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Is the Internet Your Source of Knowledge?

Posted by Cliff on from the cornucopia-of-knowledge dept.

serutan asks: "How much do you rely on the Internet for information? Since getting online 7 or 8 years ago, I have gradually abandoned almost all other sources of news and information, to the point where they've pretty much disappeared from my life. I'm a geek, but at age 49 not exactly a child of the Information Age. I've been surrounded by dictionaries, encyclopedias and similar books for most of my life. I still read fiction in book form, but if I'm trying to look up something and can't find it online in a couple minutes I generally just blow it off, as if there's no other place to look. This realization seems sort of stunning. I'm very curious if other Slashdot readers have become dependent on the Internet to that level, and what their thoughts are on the subject."

31 of 659 comments (clear)

  1. Dead trees are still the way to be by bluethundr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For news, and timely information certainly the internet is the place I turn. The evening "News" is so corporate owned and supported that I don't really consider it a reliable source for information. Besides, I don't really know exactly what I get out of keeping up with how many people were murdered or died in fires in the tri-state NY metro area (there is a LOT of that on the news). So, I've just stopped watching. I was never much of a newspaper reader, but of course there is always the New York Times and many other newspapers that bring the information to you with a nice bow on it so you don't have to go scouring elsewhere. But if scouring is your style and you are a real information junky, the scouring certainly isn't that hard.

    But if I am going to learn anything in-depth certainly books -dead tree media- is the way to be. My upper limit of reading an article on the crt is about 10 pages. Your mileage will vary there, of course it's highly individual. But maybe that's why places where the information is in digested for you allowing you to scan many stories at once and sample them all, because lengthy readings on a computer monitor are more tedious than kicking back and reading a book.

    --
    Quod scripsi, scripsi.
    1. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by pudding7 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly. For quick, one-off type stuff the Interweb can't be beat. I have no idea how I ever planned a vacation, found a movie, got directions, bought airline tickets, or hooked up with others who share my interests before the internet. On the other hand, I can only read so many 10 page Wired articles before I just want to buy a book.

    2. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by temporalillusion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree with you in that reading large amounts of information on the screen is bad. I can't wait for the day when this e-paper stuff comes to fruition and I can read a novel digitally with the same comfort and portability as a book.

    3. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by sixteenraisins · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree, we're still along way off from completely replacing printed media. I buy a newspaper most days of the week to read during lunch. In the 45 or so minutes I have to read the paper, I cover the opinion columns, comics, advice columnists, and more...

      except for the "news" stories. It's very disheartening to look through a newspaper at headline after headline of stuff you read about yesterday on the 'net.

      So for me, I don't look for "news" anywhere but on the 'net...but there's still plenty out there to read that you won't necessarily (or easily) find online.

      William

      --
      When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
    4. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'd rather read large chunks of info in the form of a book but unfortunately books are always out-of-date and tend to be dumbed down. It's hard to find anything in-depth about the latest technology. By the time it reaches being a book I already know the information so it isn't worth reading the book.

      If they'd perfect those book printers they were working on that'd be great. To just be able to go into a bookstore and load the PDF or whatever and have a real book come out would be perfect.

      Even then though I'd still use the electronic form for a reference just because it's so much easier to look things up with a computer.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    5. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by Sgt+York · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I still find myself getting most of my in-depth information from the printed page, but in the form of printed out pdf's of papers I download. I can walk out my lab door and be in one of the most comprehensive medical libraries in the nation in a less than 2 minute walk, with most of it spent waiting for an elevator to get downstairs, but I still find myself looking for online info. It is certainly where I do the searches. I can't remember the last time I used the card catalogs at the library for anything other than a place to set my notebook.

      It gets addictive. There are times when I've found myself spending 15 or 20 minutes searching for a source of a pdf of a rare or old paper online, when I could have gotten the paper from the library 3 times over.

      --

      There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.

