Data Mining – we do it all the time. Personally, going through George Mason’s Online Library the search for relevant topics depends on how well I decide to code the search words. I cannot complain as it makes searching for sources was less tedious than the days of old. I can only imagine utilizing the Dewey Decimal System that was prevalent in the late nineteenth century! (surely our generation would suffer) if our computers or access to the internet was taken away.

Daniel Cohen discusses this issue but his purpose is the search to refine such searching tools to give the researcher quality products instead of the massive document loads we tend to find on our searches. He first starts of using “Syllabus Finder” and this streamlines course materials into a search engine that surely relieves headaches for instructors. It is unique to witness the current dilemma of having rather easy access to a large amount of information and now trying to simplify it. This reminds me of General Meigs’ dilemma after the American Civil War where he has far too many documents and not enough room to store it.

Now we have far too may ways to access information without the tools to separate and streamline what we are looking for. I guess it’s just another challenge we will need to work through when regarding information access and retrieval. The question is what is the way forward to ensure all of this information continues to be accessible in a reasonable and easy way to find?

References:

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march06/cohen/03cohen.html