Robert Guralnick writes:
 
 
quote --
I think this is a REALLY good question.  It, luckily, has what I
consider to be a very simple answer.  The world does not need any more
sloppy, unorganized, cluttered gopher.  The world needs lots more
well organized and well maintained, specific, topical and useful
gophers.
end quote --
 
Of course, the really big problem is parsimony. Who has the big overview
here, and who decides what is, or is not, useful? We may need a new William
of Ockham to help us out here. The question of organization and quality of
content is clear though, this is absolutely vital. Whether or not Gophers
and/or WWW servers are the ideal answer to this, and to the more general "retrie
 
val-relevance-volume" problem that WAIS and Veronica have trouble
coping with is of course another matter.
 
pat
 
Pat Coppock
The University of Trondheim
Faculty of Arts and Science
The Department of Applied Linguistics
The Multimedia Lab
N-7055 Dragvoll
Norway
 
PS as regards the wood-pulp electronic blip issue, there is one clear advantage
with the blips, they do not (in themselves) "pollute" (nature, that is), they
are infinitely "biodegradable" and they can be "cleaned up" more easily than
oil spills - or can they? Unfortunately many of these "blips" seem to obtain
some kind of "charmed" life of their own, once they get stored on some server
harddisk out there into cyberspace, and they seem to have an increasing
tendency NOT to get cleaned up. I have some real problems with my desktop
computer, especially after I started using the Internet many hours each day.
A really incredible amount of stuff gets generated by net activities and stored.
Most of it I might never need again, but there is this kind of obsessive
little (researcher?) voice inside that keeps saying: "Yes, but you never know;
that particular file just might contain some vital information that you may
need later when you are doing a paper or a grant proposal". What we probably
need are better paradigms for identification of the relative "values of
documents", and preferably some kind of system that allows semi-automatic
filing and stepwise junking of stuff in terms of its (user-perceived and
defined) relevance or usability criteria. Some ftp servers I have been at have
shareware stuff lying there from years back. Once very complex "statically
organized" information systems are set up, it seems often difficult for people
to both maintain/organize/reorganize AND update them. Most often seem to get
updated from time to time, but they rarely get "sheared" down to the bone
and rebuilt. It is generally perceived as more work than it is worth. The
insights museum people have in relation to the amount of storage space available
in relation to the perceived "preservation/ collection value" of some piece
or other must be relevant here. I suppose it is a variant of the "type-token"
distinction, with the general idea being to try and identify the tokens that
most closely embody the particular set of qualities associated with the type,
as judged by "qualified knowers". Or perhaps I'm talking rubbish since I am
not a museum person? Maybe we need more cyberspace museums where we can keep
some examples of various datatypes to remind us things that were, but that
weren't all that useful..?? Then it might be able to throw away stuff!!
 
oops, sorry, this little "aside" got a bit out of hand....
 
have a nice weekend!
 
;-)
 
pat