published by Oxford University Press isn't the same as a badly photocopied screed that some guy in an aluminum-foil helmet hands you on the street.

You can find equivalents for all these types of publications side by side on the Internet. You need to exercise judgment to determine what's valuable.

The barrier to wide publication has become lower and lower over the years. Web publishing is in some ways a continuation of the trend that began with movable type and continued through various other technological advances to desktop publishing. As it becomes easier for people to get their writing published, the fact of publication becomes a less useful gauge for the worth of the writing. (Perhaps that gauge has become less useful for printed publications, too, but that's another story.)

Is the Internet full of junk? Yes, but it's also full of good things that are difficult or impossible to find anywhere else.