NET EFFECTS: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet Edited by Marylaine Block

About This Web Site

These pages, designed as a bonus for readers of Net Effects, feature links to sites recommended by the editor.

To make the fullest use of the resources provided here, you'll need a copy of the book, which is available from Information Today, Inc., September, 2003. ISBN: 1-57387-171-0. Price: $39.50. CLICK HERE if you'd like to order directly online.

About the Book

The Internet is a mixed blessing for libraries and librarians. On the one hand, it provides opportunities to add services and expand collections; on the other, it has increased user expectations and contributed to techno-stress. Today, the Net is challenging librarians' ability to select, threatening the survival of the book, necessitating continuous retraining, presenting new problems of access and preservation, putting new demands on budgets, and embroiling information professionals in legal controversies.

In Net Effects, librarian, journalist, and Internet guru Marylaine Block examines the issues and brings together a wealth of insights, war stories, and solutions. Almost 50 articles by dozens of imaginative librarians, expertly selected, annotated, and integrated by the editor, suggest practical and creative ways to deal with the range of Internet "side effects," regain control of the library, and avoid being blindsided by technology again.

Table of Contents, with Links To Recommended Sites

1. Regaining the Right to Select

2. Rescuing the Book

3. Training Our Users

4. Adapting To Our Users' Changing Expectations

5. Access Issues

6. The Techno-Economic Imperative

7. Continuous Retraining

8. Up to our Ears in Lawyers

9. Disappearing Data

10. How To Not Be Blind-sided Again

About Marylaine Block

From 1977-1999, Marylaine was head of public services at St. Ambrose University's library. Much to her astonishment, she acquired a reputation as an internet "guru" when she created Best Information on the Net in 1995 <http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/>, one of the first of the librarian-created indexes to the web.

As the American correspondent for a British online publication, she began writing a weekly internet column called My Word's Worth, now available at http://www.qconline.com/myword/archive.html. When an editor at Fox News Online came across the column, Fox invited her to write a weekly column called Observing US, which ran from April, 1997 through November, 2000.

In 1999, she quit her day job to become a full-time writer, speaker, and publisher of two e-zines for librarians, ExLibris <http://marylaine.com/exlibris/> and a site review service, Neat New Stuff I Found This Week on the Web <http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html>. She has written numerous articles for library publications like American Libraries, Library Journal, and Searcher, and general interest publications like Writer and Yahoo! Internet Life. She also edited The Quintessential Searcher: The Wit and Wisdom of Barbara Quint <http://books.infotoday.com/books/QuintSearcher.shtml>, published by Information Today in 2001.

Marylaine is a frequent speaker at librarians' conferences, where she has addressed topics like library marketing, mapping the information landscape, and how libraries can better serve men's interests; you can see her presentation outlines at http://marylaine.com/handouts.html. Links to all her work and her complete resume are available at http://marylaine.com/

Updated August 12,2003