The question about links between sites brings to my mind the changed role the Internet has cast upon libraries and librarians. In the past choices made in materials selection by librarians made them gatekeepers of information. If they were knowledgeable and made good choices, uses were well served.
With information moving to the Internet, the librarian has ceased to be the gatekeeper in the former sense. Some libraries, such as ours, have attempted to maintain a cyberspace gatekeeper function by setting up subject links on their homepages. It is difficult to know how successful that is - successful in the sense of providing the user with the information they were seeking. Based on the number of hits (our homepage is currently receiving over 100,000 hits per month) these subject links are certainly being used.
The larger issue I as a librarian have with the Internet is the disparate, unorganized, unsubstantiated nature of information available on the Internet. How many Internet users find information through links provided by libraries or educational sites? It should come as no surprise if some persons growing up on the Internet might either believe everything or nothing they see in cyberspace.
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