Re: more on gnutella

[Eric Lease Morgan <eric_morgan@ncsu.edu>]

Daniel Chudnov (daniel.chudnov@yale.edu) wrote:

> One thing is for certain.  This thing needs librarians.  But it isn't at
> all obvious how (though we may interpret Lars' comments in some obvious
> ways) to help.  But there is work for us to do...  take a look if you
> haven't yet.

About eight or nine years ago a co-worker said to me, "Try this. Create a
folder, put a document in that folder, run this thing called a 'gopher
server', and finally, run this thing called a 'gopher client.'" Well, I did
that and I thought, "So what." Boy, was I blind.

I'm not so sure people "need" librarians here, but the precision/recall
ratio of gnutella searches would definitely be improved if queries were
applied to more than just file names and/or the protocol supported more
structured queries. Put another way, gnutella *might* just be another way to
increase information overload, but I might be blind, again.

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/