The Library and Information Professional’s Guide to the World Wide Web

Citation

Barker, A.L. (1999), "The Library and Information Professional’s Guide to the World Wide Web", Library Management, Vol. 20 No. 7, pp. 401-405. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1999.20.7.401.1

The title of this book might be deemed by some to be slightly misleading. This book is not about how to use a browser or how to search the World Wide Web; it is a general introduction to how information may be structured and published on Web pages. The intended audiences are librarians and information professionals, academics and students who want to begin to learn how to structure and publish information on the Web. No prior knowledge of the Web is assumed but a basic knowledge of the Internet is required. The authors are current and former senior lecturers at Loughborough University’s recently renamed Department of Information Science, and an IT systems officer/consultant. This book is a companion volume to The Library and Information Professional’s Guide to the Internet (Tseng et al., 1997) which covers the history of the Internet and what it offers library and information professionals, using e‐mail, discussion lists and newsgroups, and tips on using FTP, telnet, gophers, and the Web, and a resource guide.

This new book is divided into four parts. Part I "Fundamentals" covers creating, designing and publishing Web pages and Web sites, looking at mark‐up and publishing models. This part starts with a brief history of the Web and an overview of HTML, moves on to Web page creation tools and file structures and links, then ends with publishing via Web servers and promoting Web sites. Some cautionary notes are included e.g. beware of overusing images, selecting background and text colours. It would have been useful if these were highlighted in some way, rather than being hidden in the text. Part II reports Web applications in UK libraries, and their purposes e.g. promotion, training and database access. There is little discussion. In the review copy, some lines of text appear to be missing at the bottom of page 41. Part III claims to "introduce some elements of Web technology in more detail" but consists mainly of a series of short definitions and explanations relating to HTML and CGI. Part IV, the resource guide, which takes up nearly half of the book’s 133 pages, consists of short descriptions and URLs of Web resources, organised under headings corresponding to the chapter headings in Parts I‐III. The authors state that only stable and long‐term sites were chosen for inclusion. Any published list of URLs quickly becomes out of date and this one might helpfully have been supplemented by a short bibliography of books and journals articles. The index usefully covers both the text of the chapters and the resource guide contents.

The book complements its companion volume (the publishers should consider combining them into a single work), in that it gives more technical detail about Web page creation. It will serve as a useful introduction for students and information professionals, bridging the gap between guides describing how to search the Web and technical manuals on HTML and Web site design. However, neither volume gives any detailed guidance on Internet/Web searching, which is a strange omission as surely this is something one would expect the library and information professional of the title to do well. This new guide to the Web aims to give "just enough information to encourage newcomers to World Wide Web to start using it successfully". However, as its coverage is limited to explanations of page structures, HTML, and what UK libraries are using their Web pages for, this will only give newcomers an insight into how information in this context is structured and published on the Web, and will not give sufficient guidance to enable them to do so themselves without expert assistance.