Panel Posting for 9/18

["Howard Fox" <Howard.Fox@spl.org>]

MONDAY'S QUESTION -- INFORMATION OVER THE INTERNET

 

INTRODUCTION: By way of quick introduction, I am Howard Fox and I have worked as a reference librarian at the main library of Seattle Public Library for about 25 years in the subject areas of business/science/technology, which includes much of the environmental subject area. I am very far from being an expert on the EPA and its resources. What I hope to bring to these discussions is a perspective on what type of environmental information we get asked for, and how I see patterns of usage of public libraries changing (our library in particular, of course, but presumably other public libraries as well).

What kind and what amount of information (presumably environmental information) do people need to be able to retrieve over the Internet via libraries?

First of all, the environmental field is so broad and deep that it doesn't lend itself to easy categorization or analysis. The public needs regulatory and legal environmental information, which is supplied by the EPA and state agencies. Beyond that are research needs relating to habitat restoration, wildlife studies, etc.; recycling information; and toxic studies relating to water pollution, specific chemicals, historical sites of spills and pollution. But as any thorough EIS will show, environmental research can encompass many disciplines. So research in this field often leads to materials that are not strictly in the environmental field as defined by most people.

The part of the question about retrieval "over the Internet via libraries" begs the larger question of what role do libraries have in or within the Internet? We have seen a marked decrease in reference usage (for non-library folks, reference means the user asking specific questions or needing research help), presumably due to the Internet. We do have an environmental information page on our library's homepage, but as to how and how much it is used is difficult to say since all we have are statistics on the number of hits. The public is finding information on the Internet in a variety of ways, via environmental clearinghouse sites, links of all sorts, and search engines. I think it is too early to have definitive studies to know whether users are locating the information they need. From reference interviews I have had, I think many users are using the Internet when they should be using journal indexes and good old print sources. I just don't think there is an answer to the question about quantity and quality of materials on the Internet except to say we all feel there is too much quantity of often poor quality.