The Internet: Its Impact and Evaluation. Proceedings of an International Forum held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, 16‐18 July 1999

Citation

Clayton, P. (2002), "The Internet: Its Impact and Evaluation. Proceedings of an International Forum held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, 16‐18 July 1999", The Electronic Library, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 337-338. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2002.20.4.337.4

Is a title such as this, reporting on a conference held some years ago now, still of any interest? In the case of this slender volume, very much so. The conference was organised by City University (London) as is evident from the list of contributors, and adopted a multidisciplinary approach that seems to have been especially productive. It helps that the papers presented here have all been refereed by a (named) editorial board, and that the editorial work (itself often negligible with published proceedings) has stressed consistency in presentation and referencing. Each paper has an abstract, there are profiles of the speakers and an effective index. The volume is also well presented with clear type on good quality paper. But the content is what matters, and to a notable extent these papers rise above the minutiae of individual research projects and address some of the bigger issues and, of course, these do not date nearly so quickly.

What is perhaps most rewarding about this volume is how readable many of the papers are. In his introductory paper Hunt puts study of the Internet into a wide social and cultural context, taking a sceptical perspective. Even the subheadings indicate some of this flavour: “Who’s got the last laugh now?” “Come fly with me”, “There’s a small hotel, aka, A Nightingale sang in Berkley Square” and so on; entertaining, well written and thought‐provoking, to say the least. Another exceptionally well written paper comes from Cole, who writes about “Newspapers and the Net: peaceful coexistence or fight to the death?” A fresh perspective on the impact of ICT on the learning environment in universities is taken by Akeroyd in “Joining up information and learning”. In another thought‐provoking paper, Rowlands speculates about the application of bibliometrics to the Internet, concluding that cybermetrics is a discipline in embryo.

Several papers should be essential reading for those who undertake further research on the impact of the Internet, amongst them Menou (raising conceptual and methodological issues), Daly (stepping back from a series of African Internet studies to look at the bigger picture) and Moore (addressing electronic government). In other papers, Raper adopts very much an international perspective on intellectual property issues; and Meyer gives the researcher or reporter good reason to be sceptical about much Web metrics, a conclusion supported by Nicholas and Huntington.

In short, this volume offers interesting, sometimes challenging reading for anyone concerned with the area. Isn’t that all of us?