Research and reviews

Citation

Bruce, H. (1999), "Research and reviews", Internet Research, Vol. 9 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.1999.17209eaf.001

Research and reviews

This issue of the Research and Reviews section of Internet Research presents two research in progress reports from the University of Texas in Denton. The studies aim to address two intriguing issues associated with digital information use and users. There is a great deal of interest in what some are referring to as the Net Generation - the generation of people who have grown up with the Internet. The teenagers of generation X hung-out on the telephone. The Net Generation hang-out on the Internet. What does it mean to grow up in the age of the Internet and pervasive digital information? Many of us have speculated in discussions about what might happen to the book. Some say that it will survive because people like it more or relate to it better than digital text. Is this the case for the generation of young people who are so familiar with finding information and recreation in the digital rather than the printed form - young people who think digitally rather than through image and text in a printed artifact. Moen and Walker offer the intriguing hypotheses that the Net generation may be creating and evolving new techniques for locating networked information resources that differ from other, previously studied, user populations. Many of the innovations that currently help us to search, retrieve and organize information on the Internet are based on our understanding of the way people engage in these processes but the people studied have largely been professional groups with information behaviors that are antecedent to the development of the World Wide Web. The results of the study by Moen and Walker should reveal very interesting data that may shape the way we think about the future development of search and retrieval tools on the Internet.

The area of digital image databases is also of significant interest. The Internet is a graphical environment and this has switched many of its users on to the value of visual information. Information in the form of digital image and the mechanisms that allow us to access this information are contemporary and complex issues for the information scientist. They are issues that intersect the information, library, and museum communities in particular and the form of collaboration that is being trialed in the Hastings study is very important. Tying these ideas to the development of professional practice through a link between universities and museums is also very significant.

Again - your contributions to this section of the journal are essential to achieving our mission to publish high quality, leading edge research about Internet issues and technologies. Our readers are curious about your work in progress. For those researchers who might be thinking about contributing a report to the Research and Reviews section of this journal, please don't hesitate to contact the editor. My contact details are e-mail harryb@u.washington.edu and fax (206) 616 3152. As always, the contributors to this section of the journal welcome correspondence from fellow researchers.

Harry Bruce Research and Reviews Editor,School of Library and Information Science, University of Washington