The internet has changed how information is accessed and how people collaborate. A very well known computer scientist’s thoughts on these changes are mentioned in the entry, ‘Reflection on the old days- by Joseph Kruskal‘. Krushkal comments on the fast pace of research due to wider dissemination of information:
Today, the equivalent of those two chance conversations can happen via Google and email. I feel certain that science of many kinds is developing much more rapidly than it used to for this reason (except, perhaps, in fields where progress is kept secret for reasons of financial gain)
Even if some paper or journal is not downloadable from the internet, books.google.com and scholar.google.com are helpful in searching for archived information. Recently, an ambitious project called European.eu was launched which is designed to be a massive digital library. However, with 10 million hits an hour, it crashed. Work is currently underway to resurrect the site. The aims of the website are indeed impressive:
Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers…
The digital content will be selected from that which is already digitised and available in Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. The prototype aims to have representative content from all four of these cultural heritage domains, and also to have a broad range of content from across Europe
Let’s watch out for new developments on European.eu
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