Fri, 23 May 2003 16:55:40 GMT

Tim Bray: The Death of Scholarship?. Quote: “I'm not against Web search; I use Google several times per day myself. But I think somebody really needs to get out there and exercise some leadership and dress up the world's scholarly information sources, including by the way most of our intellectual history, so that ordinary people will use them. Among other things, they might make a lot of money in the process.”

Comment: The numbers he quotes sound very accurate to me.  The solution will be hard and it won't be until it's as easy to search these databases as it is to search Google that students will come back.  Most library and journal catalogs have no focus on usability and seem too interested in revealing how many metadata fields they have, instead of making it easy to find what you need. [Serious Instructional Technology]

I think this is a very good point, I know that many times I hear someone saying something that has been oft-repeated through history, but upon questioning they don't really have a feel for that particular ideas intellectual background. Likewise, the usefulness of having a well grounded opinion seems missing in our culture, and certainly in a generation of leaders, managers, etc.