Wired to the World - Can You Really do Research on the Internet

Abstract

While working recently with a library user I encountered what is becoming an increasing problem when one tries to conduct research on the Internet. The user was conducting research on vessel departures from American ports using our Early American Newspapers online database. The researcher reported that the list of newspapers available varied from day to day. For example papers he consulted on Monday would vanish from the database on Tuesday and new ones not previously there would appear. Sad to say his experience varied again on other days of the week. What implication does this phenomena have on the ability of scholars to conduct “research” on the Internet? Unfortunately this was not the first time someone reported a vanishing electronic resource to me. In fact just this morning I was looking for the 1729 edition of William Dampier’s Voyages. I located the title in our ILS, clicked on the link “Full Text Online” and promptly got the message “You do not have access to this product. Please contact our online sales specialist at 1-800 blah, blah, blah.” Further research turned up the fact that we had purchased the e-book collection containing this title outright in 2007 and there was no known annual fee, so we should have access right? Wrong. Latest news from the vendor is that “the collection may have expired for us.” So who in the library gets the fun task of taking all of these entries out of the ILS for items that have “expired” access? Or do we just have a new link to a page for these titles that reads “Sorry, access to this title is no longer available due to budget cutbacks by [insert the name of your favorite] administration? How do we even find out what we have lost access to unless a user complains? A number of times when I request articles recently through our e-journal portal, I will click on the pdf file link and receive a blank page. So why do the vendors say they have the pdf image when in fact they don’t? Or is it a glitch in the system, a problem with my computer, or who knows. Or maybe not. Recently a colleague sent me an email: