The Internet and Consumer Choice

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Consumer.Decisions.pdf
Online Americans use different search and
purchase strategies for different goods
􀂙 The internet helps music buyers connect with artists and learn
more about music, but it doesn’t strongly influence what or
how they buy
􀂙 The internet is an influential source of information and options
for those purchasing feature-rich items such as cell phones
􀂙 The internet is an efficiency-enhancer in [...]

Publius

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/4303
Publius brings together a distinguished collection of Internet observers, scholars, innovators, entrepreneurs, activists, technologists, and still other experts to write short essays, foster a public dialogue, and create a durable record of how the rules of cyberspace are being formed — with a view to affecting their future incarnations.
The first essays [...]

Capturing the WWW

http://www.nla.gov.au/pressrel/CapturingtheWWW_aworld-wideconcernmed.rel.html
The world is losing irreplaceable information about human history, commerce, political and social movements, and creative life as information disappears from the Internet.
This crucial issue will be the focus of a meeting at the National Library of Australia this week involving representatives of more than 30 leading libraries, archives, cultural heritage institutions and private organisations [...]

Interconnectons: IMLS National Study on Use of Libraries, Museums & Internet

http://interconnectionsreport.org/
February 2008
Dr. José-Marie Griffiths, Dean and Professor
Donald W. King, Distinguished Research Professor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CONCLUSION 1. Libraries and museums evoke consistent, extraordinary
public trust among diverse adult users. …………………………………………………. 3
CONCLUSION 2. An explosion of available information inspires the search
for more information. …………………………………………………………………………….. 8
CONCLUSION 3. The public benefits significantly from the presence of
museums and [...]

The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics

http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/SOIS/cipr/ijire/index.html 
The International Journal of Internet Research Ethics (IJIRE) is a “peer-reviewed online journal, dedicated specifically to cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research on Internet Research Ethics“. The first issue of the IJIRE appeared in January, 2008. No subscription is required. PDF versions of articles can be downloaded. The IJIRE is published at the [...]

Larry Lessig’s book “The Future of Ideas”

http://thefutureofideas.s3.amazonaws.com/lessig_FOI.pdf 
Larry Lessig’s book “The Future of Ideas” is now free to download under Creative Commons attribution-non-commercial license. Published in 2001 by Random House, the book addresses IP and the impact on it of the internet. Lessig’s other books are also available free under a Creative Commons license: Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and [...]

UK search engine of human-vetted OA content

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=130085 
Universities’ alternative to Google launched, a press release from the University of Manchester, January 16, 2008.  Excerpt:
An internet search engine rivalling the multimillion pound Google is to be launched at the end of January by The University of Manchester’s national data centre Mimas.
The free service will add thousands of documents to [...]

Scholarship in the Digital Age

Information, Infrastructure and the Internet a book by Christine Borgman introducing these topics in a very readable way.
On display in the Baillieu branch library at present, and the call number is 001.2 Borg

Defining quality in web search results

 http://www.wellesley.edu/CS/pmetaxas/Metaxas-webSearchQuality.pdf
by Panagiotis Metaxas and Lilia Ivanova
Recently accepted as a full paper at the WEBIST 2008 Conference, May, 2008.
From the abstract:
Web search results enjoy an increasingly greater importance in our daily lives. But what can be said about their quality, especially when querying a controversial issue? The traditional information retrieval metrics of
precision [...]

In Search of Solutions: Using the Internet, Libraries and Government to Find Help

Information searches that solve problems
How people use the internet, libraries, and
government agencies when they need help
DECEMBER 30, 2007 Leigh Estabrook, Professor Emerita, University of Illinois-
Urbana-Champaign
Evans Witt, CEO, PSRAI
Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project
This report emerges from a national survey that looks at how people use a variety of
information sources to help [...]