This inaugural issue of the Journal of Internet Cataloging is created in an atmosphere of great excitement, uncertainty, experimentation, and risk. The environment around those of us connected with providing information is fraught with change, uncertainty, and high expectations. We are pioneers. Though some may think we are futurists, in reality, history will term us pioneers.
As editors of Journal of Internet Cataloging we expect to present both research and applied articles. But, in fact, even the applied articles or "how we do it good" or "here is what I am doing" are research as we pave new territory. There are no real ground rules, no proven paths, or even gurus out there who can say with certainty this will or will not work. This first issue presents a range of articles. In addition to our article examining the rationale for the establishment of "yet another journal," both an administrator and practictioner discuss aspects of cataloging internet resources for access by a library's users. One author addresses the complex issue of using the Library of Congress classification system as an organizational framework for internet resources in science, technology and related areas. Yahoo, one of the systems for organizing web resources is described in that context. Another article treats the difficult area of vernacular or character-based resources locatable via the World Wide Web and the issues connected to them regarding their cataloging. Finally, as most frequent Web users have discovered some of the most frequently consulted or perhaps most valuable Web sites consist primarily of links. Here the author examines issues connected to cataloging Web sites with content mostly in the form of links to other sites.
It is not possible in one short issue to cover the complicated yet intriguing world of cataloging resources available via the Internet. However, we believe that the articles included here provide, if not a cross section, a reasonable random sampling of the issues that we as information access or cataloging professionals must treat in the forseeable future. The future remains to be lived. It is beguiling and uncertain, yet fraught with excitement and possibilities. In his second annual message to Congress during the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln reminded us that "the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." We can see that our ways of thinking about the means to connect users to desired information may need to change. At the same time, that still is our purpose: connecting a particular user to his or her needed or desired information. In the midst of information super abundance, the need for organization to promote efficient and effective access is more not less important. We have much to learn about achieving our goals in the changing, electronically connected environment. History again can help us keep perspective. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., observed that, "Far from unveiling the secret of things to come, history bestows a different gift: it makes us-- or should make us-- understand the extreme difficulty, the intellectual peril, the moral arrogance of supposing that the future will yield itself so easily to us."(1). With the Journal of Internet Cataloging we at least hope to track our steps as we strive to harness and organize resources available via the Internet to an increasingly large user base. We look forward to you joining us as we make this journey.
-- Ruth C. Carter
-- Roger Brisson
Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich's The Harper Book of American Quotations (New York: Harper & Row, 1988) contains Abraham Lincoln's quotation from his second annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s quote from his work The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941-1966 (1967), p. 274.