It does feel like the web today, or www, has all happened very fast. But it has taken 2 decades! Back in 1991 Tim Berners Lee first introduced the web to the public, having created the concept, developed the idea of ‘hypertext’, shaped the first web browser and editor, launched the world’s first website - http://info.cern.ch and gave users an introduction to getting started with their own websites.
Initially websites were there as a means to publish information. Estimates show that the 220 million pages in the 1990s, have grown to a number of 1 Trillion, but as Internet hosting is not restricted the answer is more likely to be ‘infinite’ and growing at that rate too! In the early nineties pc’s were gradually appearing in organisations. There were significant cost factors, training people on how to search, learn keyboarding skills, use DOS, the early non-windows operating system and so on. Mainframes had been around for some time, but only usable by computer programmers who had the skills of cobol, fortran, pascal and the like. In the early nineties the pc was the tool used by the library and information staff to search the bibliographic databases as a profound improvement to thumbing though the printed indexes. Amstrad led the word processing market, then other software providers came along and finally Microsoft conquered the market with their ‘office’ suite. At the same time PCs became laptops, netbooks, iPads and communication moved from ‘wires’ to ‘wireless’ with mobile technology now commonplace. Another overwhelming advance as to how people can work both in and outside the workplace to access real-time data repositories to save and access information and data.
The web has evolved in tandem. These slides (Download Web 3) take a light hearted look at the changes, which almost typify generations x,y,and z.
What is interesting to information professionals, is the increasing need for the use of taxonomies, metadata standards, tagging, information architecture, enterprise searching and discovery tools.
As the web has evolved so has the requirement for LIS skills. With available information growing at an infinite rate ‘googling’ for items becomes an almost impossible task. Recall is up, precision is down. Indexing/classifying items is the only way through the myriad of websites and pages. Automatic tagging software only really works well once the taxonomy and metadata rules have been set up. Intelligent systems can now clock what we read, films we see, clothes we buy, restaurants we visit so they can provide us with the information before we even know we want it. Sounds familiar? Push and pull? All points in one direction. Long live the information professional!
- Vivienne Winterman, Senior Knowledge and Information Management Consultant
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