Cataloguing Internet resources: the library approach
| Published date | 01 May 1995 |
| Pages | 467-476 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045414 |
| Date | 01 May 1995 |
| Author | Vianne T. Sha |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
Cataloguing Internet resources: the
library approach
Vianne T. Sha
University of Missouri-Columbia, Law
Library,
Hulston
Hall,
Columbia,
MO
65211,
USA
E-mail:
sha@law.missouri.edu
Abstract: Many approaches have been taken by different groups to
collect,
organise, archive, disseminate and preserve electronic resources
on
Internet.
Some projects, such as WebCrawler, Lycos,
etc.,
purport to index or
organise
the
electronic resources automatically. Another
approach,
led by the Clearinghouse
for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource
Guides,
involves human
intelligence
to
identify
and compile Internet resources by subjects for public
access.
The
third
category
is
the traditional library cataloguing
approach.
This paper
demonstrates the benefits of the MARC formats, the importance of the integration
of information
resources,
and the guarantee of public access as the major reasons
for using the traditional cataloguing approach to organise Internet
resources.
Since cataloguing
the
Internet
is
a huge
project,
and various groups are involved
in
this process, the roles of each related group are
discussed.
1.
Introduction
The Internet is a treasury. It offers
valuable resources for the public to ac-
cess.
However, its rich resources can-
not be utilised effectively in their
present, disorganised state. There is a
lack of standard in the information
storage and retrieval system, and all
but the most seasoned information
specialists find it difficult to identify
and locate precise information on the
Internet. Internet resources are stored
in different systems and in different
formats all over the world. Some re-
sources are retrievable in World Wide
Web (WWW), some in gopher, some
in Wide Area Information Server
(WAIS), and so on. There is no single
information management system for
searching all Internet
resources.
More-
over, the quantity of Internet resources
is increasing dramatically, but users
'have few means of determining if in-
formation they need does exist and, if
so,
where to find it' (Frank 1994, p.
588).
Many approaches have been taken
to resolve these problems. One major
approach, exemplified by
WebCrawler1 and Lycos2, is to index
the WWW pages automatically on the
Internet. This approach is 'mainte-
nance-free' once the system is imple-
mented. However, searching capabili-
ties and data identification are limited
for WebCrawler, although its sophisti-
cated searching technique allows the
ranking of relevant documents. See
Figures 1A-1B for the searching op-
tions and the display results of the
WebCrawler system. Lycos offers
more descriptive information about
the resources (see Figures 2A-2D), yet
it involves the cooperation of the
authors and publishers of the Internet
resources to enter the title, keywords,
and excerpt information for each re-
cord. Thus, its process of record crea-
tion and indexing is not entirely auto-
matic. In addition, this approach is ba-
sically limited to the WWW re-
sources. Users still need to switch to
other searching systems to perform
comprehensive research.
Another way to handle the tremen-
dous amount of information on the In-
ternet is the manual subject guides ap-
proach led by the Clearinghouse for
Subject-Oriented Internet Resource
Guides, located at University of
Michigan Libraries gopher
and
WWW
servers. It 'provides a central access
point for value-added topical guides
which identify, describe, and evaluate
Intemet-based information re-
sources.'4 These subject guides are
valuable because they are the results of
human intelligence through the selec-
tion and annotation process which
cannot be achieved by automatic in-
dexing. They are transferable among
different systems since they are writ-
ten in either ASCII or HTML format.
The central server also provides ade-
quate public access. However, the
scope of these subject guides is limited
to Internet resources. Researchers still
need to take another step to use other
systems to locate resources in other
formats. There is also no way for the
researchers to perform global searches
on these subject guides so far.
The third approach to organise the
Internet is the library cataloguing
method. Modern technologies have
made it possible for traditional cata-
loguing to create bibliographic records
in library catalogues, providing hy-
pertext links from the records to the In-
ternet resources. That means Internet
resources are accessible through tradi-
tional online library cataloguing re-
cords which can be organised system-
atically by author, title, subject, etc.
This approach involves more human
intelligence and time to achieve the
goal. However, there are three major
reasons we should use this approach to
organise the Internet: the benefits of
MARC format, the integration of in-
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 5, October 1995 467
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