The Internet in 2000:
Opportunities and Disadvantages to Scholarly Work

Reply 01

re the greatest disadvantage:
"All my work is in one of several computers, now. [...] The problem seems to be that once you are using computers, you need your own, preferably just the one.
For example, if I log on to email at work, it's not automatically there at home. I have to remember to send each piece that I may want back to myself just before I log off. Security [and the associated passwords] is another problem. [...] To be honest, I'm lost in the three machines I must now use. I use the home one for the net and email, the work shared one for email only (to avoid friction with sharers I don't really sit here and work, or even look up things on the web much), and my own office dinosaur for typing only. I'm constantly wondering where I've got one file or another hidden. [...].
[...] Another visitor here, writes with a pen, on paper, and boasts that she has written four books this way, and for the first time I wonder if I might try to do the same. The way I'm organized at present doesn't work. I feel that unless conditions for computer use are optimal, as they were for me about 2 years ago, they become farcical. The controls have become stifling; and the whole experience for me is now not a friendly one [...] If you live as a hermit, you can work away at home with a setup dating from whenever, no problems. But if, like me, you move from office to office, it's a minefield. These are the complaints of someone who doesn't know much about computers, but I don't think I should have to know much more than how to do my work on one. That, I thought, was the whole point. [...]

Reply 02

"My immediate responses are:
re the greatest opportunity:
Serves as an announcement vehicle - provided the material in question is printed (paper and ink) beforehand. The concensus [sic! - tmc] (and practice) among colleagues I noticed is that one has to acquire the hard-copy if one wishes to pay attention to the work. If the subject is a durable one.
re the greatest disadvantage:
Especially the e-zine format is exceedingly perishable. Here today, gone tomorrow. Literally and figuratively."

Reply 03

"Off the top of my head: no disadvantage at all. Which doesn't mean I don't look forward to new and better facilities, connections etc. Perhaps this uncritical sounding attitude has to do with the fact that I am in the borderlands even though [name of a country] is close to the [name of another country] but as more and more text becomes available over the net the better for me. Less travel, less expense to get to texts. "

Reply 04

"A quick response.
re the greatest opportunity:
* exposure to a wide range of material which in the pre-web days would have taken many more human-days to acquire.
* of particular relevance to countries where our libraries do not have the resources to acquire quickly material of relevance to research and writing, the net has been a boon.
* the discussion groups, such as [name of a resource] have been very helpful in making available latest views/interpretations on topics of interest which might be related to one's field of research but would not have had the time or energy to source.
re the greatest disadvantage:
* the flip side of [...] the discussion groups, is the extra time required to sift through material, only remotely connected to one's on current work. While much is of interest, the pressures of academic life, meeting multiple deadlines, leaves the working academic with little leisure time - for the broadening of the mind, albeit essential."

Reply 05

"The greatest opportunity is access to information.
The greatest disadvantage is access to information in the sense that it's easy for my [name of a university] humanities students to get a short and sweet picture of a subject while spending a few seconds on the Net. True, the tools are there for sophisticated research, but as often as not these days ungdergraduates' papers are restatements or, often, simply quotations from the Net sometimes accompanied by appendices of net printouts. Papers from low to middle quality students are homogeneous and often indistinguishable from one another. This makes a teacher's heart sad if s/he is trying to teach methods of independent encounters and critical analysis of texts.
The instructor also is tempted to visit the easy room from time to time, thereby assuring unanimity of information and mediocrity of thinking. But then, maybe humanities these days deserve such a fate...."

Reply 06

"At the present time, e-mail is both the boon and the bane of my life.
I spend hours a day going through and answering the significant messages that never seem to end. If I am too busy to get that job done, in a day or two I can have a hundred or so unattended messages that may take a whole weekend to resolve. Yet I cannot avoid the task, as there are sometimes critically important messages that contribute substantially to [my department's] income in one way or another. For instance, what if I had ingored [surname]'s first inquiry concerning [name of a major international research project] back in 1997?
The WWW has yet to impact my scholarly/professional activities very much, apart from the traffic to my own site and the inquiries concerning [name of a department] datasets that it generates. Just too much trash out there that chokes up the system."

Reply 07

re the greatest opportunity
"Completely new ways of communicating, sharing and presenting information; the opportunity to think beyond well-established constraints into a promised land where you are limited only by your imagination. The opportunity to compete as a small omnivorous fish in a big pond.
re the greatest disadvantage
Interaction overload, information overload, technological evolution overload, conceptualisation overload, the sheer volume of scarce minutes required to implement neat Internet things when you are trying to be more than a programmer, and the need to do it yesterday because so many others, with many more resources and/or narrower focus (less imaginitive or more targetted), are snapping at your heels or riding roughshod over the top of you. The realisation you are a small fish in a big pond full of focussed carnivores."

