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Then I Saw the Web -- Now I'm a Believer
by Robert P. Holley
The Internet was the key to improving the results of my latest research. I was surprised at how much my paper benefited both from increased electronic access to traditional bibliographic resources and from the additional materials available only on the web, and came away from the experience as an enthusiastic supporter of the Internet as a research tool. I could not have written as good a paper with only traditional print access.
The Project
My topic was cooperative collection development. I had agreed in early April 2001 to prepare an article on this topic for the new edition of the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science to be published by Marcel Dekker in 2002. I was expected to cover the topic comprehensively and to submit an article of 3,000-7,000 words with a full range of bibliographic references so that readers could check the original sources.
The difficulty of this topic is its open-ended nature. While I would include sections on the philosophy of cooperative collection development, I also knew that I needed to identify various initiatives to trace the history of cooperative collection development and to provide specific examples for my general points. I knew that I faced a difficult task because I had written an article on cooperative cataloging outside North America in 1993 where I encountered the same research problem of identifying specific examples.
While I discovered the existence of many cooperative cataloging networks in print literature, I suspected that I was missing important examples. This turned out to be true, because shortly after publication one of my international students told me about the SABINET network in South Africa that I had completely overlooked. In addition, I depended too much on one single source that listed bibliographic networks in Europe and their support for cooperative cataloging.
General Internet Search
I realized that I should search the Internet as part of the research process in parallel with my examination of print sources. I used the Google search engine to search the exact phrase, "cooperative collection development." I had over 2,700 hits. Over the next few days, after having bookmarked my search results, I started systematically searching these entries.
I discovered much additional information that was not easily available in print resources. For example, I found several examples of cooperative collection development in school library media centers -- in contrast with a complete absence of specific cases in the print literature. The same was true for health science and law libraries. I also found many references to planned cooperative collection development activities or philosophical support for the concept.
I bookmarked or printed these pages for further investigation, but confess that I quit reviewing the results at about 300. The target pages were becoming repetitious and I felt that I had reached my goal of learning what I could from a generalized search. In addition, I did not intend to include a comprehensive list of all cooperative collection agreements in my paper.
Focused Internet Searches
I used focused Internet searches to zero in on specific areas originally discovered in print or to investigate additional areas where I felt the general Internet search was not adequate. In the first case, I found the Internet particularly useful in updating facts on specific cooperative collection agreements. The most stunning example occurred with the Sondersammelgebiete Agreement, a German initiative. I found a description of the Sondersammelgebiete Agreement as a model for the Scandia Agreement, a Scandinavian cooperative plan that was the subject of a book based upon the author's dissertation. But the information in this source stopped in the 1950's. Much to my surprise, a focused Internet search revealed that the Sondersammelgebiete Agreement was still going strong and was an important factor in the current Association of Research Libraries project to increase access to German scholarly resources.
I admit that I benefited from the fact that several German institutions included English translations of their web sites, but I could have asked for an automatic translation of the original sites in German. Thus, the most successful and oldest continuing cooperative collection development initiative in the world was almost invisible in the North American cooperative collection development print resources.
I had similar success for other projects where I was able to find much more current information. On the other hand, some projects had disappeared, because the sponsoring bodies' Web sites made no mention of current activities in support of cooperative collection development. I also attempted to verify the subsequent history of proposed projects or strong statements of support. I often came away morally certain that the proposals had never materialized and that the philosophical support had not led to action.
I also used focused searches to zero in on specific areas. My favorite search engine for this task was AltaVista, for its ability to formulate complex Boolean searches. For example, I wished to verify one of my surprising conclusions that public libraries had almost no interest in cooperative collection development. A focused search brought up a few minor examples in rural areas, but I confirmed to my satisfaction that cooperative collection development is not a high priority for public libraries. Even when I had a fair amount of information from my general search, I did the same for other types of libraries to test my conclusions.
How We Did It Not So Good
Many others have commented that the print literature emphasizes plans and successes while minimizing failure. Authors prefer recounting successes rather than failures, although the lessons from a failed project can often be a great value for those considering a similar solution. In my research, I did find one example in the print literature where the authors admitted that the cooperative collection development project did not achieve its objectives.
The documents from the web, however, were much more candid. I discovered that the web includes many internal reports, draft documents, and archived e-mail messages where librarians describe in detail what went wrong, why it happened, and who was responsible. I worry that some of these authors will not be pleased that my references point to their documents, but I consider availability on the Internet as a form of publishing suitable for scholarly citing. I also wonder if organizations of all types will begin to take greater care in what they allow on the web, if this information is contrary to the official public relations stance.
Surprising Resources and Increased Indexing Depth
I often found key information about cooperative collection development initiatives in documents on completely different subjects. For example, the best history of the shared purchasing project in University of California System appeared in a report on collecting Women's Studies resources in the UC System. Though references to this initiative appeared in print resources, they were out of date and did not give the critical perspective that I found almost as an aside in this report.
Similar information may have appeared in print buried somewhere in the texts where cooperative collection development was not the principal topic, but I do not know how I would have found it through the traditional indexing, abstracting, and cataloging sources. The web, as indexed through the search engines, may finally make available some of the information included in annual reports, committee documents, and similar reports, at least for search terms that provide a reasonable number of responses.
Dynamic Information
Finally, I hope that my article on cooperative collection development will become dated more slowly because of the dynamic links to the web. For example, if the Center for Research Libraries updates its membership list under the same URL, the reader should be able to click on the reference to see if the membership has changed. I realize that the opposite may also be true and that some of my links may disappear as documents are removed from the web while the print documents that I cite will not disappear or change.
I'm A Believer
While I started with established print materials, web research helped me pry open the hidden world of non-traditional resources. Internal documents and other types of grey literature provided information about projects, often in small libraries, that have never appeared in print. I also learned about failed projects. Through focused searches, I was often able to update my knowledge about cooperative agreements whose last print references appeared 10-15 years ago. In many ways, I felt that I was doing archival research without having to visit the archives.
I also did not worry about the authenticity or veracity of the web resources that I found because I was researching a neutral, factual topic where point of view and opinion did not play an important role. If I were writing an article on a controversial topic such as library outsourcing, I would have paid more attention to fact checking and to discovering the potential biases of the documents' authors.
I will conclude by stating that I am not suggesting that researchers abandon print sources. I started with Library Literature and WorldCat. The web, however, deepened and updated what I found in published materials and answered questions that would have remained unresolved by what I found in print.
Bob is currently a professor of Library & Information Science at Wayne State University where he has also been Associate Dean and Interim Dean of Libraries and Director of the Library and Information Science Program. He has a broad range of interests including bibliographic control, collection development, international librarianship, and the lessons from e-commerce for libraries.