    6. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by digitalsushi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Whoever it was that said "you cant grep a dead tree" was dead-on, in my opinion. I'm 24 and have stumbled through maybe 1/4 of a college education, so take that to mean I have no well defined research skills. As such, if I can't google for the information I want, then it doesnt exist to me. My eyes are probably 3/4 shot by this point, but I'll (not gladly) sit here reading on the crt for 8 to 10 hours, scattered with hefty half hour breaks throughout. To me, the web/whatever will be ready for prime time officially when the default assumption is that the dead tree version of whatever has already been converted to digital. With google, I get my instant gratification. As long as I can remember the slightest detail to whatever it is I am trying to remember, odds are severely in my favor I can filter out the noise until I have my answer. Last week I was able to google for a song we sang in 4th grade -- the lyrics were all Hewbrew and I was able to find the lyrics phonetically! I agree that all the major news sources seem very biased. That's why I like slashdot, which still has the sketch factor of a corporate bias. My take on it, the more typos and cursing, the closer you are to the truth :D

      --
      slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
    7. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by Lordofthestorm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've found that anything I read for enjoyment, I read on dead trees. I'm a huge bibliphile and I just got Neal Stephenson's new book - in First Edition hardback, and I'm all happy. I wouldn't' dream of reading a sci-fi book on a computer (ironic eh?).

      However for learning based tools - I never use textbooks anymore. Google rules for finding information, websites like WebMD.com offer outstanding sources of issue specific medical knowledge, etc. I wouldn't dream of relying on manuals to find information. The only time I pick up a hard copy is when I'm trying to learn a whole new process (like say, Linux) and then I'll go to it. You can't be the internet for speed, the ability to do a customized search and the almighty 'cut and paste'. Especially since through my university I have access to several hundred databases with one quick search.

      Oddly enough, I'm also addicted for local events, movie times, restaurants, news (cnn/slashdot/bbc/newscientist) -etc, yellow bages, white pages, etc. The other day my SDSL connection went down and it took me a full minute to remember I could dial information and find out where the restaurant was located. ;-)

      Good point about the CRT though, I just bought a flatscreen and it's done wonders for my eyes, although I kept my CRT for my gaming machine.

      For enjoyment though, nothing beats good old dead trees. ;-)

    8. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by C10H14N2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In total agreement, I've also seems that with the Barnes and Noble, brick and mortar edition, that came about contemporaneously with the internet, the dead tree vendors have either completely disappeared or become absolutely piss-poor, filled with nothing but massive stacks of fluff. On the other hand, the on-line versions of even the most sterile retail bookstores like B&N have available an enormous amount of new books in the relatively esoteric corners of specialized fields.

      As for finding information online, it more often than not takes an informed researcher who knows the physical location of the appropriate repositories as well as the biases of those sources to dig up high-quality information over the net that may or may not even be possible to search for via any general search engine. I've seen far too many people, certainly first-year university students, who when asked for "research" to back up assumptions respond with nothing more than:

      http://www.google.com/search?q=high+quality+info rm ation

      Librarians do a good job of debunking that idea, but sadly, post-Google, I don't think most people see, much less speak, to librarians even once a year anymore, much the way they don't think a securities analyst is of any use when they have E-Trade.

    9. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by Anitra · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've been in several classes at my school that require research projects of one sort or another. If the professor thinks it's important enough, he takes a day off so a librarian can come in and teach us the basics of researching. The major topic is how to find stuff on the web (including an overview of the various paid databases the school has access to), and how to know if you can trust the info when you find it.

      Most of this I had already learned in highschool, but there were certainly people in those classes who were clueless when it came to doing any kind of real research.

      --

      Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
    10. Re:Dead trees are still the way to be by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Interesting
      As such, if I can't google for the information I want, then it doesnt exist to me.
      Which is sad, because that means you are willingly shutting yourself off from 90% of the information available.
      With google, I get my instant gratification. As long as I can remember the slightest detail to whatever it is I am trying to remember, odds are severely in my favor I can filter out the noise until I have my answer.
      I know you young folk might find it hard to believe, but there is a *lot* of stuff not available on the web. (case in point: Today I was researching some detailed information about the history of SLBM guidance systems and the decision to use stellar intertial vice straight inertial. Almost nothing on the web about it, yet one of my dead tree books dedicated a whole *chapter* to the topic.)
  2. Re:The Internet? by keep_it_simple_stupi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yep. It's the worst though when you're searching Google for "Google monopoly theories".

