Resource Search and Discovery

Electronic technology has begun to change what information is available and how that information is located and used. There are already a large number of electronic projects in the humanities (see Getty, 1994). These changes are first related to remote access: Instead of traveling to the sources of information, scholars use technology to bring information to them. One important consequence of remote access is the broadening of access to students and other novices who would not or could not bear the time and financial costs to travel to libraries, museums, and research institutes, and who might not know what to look for once they arrived. Secondly, electronic technology brings new genres of information that provide new challenges for search and discovery (e.g., multimedia, interactive ephemera, etc.). The traditional problems humanists have found in documenting and locating non-textual materials are exacerbated by electronic technology. Thirdly, change is due to electronic tools and the strategies made possible by electronic representations. The emphasis here is on tools and strategies for resource search and discovery, although I will argue that we will continue to see closer integration with tools and strategies for creating, using, and communicating information. This implies that creators who choose to become more closely involved with consumers must take more responsibility for documenting and directly placing their work.