The Internet: Its Impact and Evaluation. Proceedings of an International Forum held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, 16‐18th July 1999

This collection of essays announces itself as the response to the obsession that the information profession and the world both share with the complex phenomenon that is the Internet. It forms the record of a seminar held to discuss various aspects of the Internet, which brought together experts in various areas of study in the hope of intellectual cross‐fertilisation and interdisciplinary thinking. The aims of the forum were thus to explore ways in which the Internet might be evaluated, and to assess its current and future impact. Through this the participants hoped not only “to identify the key information and communication principles, ideas and concepts” (p. vi) that have emerged with the growth of the Internet, but also to establish an agenda for future research.

The scope of the published volume is, therefore, ambitious, especially since the participants at the forum were encouraged to engage with higher level principles and questions, rather than simply presenting results of their latest research projects. As such this must have been an engaging and stimulating forum. However, the intellectual excitement does not quite translate to the printed page. The editors make clear that the volume simply follows the order of the conference itself and it contains much material that is of great interest. However, as a result of this decision, when read as a book, the impression is that it is oddly centripetal and uneven in character. Some papers present general overviews of a particular subject area, such as Ellis and Vasconcelos on information retrieval or Rowlands on biblio/cybermetrics. Others engage in great detail with particular data, such as Chapman’s article which looks at specific Web sites for community information in the North East of England. The effect therefore is not so much that of interdisciplinary connections as of a bewilderingly wide frame of reference.

The reader is left wondering about what level and type of readership the editors have envisaged for the volume. For example, some papers, such as Menou’s fascinating article on how impact should be measured, question methodologies at a deep level, and would be of interest to academic researchers in the area. Others are less detailed and might be used for an undergraduate audience; yet others might attract the interested general reader, but be too basic to give an information specialist new insights.

The organisation of the volume also adds to this impression of unevenness. Perhaps the most interesting area of study to emerge from this collection is that of how newspapers and journalists are dealing with the Internet, with stimulating discussions from Cole, Meyer, Nichols and Chapman. However, these were spread throughout the volume, making it difficult for the reader easily to make thematic connections between them. This might have been an argument for considering the material anew when printing it. In the conclusion Nichols and Menou make it clear that the conference was valuable for the interdisciplinary links made through discussion of the papers, and the printed volume can only provide tantalising hints of the issues that might have been raised. So, rather than leaving the reader with the feeling of having missed out on some good discussion, now lost, it might have been better either to provide us with some summary of the points raised, or to reshape the material in the book. In the present format, the reader might for example feel that the opening of the book lacks an attempt to define the Internet as a phenomenon, only to discover it in the fifth article, by Menou. It seems a lost opportunity not to open the volume with such a strong and stimulating discussion.

What of the content of the book, however? As its title suggests, the papers range across a very wide area, including government, education, the press and developing countries, providing a sense of coverage that is admirable. It is slightly odd though that the health sector is not touched upon, given the impact that the Internet has had on health information, whether for patients or practitioners. Methodologies and research methods are also presented, though most authors were forced to conclude that of necessity all research in this area is at a very early stage, and as such we cannot yet be sure what methods might be the most effective.

Meyer also makes the important point that “online publishing has given rise to more statistics, and less understanding, than any medium since television” (p. 131), arguing that most data about the Web are either ill digested or simply misunderstood. Happily there is no evidence of misunderstanding in their volume, but a general impression gained by the reader is that researchers are aware that they have access to potentially vast resources and amounts of data. However, several authors admit that they are only just beginning to be able to find ways effectively to interpret and understand them. Indeed Menou argues that the only effective way forward is for research groups working on different areas to collaborate and share insights about this vast area (p. 61). It may be because the area is so vast that some of the most interesting and successful papers are those that concentrate on case studies or detailed examples, while managing not to lose sight of the bigger picture. Cole, for example, presents case studies based on qualitative interviews with journalists, Rowlands refers to Web log data and Daly discusses the results of a survey of Internet use in developing nations, while at the same time pointing up the dangers of technological determinism when discussing this area.

The editors discuss the common theme which emerged from the papers and discussions of comparing the physical to the virtual Internet space, and between the old and new spaces. The conclusion therefore looks towards these new spaces and points out the need for further work, in terms of longitudinal study, and strategic comparisons of methodologies. Panoramic views of large problems should be taken, they argue, and research must not be obsessed with the minutiae of the data. All of these aims seem as daunting and imposing as the size of the problem area itself. While we can await the results of future fora such as this with interest, it therefore seems likely that our obsession with and need to understand the phenomenon of the Internet will last for some time to come.