Reply 08

re the greatest opportunity
"- newsgroups (i.e. quick and informal contact to all kind of people)
- great variety of information
- easy possibility for publishing
re the greatest disadvantage
- often takes too long to get the information one is really looking for
- too great a variety of not very well classified information
- frequently badly (i.e. too complex) arranged for good usage, incl. layout that uses up too much space and time to load.
- unnecessary advertisments, that use up time and energy
= sometimes the outcome is very helpful, but generally it feels like a waste of time and nerves..."

Reply 09

re the greatest opportunity
1. The FIRST greatest opportunity: The Internet has greatly facilitated my ability to keep up with the latest work and thinking in my field and beyond.
With little effort (just by checking my e-mail, and having subscribed to several e-mail discussion groups), I have been able to:
-- Find out about conferences and papers I would otherwise not have known about. (I have requested papers from people via conference announcements on [name of a mailing list] and other lists, which have proven to be very helpful).
-- Read or receive answers to questions from a whole range of people (not just particular specialists), and thus be exposed to ideas and perspectives I might not otherwise have encountered. (I can't quantify how this has affected my work, but I believe it has.)
-- Been able to expose myself to work in other fields (which I probably otherwise would not have gone to the trouble of doing), and so am getting a sense of trends that might possibly be applied to my own work. For example, I subscribe to [name of a mailing list], which sends out book reviews generated from all of [name of a resource]'s e-mail discussion lists. Also, [e-journal] postings about new web sites related to Asia have been wonderful--I have, of course, checked out websites related to my field, but have also checked out sites that are totally unrelated, simply because they looked interesting from the description, and were accessible with so little effort. Again, I can't quantify the effect to my work of all this, but I think it is proving useful both in forming a sense of what to look for--what questions to ask--when doing research, and a sense of how my work might be presented in order to be intelligible to a larger audience.
I have found that, in the last couple of years, so many more people (and different kinds of people) are now on the net--that using e-mail discussion lists as a resource in the above ways has become more fruitful than in the past.
Regarding accessing internet-related resources in a university library, or the WWW from my home, I find that these have become much richer in the past couple of years too, making searching for articles or any other kind of information much, much easier than before. A few months ago, I was compelled, within a fairly short time frame, to write a scholarly article in a subject I knew little about. With the aid of the WWW and e-mail, I was able to get in touch with experts in the field, who were very helpful, and was able to access websites which gave me an overview of current issues in the field, thus allowing me to write what turned out to be a fairly presentable essay. I don't believe this would have been possible with out the internet.
2. The SECOND greatest opportunity: As you know, I have been writing about [name of a country] for [name of a mailing list]. My advisor at [name of a university] has told me that the main advantage of writing the [title of an online series] to me has been that now people in the field of Asian studies know who I am. However, in my opinion, the greatest advantage has been that, knowing I have an audience has given me the motivation to write [name of an online column], and the task of writing regularly has helped improve my writing speed (which was woefully slow in the past).
re the greatest disadvantage
Just as the internet has the power to inform, it also has the power to MISinform. I greatly fear that, in a couple of my postings on [area of specialization], I have given out incorrect information, through having misunderstood how something works. This is the greatest disadvantage of the internet--it is so easy to misinform people."

Reply 10

re the greatest opportunity
"There is a great deal of very good information accessible, and students have the ability to find out things about other cultures and histories with very little effort. It can be a marveous reference and support infrastructure.
re the greatest disadvantage
There is a great deal of very bad information available, and the integration of computer software has made plagiarism exceedingly easy. Teaching students to distinguish the quality of information and to respect the integrity and source of information are difficult."

Reply 11

re the greatest opportunity
"- continually increasing access to images from museums and other collections around the world
- potential for new research tools (a la [name of an innovative software])
- greater interdisciplinary opportunities
- increased opportunities for collaborative efforts with individuals around the world
- feedback from people I would not otherwise come into contact with
- increased communication with colleagues
- rapid and convenient access to data and resources
- greater awareness of other resources and research underway
re the greatest disadvantage
- unnecessary communication
- expense
- difficulty explaining research efforts to people
- increased expectation levels for production and quality output (disadvantage??? ...maybe just that higher quality is expected in less time?)
- less time to reflect on and process information."

