A review of this book which states that librarians should stop paying for some resources and start using materials freely available online

Weaver, Belinda

University of Queensland eSpace

22
Online Currents -  Vol 19 (8) October 2004
Anyone who has surfed the Web knows that there is 
a whole universe of free information out there for the
taking.  The Web has attracted enormous numbers of
people with information to share – from the keen
volunteers painstakingly entering books into Project
Gutenberg, to organisations, associations, government
agencies, universities and other authoritative services
who have discovered “that the Internet is simply a
cheaper and more effective way of disseminating their
information than print on paper.”  Author Nicholas
Tomaiuolo has that right.  He goes on to say: “Many 
are commercial publishers and Web content producers
who are willing to risk giving some of their content
away for free on the Web, in the hope that they will be
able to entice you into a subscription
or at least make you stick round
long enough to see some of the ads
on their sites.”  Despite the free stuff,
a lot of people still want to charge.
It may be hard for librarians to
convince people that not everything
is freely available on the Web when
books like this document so much
free information.  But Tomaiuolo
does try to dampen some
expectations: 
“Among resources that you will still need to pay for,
or at the very least, make a trip to your local library
to use, are sensitive company information, the
newest bestsellers, and personal articles that never
make it to the Web.”
He’s right.  Information that is costly to produce, such
as market research or business data, will always come
with a price tag.  What is amazing about Tomaiuolo’s
compilation though is how much material – even
scholarly research – is actually out there – gratis.  The
job of tracking down and organising this vast store of
freebies cannot have been easy, and I for one am
grateful that someone else has created the road map 
for me.  The book comes with a companion Web site 
at http://www.ccsu.edu/library/tomaiuolon/
theweblibrary.htm.  This site is updated frequently 
to compensate for the fact that addresses listed in the
book might vanish or change.  My only quibble with
the site is its appearance – messy layouts, hard-to-read
fonts – but that aside, the site provides a much easier
way to navigate what’s inside the book than simply
using the print.
In addition to reviewing free online sites, Tomaiuolo
intersperses the text with interviews with Web experts.
These interviews place the material being discussed in
context and give the point of view of either the
producer of the material or that of the dedicated user.  
The first chapter tackles the problem of finding
background or research material online.  Students,
researchers and academics alike are interested in finding
magazine or journal articles and Tomaiuolo has
developed a nifty strategy for making the most of what’s
freely on offer.  He separates the job into two parts –
the first consists of identifying the articles you might
want to read; the second tackles the problem of getting
the articles for nothing.  Many of the sites that offer free
articles, such as FindArticles.com (which includes
content sources from Gale Group publications) do not
offer very sophisticated search facilities.  Tomaiuolo
recommends using the free search facilities of sites such
as Ingenta or Scirus to identify the works wanted, and
then going on to use sites like
FindArticles to grab the content.
FindArticles provides free access
to scholarly journals such as The
Lancet, so it is not a destination
for popular magazines only.
Tomaiuolo documents other free
article sites and gives a good
description of each.
He also covers the burgeoning
growth of preprint and other
open research archives where
scholarly research papers or theses can be found.  The
book was probably issued before the launch of the
brilliant cross-archive search tool, OAIster, which to 
date indexes the content of more than 300 open
archives.  These services include e-theses, working
paper archives, open access journals such as BioMed
Central, preprint servers, museum collections, digital
image libraries, technical reports and other scholarly
materials, and are a boon to anyone who wants to get
research on the cheap.  However, Tomaiuolo does
mention other finding tools such as ARC and provides
links to some preprint sites.  With OAIster having struck
a content sharing deal with Yahoo!, much of this
material can now be found in search engine databases
as well as through these kinds of specialised tools.
Tomaiuolo deals with online news in chapter 2.  Part 
of his argument in writing the book is to convince
librarians to stop paying for material and opt for free
models online instead.  This argument must be weakest
with news, as news sites are still struggling with the
issue of how to make money online.  If they charge for
content, Web surfers may go elsewhere.  If they give
their news away for free, they risk eroding their print
subscription base or losing their TV audience.  With
issues of compulsory registration, site subscriptions, and
archiving still up in the air for many news organisations,
cancelling paid subscriptions in favour of free content
would seem foolhardy.  Perhaps more free archival
content is available to US readers, at whom Tomaiuolo’s
THE WEB LIBRARY: BUILDING A WORLD CLASS
PERSONAL LIBRARY WITH FREE WEB RESOURCES
BY NICHOLAS G TOMAIUOLO reviewed by Belinda Weaver
23
