The Internet Does Not Have Everything

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The Internet Does Not Have Everything

Everyone needs to know that the World Wide Web (a subset of the Internet; see Internet for a definition of "Internet") is a tool, not the be-all and end-all of research. Many students begin their research assignments with the "fact" from their teachers that they'll be able to find, from now on, everything they need on the Web. Not true.

Students do need to be made aware that the Web is a great resource when you need some very current information--today's Dow Jones average, currency exchange rates, score in your favorite baseball team's game, news headlines, etc. Furthermore, through libraries there are increasing numbers of indexes that before were available on CD-ROM or in printed books, that are now accessed via the Web (only to authorized users); these are not "on" the Web per se. The term used to differentiate these proprietary and other directly inaccessible sources is the "invisible Web." The invisible Web is much larger than the visible Web.

However, some students seem to think that they can find EVERYTHING on the Web. They can't. They probably never will in their lifetimes either. There is simply too much information out there to have it all transferred to an electronic--and widely accessible--format.

Other issues that keep things from existing on the Web:

Costs can be astronomical--and who is going to pay them?

Scanning in images is expensive and time consuming (think of the millions of photographs in archives around the world),

Copyright concerns play a major role in keeping things from being widely accessible; companies want to make a profit (there are hundreds of databases that can only be used by au...

... middle of paper ...

...-and help them to identify more readily trustworthy sources.

It is doing everyone in society a disfavor to lead citizens (whether young or old) to believe that the Web has every piece of information that one might need. In this increasingly technologically-dependent world, it is critical that the citizens in it are finding reliable information before they start inventing, improving, building, cleaning, renewing, destroying, exploring, etc. They need to be able to critically evaluate their options, and make sure that they aren't ignoring sources that happen not to be available on the Web. The exclusively techno-reliant are, in their own way, as unreliable a source for trustworthy or thorough information as the techno-phobes who won't use the Web at all. Using the best tool for the job or information need is the only way to be certain that you get the best results.

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