  3. Re:Without question especially regarding.... by waterlogged · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And the beauty of internet pr0n is that the monitors don't stick together

    --
    I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
  4. Absolutely. Yes! by moehoward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes. I have done this as well. I'm bored by the morning newspaper now. I already have read all the stories the day before on various news Web pages. We use the Internet as our TV guide and don't even bother saving it from the Sunday paper anymore. Stock quotes? Why does the newspaper even bother. And I'm all caught up on sports the night before I get the paper as well.

    I am seriously considering cancelling the newspaper, except it is really the only good source of very local news. I find that a few casual minutes of browsing every couple of hours keeps me infinitely more informed than most.

    I feel out of touch when I do not have decent Internet access. I get frustrated when I see people sitting around debating some fact (news, gossip, celebrities, sports...) and just want to drop some Cat5 wherever I am so we can hook up and resolve the issue immediately.

    The weird thing is that I think I have good intuition about reliability of sources, etc. And I have proven this to be true over time. However, I notice that many, many people are not very good at this skill and end up getting hood-winked pretty easy by junk they read on the Internet.

    The inherent naivete of the masses is the Achilles heal of the Internet becoming THE source of all info.

    --
    "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
  5. Depth no, fast yes by Dan+Farina · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The internet is good for gaining quick information on a topic to help you look at a library, but that's about all.

    If I need to know how tall a mountain is, or how many lines of code are in FreeBSD, then the internet would be my source.

    But when writing a research paper, libraries still remain king, especially at universities where they subscribe to many very expensive (too expensive, IMO) journals that contain publications that aren't necessarily on the web.

  6. Internet is my primary source by realdpk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Internet is my primary source of knowledge, and has been since I was in high school. The school never ended up teaching much that was relevant to.. oh.. anything, and the Internet had tons of freely available knowledge to eat up.

    I still rely on the Internet, but it's becoming increasingly more difficult to do so as Google is the best search engine, and has become barely useful any more due to the search engine spammers.

    I do think that a good search engine is key to extracting information from the Internet, and I look forward to a day when we once again have a good search engine.

  7. books still have better depth of content by djmab · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was just musing this morning that there is a wealth of knowledge in book form that I hardly ever go back to anymore but which is simply not available online. It occured to me that in my university's rather modest library there were reference books that had very in depth information on specific subjects. Example: translations and commentary for early music of, say, the trouveres. Can you find articles about them online? Sure, but the material is spotty. You can't find as many scholarly opinions on the matter or get at really useful information.

    The problem is that the content that is readily available online never has the sustained depth that a book on the subject seems to. It's more likely that a scholar setting out with a purpose to explain a lot about a subject publish in book form even now. Unless the book has already been put online you won't find information of that depth...but I'm sure that the majority of books still aren't available online, no?

  8. Great Books & LIttle Else by zensmile · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These days I only keep the Britannica "Great Books" series in my home and assorted DVDROM encyclopedias. I rarely use the DVDs though.

    I used to buy the newspaper for movies. The telephone book for numbers. The TV Guide (in the Sunday paper) for TV shows. Now all of that is taken care of in Apple's Sherlock or Watson. I don't even mail anything these days...I use email. I do mail stuff for half.com sales and netflix.com....but even my bills are starting to be handled through an online bill pay service.

    I am starting to get a lot of my news from the internet too. Soon, I will only watch TV for news commentary and shows...on Tivo, of course! :-)

  9. Incredible for research by PhoenixRising · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Internet (well, the web in particular) is a fine tool for quick research, and has supplanted dead-tree media for me in that regard. No longer do I have to go down to the local library to look up a quick fact, or have a huge pile of reference books next to me with well worn indices. The true strength of the web lies in search engines, which provide an index to essentially every written work on it.

    Similarly, it's supplanted making phone calls or poring through paper records to get service from another party. There are no more hold times for customer service reps or having to wait for business hours to get information. The computer is there, 24 hours a day.

