Tim says:
> John Paul Fullerton stated the www is already like a data warehouse but I
> strongly disagree. The world wide web is like a mad monk's library. There
> is an awful lot of very interesting finds and useful knowledge available
> on the web, but finding that information is very difficult. There is no
> uniform reference guide or key to web. The very nature of a warehouse on
> the other hand is one of organization. Warehouses are designed to make
> life easier and allow work to be done more quickly. The web has no
> underlying organization and only makes life easier once one has learned
> the sky so they can then navigate by the stars.
If a researcher doesn't know the way a library is organized, it is not the
library's fault. The organization of the web is no different than that of
a library. If the publisher uses ambiguous keywords, or if an author
insists on a catchy (but misleading title), there will be bad hits. The
key to successful use of the web is rigorous search methods. It is less
tedious to me to read the summaries of possible pages of interest in
search results than it is to do so in a card catalogue, and it is less
difficult to click on a hyperlink to check out a document than it is to
walk through the stacks and pull it off the shelf (a bonus here is that
the user doesn't get to misfile the book!).
A data warehouse can be problematic. Often I find users of information
who do not understand the relationship of the personal database to the
enterprise to the universe. It takes a lot of coaxing and cajoling to get
them to make the connection and to then categorize the information in a
useful (to the organization) framework. This is one of the most
interesting elements of my work (albeit tedious) because of its
associative nature. It is association than makes learning organizations
grow, not the random, personal hermeneutic, but a schema based on the
generative, transformational mind. It may seem like chaos, but it has a
purpose.
--jzavacki@epix.net John Zavacki The Wolff Group 900 James Avenue Scranton, PA 18510 Phone: 717-346-1218 Fax: 717-346-1388
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>