EDITORIAL
This issue of Journal of Internet Cataloging completes volume
one. Although this first volume is published over two years, volume two is
expected to be out within the normal one year period. Several theme issues are
in process; the next volume will present a number of the papers from a recent
colloquium sponsored by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in
Mexico City on the Internet, metadata, and information access.
The current issue includes two "42" columns by a
trio of authors (Eric Childress, Erik Jul, and Eric Miller) uniquely placed at
OCLC in the middle of considerable research and development related to
providing organization for and access to Internet resources. JICs co-editor,
Roger Brisson, offers a conceptual look at digital libraries, metadata, and
implications for library administrators as rapid developments with the World
Wide Web are creating a greater appreciation for cataloging (bibliographic
organization) to bring the Internet under control. It's easy to see that
Brisson is an author at heart. To devote more time to his first love, he will
be giving up his co-editorship with volume two. Fortunately, JIC will continue
to benefit from the multi-talented Brisson as he will become Editor for Network
Applications and Access. As such he will maintain the journal's home page. His
energy, creativity, and aptitude for the increasingly digital world, have been
essential to the founding of JIC. I look forward to continuing to work with
Roger Brisson in the years ahead.
Jimmie Lundgren and Betsy Simpson of the University of
Florida contribute the results of a study of graduate students and their use of
internet resources located via the library's catalog. What data elements are most helpful to
those information seekers? We learn at least part of the answer here. Finally,
Gerry McKiernan's News Column brings together information on a wide variety of
symposia, conferences, and other opportunities for learning about activities in
the rapidly developing world of organization and cataloging of Internet
resources. Many events mentioned are passed already. However, we can be sure there
will be many more in the future. With relatively few libraries cataloging the
many resources available only through the Internet, it is all the more
important that those who do share their experiences. The Journal of Internet
Cataloging provides a forum for case studies as well as articles reporting
research. What does not work is often as important to record as what does.
Don't be afraid to report experiments. And, we are not the first, nor will we
be the last generation to witness major advances and shifts in thinking due to
technology. Perhaps we can say of our time as Ralph Waldo Emerson observed in
1870 about his,
"Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our
science; and such is the mechanical determination of our age, and so recent are
our best contrivances, that use has not dulled our joy and pride in them; and
we pity our fathers for dying before steam and galvanism, sulphuric ether and
ocean telegraphs, photograph and spectroscope arrived, as cheated out of half
their human estate. These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make
the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a godlike ease
and power." (1)
-- Ruth C. Carter
1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Works and Days," Society
and Solitude, 1870, quoted in Gorton Carruth and Eugene H. Ehrlich, The Harper
Book of American Quotations (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 507.