Reply 12

re the greatest opportunity
"Is the facility of the internet to make my and others' work more broadly known within a shorter period of time and much less expense than by non-internet means. Correlated with this advantage is the more rapid feedback time from and contacting efficiency with colleagues and others.
re the greatest disadvantage
Possible copyright infractions, trash mail."
[Additional comments offered by the respondent on 4 Jun 2000, and thus not analysed in this paper:
"Advantages:
[...] I do not find that deleting takes as much time as reading email; therefore, the volume of mail on listservs is easily dealt with. Having the internet [...] is an incredible boon for keeping up with one's disciplines and colleagues, and finding new scholarly angles and colleagues.
Disadvantages:
I have occasionally been on too many listservs, and had to just unsub because they were causing me to spend too much time at the PC. My problem with email volume is storage of the information I wish to keep: eventually it has to go on backup disks. I tried backup tape, but the information stored on them just disappeared, on its own---a wasteful expense. Now I store on a jaz disk."

Reply 13

re the greatest opportunity
"The greatest opportunity is contact with other people, but this has to do more with email than with the Internet as a whole. In the Web, the resources I find most useful are mainly those with a bibliographic nature: library catalogues, e-texts, and some websites. It also seems that setting up my own website has helped to make my work better known, which of course has positive aspects.
re the greatest disadvantage
The greatest disadvantage is that the info is simply too much. I spend at least the same amount of time in deleting unnecessary (for me) information from mailing lists such as the [names of two mailing lists] as for actually reading what interests me. The problem is that both resources have not changed in scope since they were created, but their volume has increased. (Perhaps this is not statistically true, but this impression is due to my increased disturb -- after the initial enthusiasm -- for electronic materials unrelated to my interests). I would very much like to see them subdivided into several smaller lists, so that I can subscribe to those I want. This is in fact what I would like to get from the Internet through resources like [name of an e-journal]: information on and access to materials that are exactly tailored to my interests."

Reply 14

re the greatest opportunity
"The greatest opportunity that the internet has presented my scholarly work has been to expand the potential base of sources. In fact it has completely changed the type of research I am doing. My work was as a historian, but now I feel it is closer to political science (of course informed with an historian's sensibility). I find the ability to receive, scource material to be greatly expanded. An example, I was attending a lecture at [name of a university] during the (Northern Hemisphere's) autumn semester, & two substantial Indian scholars were presenting a lecture based on their findings from scource material largely gather[ed] in the early '90's. I was able to chirp in with a newspaper article of two days previous which greatly altered and even challenged their findings. [...].
re the greatest disadvantage
The greatest disadvantage to the internet has been its commercialization which has even affected the scholar. A case in point has been AltaVista, one of the best search engines of only a few years ago. Now, it is a 'portal' owned by a very commercially oriented firm which tracks the preferences of those who use it to 'shoot personalized' advertisement at them."

Reply 15

re the greatest opportunity
"To be in communication with scholars having the same interest of research and to be informed about what is happening all over the world about [an area of expertise].
re the greatest disadvantage
[...] I feel that some people tend to bring politics into subjects, and just give their opinion. Personally, I am not interested in that, but anyway I have the choice: so I don't read them. But, perhaps because of the frequency of that kind of message, it is possible that some people delete the e-mail judging only by the object of the title (as I do, because I do not have time to read everything, I also receive other e-mail and lists)."

Reply 16

re the greatest opportunity
"The greater ease of communicating with colleagues. Email has made it so much easier to initially contact someone and to maintain connections. Also, receiving an electronic newsletter like [name of a resource] is a great way to share ideas with colleagues, get help, and keep abreast of issues.
re the greatest disadvantage
It eats up time. I spend at least an hour a day dealing with email. I'm not sure if I ever spent that much time a day, say, on the phone or writing letters. There's a new pressure of things (email) waiting/needing to be done.
Also, the internet creates a new anxiety for me. Nevermind that I already have enough research materials gathered from archives, etc. that I worry I'll never get too. The internet makes me feel that there are all these new sites of information that I may not know about, don't know how to use or access, don't have to the time to play around with, etc."

