While I am glad that Mr. Baron got his information, there are some vexing
issues that I need to comment on.   First, I believe Mr. Baron is the loser
in this information search.  What we try to do as librarians is to TEACH
people HOW to find their information--that way, they can do it themselves
the next time they need something.  Mr. Baron said he had an extensive library
but what if the person who answered the query actually had a particular book or
index that Mr. Baron should know about?   Second, the comment about let's get
our libraries online is the new contemporary myth.  I don't know how many
queries I get from people that assume everything is online....today I got a
telephone call wanting to know if alumni lists of everyone who ever graduated
from West Point and the University of Alabama was online.  Our libraries are
full of millions of books, indexes, periodicals....and our archives are full
of billions of paper documents--from manuscripts (13th century-on) to type-
scripts to dot-matrix documents, etc.   There is simply no way that much of
this information is going to be available "online"......for example, the
latest Information Please almanac might be online, but not the 1955 edition if
you need racial statistics to correlate with the Supreme Court decision of
1954 ordering school desegregation.
 
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be proven wrong.  But online
information exists because of publishing profit.  If there's no profit, it
won't be online....and I don't know of any library as well-staffed and well-
financed that someone can sit down and input 85 years of the entries in
the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature so you can find an obscure article
about a certain painting, artist, archaeological dig, etc.
 
I remain concerned indeed about the "online" myth that I see more and more
repeated.....Actually everyday "online" databanks go out of existence, or
are erased, or abandonded as a publisher moves on to another project, or an
information agency is sold, broken up, or goes bankrupt.  There is also
considerable question about the long-term storage/access of CD-ROMS, and
other electronic media.  Will that CD of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (where no
print edition was made) still be accessible or readable in 50 years?
 
It is fun being able to find information without (1) looking it up yourself,
and (2) seeing it scroll across the face of your computer.  But I'm afraid
that too many people are missing the hidden problems of such convenience.
:::stepping off the soapbox:::
 
Dean DeBolt, University Librarian, University of West Florida