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The Invisible Web 2.0

I really like the term "invisible web." It implies super powers, or something mystical. Certainly not what it really means, just parts of the internet that are not "publicly indexable," according to Ru and Horowitz in Indexing the Invisible Web. Information that is hidden, either because you have to pay to subscribe to it (from databases or journals) or urls that contain a ? (Ru and Horiwitz 250).

So people who work on indexing and categorizing this hidden web- are they considered web 2.0 people, or is that encroaching on 2.5....or even 3.0? Library 2.o is a buzz word that has recently created a lot of hype on wikipedia; someone suggested getting rid of the term altogether. Why doesn't it deserve an entry, I wonder? Just because someone doesn't like it? Isn't that called censorship? Most libraries are working to combat censorhip, so censoring the very term library 2.0 is pretty ironic, I think. According to Casey and Savastinuk in Library 2.0, library 2.0 is "new model for library service" that springs from different emerging web technologies; essentially stepping up to be more web-savvy for our customers.

The term sounds so up to date, so fresh, so ...2.0. In The Terrible Twos, Notess notes that the term is pretty trendy, but "before dismissing the concepts, ...visit some of the example sites, experiment with their capabilities, and imagine the possibilities for products and processes in your own workplace" (Notess 42).

So part of being "library 2.0" is trying to tap into this invisible web, because a lot of information out there on the internet isn't being indexed by search engines because it's well, invisible. So how do we change that? I suppose create search engines that index in a different way than current ones do, or work with current search sites to change the way their crawlers or algorithms index the information. But it's not that simple, according to Ru and Horowitz.

Part of the problem with the invisible web is that how do you know if you've found everything? The current technologies do not allow us to search ALL the information out there (262) which is sad. Really sad. I was under the impression that when I go to www.google.com and it takes .06 seconds to search the entire web, that it really is searching the entire web. I must admit, I'm much less impressed. Although, that's what happens when you learn a lot about something - it becomes less magical and more formulaic. I equate this example to when I was in high school and began to learn about the syntax or writing. I learned how you can plug words into a formula and come out with a decent essay. I realized you didn't necessarily have to possess a special gift to be a decent writer; just learn and use (often) the formula.

Of course, this isn't entirely true, and neither is the part about the internet. We can only estimate, guess, and use our reason; we certainly can't presume to know everything about anything. I will be excited to see when someone comes out with a search engine that works as well as ask.com or google or yahoo that can index a major part of the web, and not just a small portion.

Comments

DocMartens said…
Don't you think you should wind this up with a flourish by introducing the new "friend" you've been cultivating in MySpace? I'd really like to see a final post about that!
9:48 AM
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