Customer Reviews

Net Effects

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Expertly compiled and edited by Marylaine Block, Net Effects is a very highly recommended librarian's guide to the issues and solutions of managing the Internet's opportunities for patrons provides librarians with nearly 50 articles by dozens of librarians which suggest practical ways to handle the 'side effects' of Internet use. From access issues to adapting to changing web site content and training users, Net Effects cogently addresses a myriad of training and use issues.

Aggregated for the aggregators, this anthology of fifty reprint makes an interesting reading--expertly selected, skillfully annotated, and intellectually integrated by the editor of Net Effects.

However, as any collected work this book lacks homogeneity. If you are looking for an exclusive analytical catalog of side effects, and a systematic tabulation of solutions, this book may not be so user-friendly. Nor, the book is for those who wish to see original research on focused areas. It does not even tell you where libraries are integrating the Net and where they are failing. For instance, knowledge management has enough lessons learned in Web work for librarians. This book has no such synthesis of the synchronous subjugation in at least one corporate inter or intra organizational domains.

I liked Chapter Two: Rescuing the Book. It helps in facilitating a principle of librarianship: Every book, its reader. I found the links in this section quite beneficial in my project on 'information visualization.' see more at www.taher.cjb.net

Net Effects, does offer some depth and breadth--highlighting the positive and negative sides of bringing the Internet in the Library. In this lies the strength of Net Effects. Furthermore, in an age of dynamic content, Marylaine Block regularly updates the links discussed in the book <http://marylaine.com/book/1.html>. This idea, takes a clue from another principle of librarianship: Information is a growing organism. And incorporating this bioorganic spirit deserves a compliment. Sadly, information industry is to wakeup and give a booster to make books live longer.

I recommend this book to all information professionals who wish to get the Web work for the common good of the society.