Vol 19 (8) October 2004 - Online Currents
➥
book is targeted, but the Australian situation is quite
different – to get much Australian news after the current
day, libraries have to sign up to services such as Factiva,
LexisNexis or NewsText.  Tomaiuolo also fails to
mention one good source of free archival news – the
UK Guardian’s archive which stretches back several
years.  The UK Daily Telegraph also has an extensive
free archive that is good for international news.  To his
credit, though he does have a very American-centric
focus, Tomaiuolo does cover the use of news alerts and
the growth of Web logs (blogs) as providers of news, so
the chapter is still worth reading.  
Also of benefit are the two
chapters on online look up tools.
The Reference on the Web
chapter points to the vast range
of material already out there for
look-up – almanacs,
encyclopaedias, dictionaries,
health and other specialist subject
material, factbooks, directories
and more.  Again, the focus is
American, which limits its
usefulness, though many of the
tools listed, such as literary,
geographical or scientific
resources, will have universal
relevance.  The chapter is mainly
pages of lists, arranged by
category, of what can be got.
The next chapter covers Expert,
AskA ..  services and digital
reference.  Several of these expert
sites are reviewed, which helps
with choosing the right one.
Tomaiuolo then goes on to
suggest other paths for when you
draw a blank, such as USENET newsgroups or posting
questions to lists such as STUMPERS-L.  He also weighs
up the usefulness of Ask a Librarian online reference or
chat services.  
Free books are covered next, with Project Gutenberg
predictably getting a good write-up.  In the chapter,
Tomaiuolo includes an interview with Michael Hart, the
founder of the project, who provides a cost comparison
of using Project Gutenberg books as against buying
them in print.  Other e-text sites are reviewed, and
there are further interviews with library professionals
about the usefulness of e-texts.  No mention is made
of Amazon’s new facility of peeking inside new books
before purchasing them, but there is a comparison
availability chart for selected titles to demonstrate the
superiority of Web archives over ordinary bookshops,
especially since one of the selected titles is out of print.
No mention is made of antiquarian or secondhand
booksellers, who could reasonably be expected to fill
such gaps, presumably because they charge for their
services.  
Images are the subject of the next chapter and
Tomaiuolo deals with a range of issues here – from
finding images to acquiring them, issues of copyright
and the plethora of image formats.  Tomaiuolo covers
some public domain image services as well as providing
a few links to paid services such as Getty Images, Art
Today and Timepix.  I would disagree with Tomaiuolo’s
assertion that Web surfers should not have problems
finding the images they want.  I find using search
engines such as Google or AltaVista to track down
images frustrating; the lack of metadata means you
have to page through screen after screen to find what
you want.  Searching in digital image archives is
certainly a more satisfying
method of targeting queries,
since many images have been
extensively described.  In my
opinion, good image searches
will not eventuate until more
images online are adequately
described by metadata.
From images, it is logical to
move on to exhibitions and the
Web is certainly rich in these
with many galleries, museums
and libraries mounting online
exhibitions, some permanently,
some more ephemerally.  The
chapter reviews a number of
gallery sites such as the Museum
of Modern Art and then goes on
to discuss the use of such sites
for research, for example, the
use of digitised versions of the
Gutenberg Bible by scholars.
The Library of Congress’s
American Memory collection gets
big coverage but so too do sites
designed more purely for
entertainment.  Tomaiuolo also talks about the use of
gallery and exhibition sites for trips and travel planning.  
The next chapter is a must-read for any Web user as it
covers the kinds of software necessary for Web use –
the basic plug-in software, such as Adobe Acrobat,
without which certain classes of material cannot be
used or viewed.  Other basics include RealPlayer for
audio and video, QuickTime for movies, and Flash and
Shockwave for animations.  Tomaiuolo also covers
downloadable toolbars such as the Google toolbar.
Again, the time lag may be operating against the book
here – while Google’s toolbar is handy, it is nowhere
near as versatile as the new deskbar which sits on the
Windows desktop rather than bolting on to a Web
browser.  I use the deskbar several times a day, as I
can launch searches and dictionary lookup from within
other applications, such as Word, without having the
browser window already open or active.
Tomaiuolo has also included a reality check by covering
in his final chapter the kinds of materials that may never
be in the Web Library.  He has also tried to compensate
for the lag between publication and new developments
by adding material to the Web site that is not covered in
24
Online Currents -  Vol 19 (8) October 2004
the book, and by adding new material to existing
chapters of the book online.  The book’s appendix lists
all the sites mentioned throughout, chapter by chapter,
which is a much easier look-up aid than going back
over the book itself.  For those with Web access, if the
idea of typing in all those URLs is a chore, use the
companion Web site and let your mouse take the strain.
