The Professional's Guide to Mining the Internet: Information Gathering and Research on the Net (2nd ed.)

First the bad news. The title of this book is rather misleading. Mining the Internet, one assumes, implies data mining, knowledge discovery, and such things. Not in this case. Even the sub‐title, Information Gathering and Research on the Net, suggests something in‐depth – perhaps an exposition of the “invisible Web” or “gated Web”. Alas not. What we have here is a very basic introduction to finding information on the Internet in general, and the Web in particular. The tone is generic, so that, despite the “professional” in the title, most of the examples and discussion are of popular sites and information – weather, news, maps, names and addresses, etc. Not necessarily a bad thing, but quite how a book can be described as a professional's guide without any professional context is hard to understand.

Now some more bad news. Clegg, himself a journalist and online bookstore operator who should therefore know better, can't resist a dig at the library stereotype. He tells us, commendably, that the Internet is not a library – no organisation, no overall catalogue etc. – but has to add “on the plus side, you don't have to be quiet – in fact it can be a fun place … there's no censorship, there's interactivity and there's excitement, unless you are a professional library‐lover, it also has a very positive feeling of liberation”. Ah well.

What about some good news? Well, the book is quite well written, and I could not avoid the feeling that Clegg is an intelligent author, who would like to write an intelligent book. Sadly, he, or his editor, feels obliged to show us what a regular guy he is, by including “nope”, “oops” and the like rather arbitrarily throughout the text. He also prefaces a short and pretty clear description of Boolean searching by telling us not to worry if “it sounds painfully academic”. One wonders what sort of professionals he thinks he is writing for.

Back to the good news. For someone who knew little or nothing about the Internet, or who had picked up strange ideas about it, this book would be genuinely useful, for Clegg explains the basics clearly and accurately. Sensibly, there are no lengthy lists of URLs to become outdated; those given are samples of major sites which are likely to remain stable over time. The major search tools are described briefly, with the glaring exception of Google, which, despite having become almost a verb in its own right doesn't get a single mention. This has to be a major blow to the book's credibility. Nor is there any mention of subject directories, which have to be major sources for any professional use of the Web.

Any more good news? It's cheap, as “proper” books go, at £9.95. But I still wonder who would want to buy it. It falls in the awkward area between very basic guides to the net, largely free and online, and genuine professional guides, which have to have a professional context. This is probably among the last examples of general Internet books to be produced, simply because knowledge of the net and Web is now endemic. If you have a copy, keep it for future nostalgia value.