    The one thing that it hasn't supplanted, and I doubt that it will for a while, are long writings. If I want to read a book, rather than use it as a reference, far better to have it in print form where I can carry it with me anywhere and read it on something other than a computer screen. In short, the Internet is probably the best /random-access/ media yet developed, but is lacking for long serial accesses.

  10. Yes, but not without it's limitations by Alpha27 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The internet is a great wonderful thing....
    I use it for the following:
    - Yellow Pages
    - Map to locations
    - News
    - Local Weather
    - Learning new technology

    One thing I've come across is that not all subjects are available in equal formats... meaning that I can find a pleuthra of info on programming in almost any particular language, but I find some difficult in finding that same kind of info about plants of woodworking. The more technical and closely related to computers the subject, the more I find. But as I go from away from computers, the less I find, and less consistant the quality.

    It will still be some time to before we have wonderful resources for major subjects online.

  11. Internet isn't there yet by Roxy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At 40, I'm a child of the computer age (started programming at 17 and was on the Internet when that meant using FTP or UUCP in the 80-ties.). Nevertheless, I read fiction and non-fiction in book form (as can be seen on the reviews on my homepage, a hobby of mine), but every time I need some quick info, I too google, msn, etc, for the information I need (I love google, but they don't have all information). Why do I still read non-fiction books? As I'm interested in Management (and has an MBA), I can tell you that very little of the information that you need to learn to become a manager (or MBA) can be found on the Internet. You need to find the books or journals and read them. If I need to understand how PHP parses regexp as compared to PERL or how the object classes of OCCAM is built compared to C++, I can find it on the Internet. More specialised, non-computer related subjects, is still best found on paper (I would love if it wasn't so, but that is my experience). For News on the other hand, I nearly always use the Internet, as it has the latest news, as it breaks and allows me to get different opinions (like the American, Canadian, French, Swedish, Israeli, Arab, etc opinions on the Iraqi question). TV, Radio and Newspapers are too focused on what they believe to be politically correct and it is hard to get an overview of opinions if I don't use the Internet. Also, the ensuing discussions, with experts, so-called-experts, crackpots and lay(wo)men is what I love about the Internet. The Internet today, is a wonderful complement to hard sources of information, but it is far from replacing them. Regards Roland Buresund

    --
    -- Roland Buresund MBA, MCMI, CISSP
  12. Primary Source of News but Not the Rest by jak163 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The big moments were nytimes.com and news.google.com. As you go back in time it gets harder and harder, however. If you want to learn about steelworkers in the 1890s, you're better off going to the library.

    I think overreliance on the Internet for information is why so many tech stocks bubbled and why so many techies are so insensitive to the effects of technology on people, as well as a sort of social darwinist ideology that the free market correlates perfectly with ability (even at the same time as M$ is bashed albeit often for anti-free market principles) or with public taste. If you don't see it on the screen, it doesn't happen.

    That and getting information from games like SimCity (software is the cleanest and highest value of all industries) and Civilization (limited liability is an important moment of progress). The general conclusion is that corporate expansion and economic growth means greater efficiency, which is the way that all people become better off. This seems so self evident based on most of the information you get from the Internet that as soon as I write it I realize that the mere questioning of it will seem absurd to most people. The fact that the vast majority of people in human history did not believe this to be true is something you would have very little indication of from the informatoin available from the Internet. That is to say that the Internet is suffused with a Taylorist, efficiency based ideology.

  13. Knowledge being replaced with Resourcefulness by Shazow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think it's coming to the point that, online, knowledge is more or less irrelivent. It's more about how resourceful you are. How potently you use your favourite search engine and how well your instincts navigate you between the junk and into the holy grail. :D

    People think I'm smart, but really it's just that I've learned how to find what I'm looking for. Smarts has little to do with it, as I have little of it. :D

    - shazow

  14. My experience by Narphorium · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I am a 21 year old studying Software Engineering and in my experience the internet has been the single most important source of information to me since I first got into programming back in high school. Since my high school library only had a couple of books on "Programming in Pascal" etc. I learned Web Design, Perl and C++ on my own entirely off the web.

    Books can't even compare to the flexibility of the internet, especially in areas like Computer Science which are rapidly changing every day.
    But the internet is much more than that, its my source of news, shopping and reviews for just about anything. I can compare various weather reports, check out the radar images or click onto a web-cam anywhere in the world to see for myself.

    The parent post brings up the issue of realiability. Now, while I will admit that there is a large ammount of usless, misleading and just plain false information out there, I have to remind you that this is because ANYONE can post ANYTHING THEY WANT on the web. This means that if you look around and compare sources, the internet will provide you with exponentially more viewpoints than any book or newspaper ever could. Just look at what's happened with the SCO thing on Slashdot.

    I can't even count the number of times I've seen stuff on the news and said "Oh yeah, I remember reading about that on Slashdot a WEEK ago!".

  15. NPR by judmarc · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My commute is one hour each way, so it's Morning Edition on the way to work, then a mix of sports talk and All Things Considered on the way home.

    Once at home, yep, it's the Net, with Google playing a big role. No TV news, no newspapers. That's really no significant change from before the Net, though. I might watch the Newshour on PBS once every two weeks instead of once a week; never have read a newspaper for anything except the comics and sports.

  16. My work is the same by riptalon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is just as true for my work, as a research scientist, as for general information and news. There has always been one large university library or another within two minutes walk of my office but over the last five years I could count the number of times I have been in it on my hands. Most of the time if I can't download a paper off the web I will just give up and decide it isn't worth reading. After all in the half hour it would take to walk over to the library, search through the journals, read the paper and walk back I could download, print out and skim through a dozen other papers.

    It isn't just speed of access either. If I want a copy of a paper journal article I have to muck around with photocopying etc. where as for an electronic article I can download a pdf in seconds and if I want a hard copy I can print it any time I want. Of course there is always the odd really annoying case where there is some data I must have but its only in a table in a 20 year old paper in an obscure hardcopy only journal. That is when you have to resort to scanners and crappy OCR software but again it isn't actually of any use until it is in electronic form.

    However on a more serious note there is such a vast amount of stuff, like catalogues of 100's of millions of objects that was just impossible before computers and only really useful using the internet. In some way it is making people lazy but the advantages are just so huge that they out weigh any disadvantages. We have so much data now that there are huge advances to be made just by finding better ways to sort and correlate it (data mining etc.).

    On the news front the effect of the internet is just as profound. Not so much in speed as in variety of topics and points of view. Potentially everyone can be a journalist and contribute. Where things are lacking are in the searching and filtering aspects? The infomation may be there but even with Google it can be hard to find. Sites such as Slashdot in a way try to fill this niche but obviously there is only so much news they can cover.

    What is really needed is some sort of distributed and semi(or fully)-automated system where good sources that individuals find can be distributed to everyone who whats them. It would be best implimented as some sort of web of trust where you would select a number of individuals whose opinions you trust and base on their recommendations and those of people they trust etc. new sources would be suggested to you which you can then rate etc.

  17. Get a laser printer by los+furtive · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you haven't already, get yourself a laser printer, preferably the kind that prints on both sides. I agree and myself rarely read more than 10 pages online, but I have no problem finding 20, 50, 100, 300, 1000 page manuals (huzzah for .pdf, I don't know why people poo-poo it so much) and printing them out. Then I close the notebook, curl up in my favorite reading chair, and spend hours of time offline.

    --

    I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.

  18. It's not just the info, it's integration... by jpellino · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've been online since Delphi & MCIMail, The Well, AppleLink Personal Edition etc... I believed everything in "As We May Think" and in the Knowledge Navigator video(s).

    Using OSX on a 'lowly' iBook 500 with a carefully cultivated suite of apps is getting close enough to the dream that I should stop dreaming and just revel in it. And get more done. Which I do.

    It's not just the info at fingertips. I watched someone try to scan a book for a 60 year old article, then import it, try to OCR it and reformat it... nice, but it's on the web in text and I had it within seconds. Priceless.

    I'ma teacher at a very non-traditional place with lots of need for proposals, classes, results, and lots of techie things happeneing anyway, but it's the everyday access that's needed, and the ability to do it all literally at your fingertips.