Advice from librarians to evaluate what’s trustworthy
and what’s not is also a feature.
While the book will be an undoubted godsend to those
keen to organise and manage the vast shoals of free
online information, its American focus limits its
usefulness somewhat (though this is not decisive).  The
book’s evangelical argument that librarians should start
using these free services and dispense with paid ones
failed to convince me.  It might be possible to drop
Medline and switch users over to PubMed, as the latter
seems guaranteed as a public service.  But PubScience
vanished overnight, despite being a seemingly bullet-
proof US government initiative.  The same could
happen to other currently free services.  They could
easily close down, or start charging.  As developments
on the Web show, sites change their raison d’etre
constantly.  To cancel a newspaper subscription only 
to see a free online service start to charge for content 
would make many a librarian regretful about the
damage done to a hitherto unbroken collection.  
In his foreword, Steve Coffman claims that is it “simply
ludicrous for libraries to continue to purchase things
that everybody else can get for free.  It is high time we
re-evaluated our traditional collections and roles in light
of the changing reality of the Web.”  Alas, the reality is
that that many, many Web sites change or disappear.
You can certainly use this book to create or add value
to an existing virtual reference collection, or to add
many marvellous services to your existing catalogue.
But to throw out subscription materials in favour of sites
that may be gone tomorrow would only be for the
foolhardy.  This book is a tremendous summing up of
the materials many of us will want to link to online.
However, it can never be the whole answer.  The
Internet is not yet ready to replace the traditional library
collection.
The Web Library: Building a World Class Personal
Library with Free Web Resources by Nicholas G
Tomaiuolo, edited by Barbara Quint.  Medford, NJ,
Information Today, 2004.  US $ 29.95.
Belinda Weaver is Co-ordinator, ePrints@UQ - the UQ
ePrint Archive, University of Queensland Library.
FAST SEARCH & TRANSFER UPDATE
Fast Search & Transfer (http://www.fastsearch.
com) has recently announced that InfoData has
signed an agreement to deploy the FAST Enterprise
Search Platform (FAST ESP) across multiple
applications throughout its enterprise.  InfoData,
which was acquired by the BTJ Group in March
2004, is a privately held company and a leading
supplier of online databases and direct marketing
services in Sweden.  It has developed one hundred
Swedish databases and one thousand international
databases under the name of InfoTorg.  InfoData
(http://www.infodata.se) offers a variety of
services such as Electronic Commerce, EDI
handling, contact centre development, and direct
marketing services. 
Fast Search & Transfer has also announced the release
of FAST AdVisor, an enterprise-wide software solution
that facilitates the introduction of buyers to suppliers
for Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), Business to Consumer
(B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) verticals, online
classifieds, and traditional publishers.  By improving
the overall search experience, consumers will be able,
more quickly, to discover relevant information, and
advertisers, in turn, will connect to these customers
more rapidly.
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NETCONTENT LAUNCHES SCOOP
NetContent has launched Scoop (http://www.
scoop.com) to help sales, marketing and
communication executives monitor business news
and redistribute important information to their
selected audiences.  NetContent provides alert
services, company research, electronic news feeds,
and newsletters to businesses and professional
organisations.  It secures copyright in order to
deliver information from over 15,000 sources
including magazines, professional journals,
newspapers and online publications. 
User benefits include improved selling efficiency,
competitive intelligence, and credibility among co-
workers, clients and prospects.  In addition to news
monitoring and company research reports, Scoop
provides a publishing service that lets executives
deliver key information to their co-workers, clients
or prospects via Web site postings, e-mail or
RSS feeds. 
It is available by personal subscription or enterprise
license; it is a Web-based Software as Service product.
It can be personalised by the individual end user and
is configurable for specific industries or corporate
information needs. 
NetContent has recently been selected as an initial
provider of premium business news article content for
the Find.com business search engine.  Find.com
(http://www.find.com) is a business-focused search
engine.  It combines free search of business-oriented
Web sites with pay-per-view access to premium articles
and research. 
Available content sources provided by NetContent
include articles and company research from Proquest,
Thomson-Gale and NewsNow.
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The Web Library: Building A World Class Personal Library With Free Web Resources By Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo (review)

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10263/olc_19_8_04.pdf

The Web Library: Building A World Class Personal Library With Free Web Resources By Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo (review)

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