The Business of Searching and Cataloguing the Internet

By Phyllis Albert-Mitzman

Special to the Gazette

A lot of people complain that the Internet offers far too much information, but it's not enough, according to Willy Chiu of IBM's Worldwide Digital Library group. Digital libraries now offer only 1 percent of the content of printed text libraries, he said, and more content is being produced every day.

So the real problem is for the library and the librarian. The library "maintains the collective memory of society," Chiu said, and librarians establish order in the chaos and information overload of the Net.

"We need someone to place information in context, to provide order and structure and documentation to help patrons search and find related information," Chiu said. "There is absolutely no quality control on the Net. Anyone can put anything on the Internet, and they will! "

He said the Net is an opportunity for content owners, for technology providers and for society to distribute its collective memory. "But just getting all the content up won't allow us to maximize its power. Only digital librarians will allow this."

Chiu was one of four panelists in a session on "Opening the Gate: Increasing Content on the Internet." All emphasized the importance of building new relationships to realize some of the potential of the Internet. This is true for business, for libraries, for indexing companies, and even for newspapers.

Christine Maxwell, president of the McKinley Group, a search engine and indexing company that produces The Internet Directory and the Magellan Online Directory, said the most challenging issues are the Internet's implications for content and intellectual property owners. They will probably no longer realize the chief benefit from publishing, she said, and will focus instead on what people do with information; "how to distribute the content free but sell the services, relationships, and ancillary products."

She perceived the added value as coming from evaluating and rating existing resources and helping people sift through the vast amount of digital information. "Browsing has now hit the masses, but in the next 10 years searching will hit the masses," Maxwell said.

She urged people not to fear letting go of the way intellectual property has been traditionally viewed, but to "build bridges and bring publishing integrity and standards to help the Internet grow into the new interspace of the future."

Shikhar Ghosh, head of Open Market Inc. -- at two years old, one of the older Internet technology businesses -- commented that, "Although everyone believes the Internet is an important paradigm shift, few have any understanding of quite how this will be felt." He described how the new medium is reshaping business boundaries and alliances and how entrepreneurs will need to build new, innovative partnerships to be successful.

"Every information company will have an identity crisis," he remarks, "but relationships will be essential. We will need to pay attention to the complete value chain and offer several services to customers, not just one."

Edward Horowitz of Viacom Interactive Media, who moderated the panel, foresaw a problem of separating development of consumer applications for the Internet from their own Intranet business environment.

In the first, he said, the emphasis must be on openness, adding value and on easy ways to find and access information. For the second, the emphasis is on ensuring the security and privacy of content information and business transactions.

For Martin Nisenholtz of The New York Times Electronic Media Company, the question was how to achieve scale in the new electronic business markets.

To do this, even for a well-established content provider like The New York Times, he stressed that it would be important to find a new identity -- to provide added value by helping advertisers and agencies to a new vision of interactive marketing, as well as develop new ways to measure those marketing strategies.

"In a sea of content," he noted, "industry needs to work harder to make services easier to use, the cost of access needs to fall, and the selection of content must expand. But," he cautioned, "the process can't be forced. Above all, we will need patience."