    I can order the model rockets (in one typical case), check the weather for the best launch date, email all the parents to come see, fax the bus company to get the transportation, video and still photo the activities... create a summary of lessons that my students have done, download the stardust launch for them to see on a projection screen as part of class, prin their junior rocket scientist certificates, edit, compose and post their movies and pics to the web for all the parents to see, email parents or sms them or fax them to get all this done in the time it would take a staff of three twenty years ago.

    could i just build the rockets,. launch the rockets and see how jazzed the kids were? sure. still do all that. plus add value to what the parents can get out of it too.

    it's a faster more accessible source. i know i have the estes catalog around here somewhere, but where...

    i know i have videos of other older launches, videodiscs of all of the apollo and shuttle test programs, but the batteries in the ldp remote are crusty, and well, this way all the kids can play the video to their heart's content...

    i can send proposals as pdf attachments to email, submit all my nsf stuff online, if I don't know where I'm going this evening (vaguely know it's around yale somewhere) I jump to watson, get the address, see a map, add the location to my address book, sync my ipod before i leave and i'll get there one way or another. beats the big spiral bound map and hundreds of slips of paper i'd have carried around even 5 years ago.

    i can do travel better. way better.

    i can buy a car by driving around or going blind with classifieds in the local fish wrap

    my wife and i can specify the house we want and get the info delivered to us without having to drive down roads nobody else drives down for days at a time trying to find that out of the way house or having to actually talk to a bevy of real estate agents ( i actually hear one of them refer to a old local place as an antique house - grrrrr... i prefer tocall them 'used houses' as in 'used cars' but don't get me started)

    for that matter i can find out that a wedding can cost $1K or $100K and how to make it what we wanted, instead of taking someone's word on how much we should have spent.

    ditto real estate. there's a wide range of what it will all cost when they fire the starter's pistol at the closing, and we know much more from the web - we could have just taken a single sources word for it, or bought a dozen books. an hour with safari and a broadband connection and we are much wiser. we hope.

    i can get references to anything from various sources...

    i can have my kids go research the mountains of little white lies us teachers have been spouting for years in the name of shorthand lessons... columbus, magellan, the pilgrims, abner doubleday, the wright brothers...

    will i ever get rid of my books? never. ditto the back issues of bicycling or wired, my berke breathed paperbacks.

    I'll always be able to put my hand on 'the compleat angler', 'a winter's tale'or the beaten copies of 'andromeda strain', 'banner in the sky', o

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  19. 1984 by maraist · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Remeber in 1984 how it was somebody's job to go back and modify all public records of an old "inconvinient" fact. Just imagine being able to control dictionary.com / cnn and a few other heavily hit sites. You'll be able to remove any record that something existed.

    --
    -Michael
  20. Re:Corrupt Health Care System by syrinx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In other words, you have a vested interest, thus your complete lack of objectivity should not surprise me...

    I don't work in the medical field, and I still say you're full of shit. Don't confuse objectivity or lack thereof with the fact that you're spouting off nonsense.

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
  21. Librarians - the original database managers by grolaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reference librarians are one of the finest research resources available in the US.

    My degrees are in hard science (chemistry, physiology) and law and I could never have completed my undergrad or grad degrees without the assistance of these professionals.

    When I'm faced with difficult legal issues I'll ask the reference librarian BEFORE I start to avoid wasting time. I know that I talk wth librarians more than just about any other professional and they are invaluable.

    As I said in the subject line: librarians are the original database managers. Dewey is dead and the OCLC / Library of Congress rule - but it takes a professional only a few minutes to narrow my searches where I might well have spent hours getting to the same place.

    Quick: find me authority for the legal proposition that an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the material stored on a computer used in the workplace - and, while you're at it find me authority for the rights to the data where the original computer used in the workplace was purchased by the employee but the data from the first machine has been transferred through three upgrades to the employer-owned computer. Let's add a dollop of employer policy that they recognize certain rights in the employee's work - and add that the employee is a public-sector employee with tenure.

    Find that --- good luck on the web.