1. Enhanced access to information
   9 comments
   • Quality
     • access to substantial full text information (98 study-reply no.04)
     • ability to access various libraries to check on citations (98-07)
     • existence of trusted [esp. refereed] sources of information (98-10)
     • existence of moderated mailing lists (98-10)
   • Ease
     • access into any information, any time, any place, any how (98-04)
   • Variety/Richness
     • access to information not previously accessible (98-02)
     • the Net offers a range of resources never before available (98-05)
     • accessing a huge variety of information, especially from 'faraway' places (98-08)
     • cascading layers of knowledge being displayable and accessible in multi-tiered form (98-06)

2. Enhanced command of one's field of work
   2 comments
   • New ideas
     • a valuable source of ideas (98-11)
     • positive surprise factor practically every day (98-06)

3. Enhanced communication between scholars
   11 comments
   • Forming contacts/networking
     • speed and ease of communication (98-03)
     • fast and free contact with other scholars (98-07)
     • the opportunity to form networks of like-minded individuals (98-08)
     • potential for networking with like-minded scholars (98-10)
     • seamless public outreach (98-06)
   • Collaboration/sharing information
     • enhanced scholarly communication (98-09)
     • a venue for the exchange of ideas (98-11)
     • pooling resources to amplify research foundations (98-01)
     • shared information can be made to be shared by an anonymous "all" (98-06)
   • Getting help and feedback
     • transportation and transmission of scholarly expertise in real time (98-06)
     • instant communication with people world-wide (98-10)

4. Enhanced scope for publication of information
   3 comments
   • E-Publishing opportunities
     • vanity-free anonymous publishing (98-06)
     • potential for wide distribution of information (98-10)
   • Promotion opportunities
     • the opportunity to spread my own message (98-08)
   • Enhanced financial/career/ opportunities
     3 comments
     • the Internet opens all sorts of possibilities - esp. at the global level (98-05)
     • creation of an ethos that can help with global issues (98-01)
     • flattening and deconstruction of professional hierarchies (98-06)

1. Scholars' skills and resources lag behind endless technological developments
   3 comments
   • Lagging skills
     • lack of skills in efficient maintenance of online information (98-10)
     • lack of skills in efficient research/retrieval of online information (98-10)
     • no inherent training for disriminating use of the Net (98-06)

2. Increased workload and stress
   11 comments
   • Information overload
     • access to too much information (98-02)
     • information overload (98-03)
     • information overload (98-08)
     • information overload (98-10)
   • Increased demands on scholar's time
     • one wastes a great deal of time trying to separate the wheat from the chaff (98-11)
     • delays inherent in the World Wide Wait and wait (98-04)
     • the wait time while accessing networked resources (98-10)
   • Increased pace of work
     • doing web work without assistants or released time (98-07)
     • ceasless shrinking of the time regarded as a tolerable interruption/delay in our work activities (98-04)
   • Additional psychological pressures
     • online presentation and publication do not count as 'approved' professional activity (98-06)
     • the crowding of cyberspace with professional educators telling us how to use
     • the web for teaching and learning (98-07)

3. Shortcomings in content and organization of online information
   16 comments
   • Volatility of online information
     • ephemeral nature of the Internet resources (98-10)
     • volatility of hypertext links and of the online resources (98-11)
   • Dumbing down of the networked information and it users
     • lack of creative modalities on the web (98-01)
     • dumbness of present relevancy indices (98-04)
   • Low sigal:noise ratio
     • vanity-driven pseudo-copyrighted junk (98-06)
     • the lack of quality control over document scanning (98-07)
     • academic sites that simply point to other people's materials (98-07)
     • too much of exploratory or inadequate material (98-11)
     • mailing lists are used mainly for socialization and not for exchange of factual information (98-10)
   • Insufficient organization of online materials
     • wealth of information on the Internet is badly organized (98-09)
     • lack of meta-structure to information on the Internet (98-10)
     • inadequate indexing/identification of materials resulting in productive hits
     • being only a fraction of total hits (98-04)
     • misuses of markup-languages while handling logical structure, presentation and content of a document (98-06)
     • no vetting process in most resources (98-11)
     • uncoordinated, redundant efforts (98-06)
     • diffusion and fragmentation of the web (98-01)

4. Other negative cultural/psychological processes
   8 comments
   • publisher greed and academic faculty indifference (98-05)
   • the growth of site-licensed proprietary data bases (98-07)
   • tendency of some institutions to restrict access to their resources to their own
   • faculty and students (98-07)
   • the prevailing tendency of web-builders to slap "copyright" on everything they do (98-07)
   • web development funding being diverted to web management and administration (98-07)
   • Institutions should be respected for what they produce for the public, not what they
   • make available to a restricted audience or for a price (98-07)
   • one should consider how much scholarly effort is diverted from scholarship to increasing the net's value for scholars (98-07)
   • one should consider the cost of ongoing maintenance of good online resource (98-10)

5. Inadequate handling of the CJK character set
   • continuing language [esp. vernaculars using non latin fonts] barriers (98-06)
   • problems with correct handling of CJK fonts (98-10)