rhorn@infinet.UUCP (Rob Horn) (12/29/87)
The conjectural hypertext system of Library of Congress would provide automated facilities that correspond to skills that I was taught under the description ``Learning to use the Library''. I can see many advantages to having nice fast linkages that correspond to the present practice of footnotes and references. Some of the better constructed legal references, like Tribe's _American Constitutional Law_, provide a good paper analogue. But I worry that this might become counter-productive. One of the greatest advantages to the manual process of following linkages is that you find and follow linkages that were not created by the author. The skills included in ``Using the Library'' include skills in finding and creating your own links. I personally find these to be just as important as the links that the author included, especially since I can create links that are forward in time and that involve information available to neither of the original authors. These skills are crucial to success in creative fields. I remember MIT having to establish remedial courses to teach these skills to students from poorer school districts. The danger in these hypertext systems would be the atrophy and failure to teach the techniques needed to create your own linkages. The temptation would be very strong to just let the original authors and the computer handle all that. This problem is not likely to arise too quickly. The easiest implementations would just correspond to automation and enhancement of the present practice of footnotes and references. These would probably remain sufficiently inadequate (:-) to encourage the continued teaching of the manual skills. Rob Horn
wscott@faline.bellcore.com (W. Scott Meeks) (01/05/88)
Re: your concerns about stagnation when replacing today's methods of finding crossreferences. I agree that this is something to watch out for, but most hypertext systems I've seen have facilities to allow user's to add their own links. In particular, the Intermedia system at Brown is designed with the idea that students using the system will not only follow links other people have added to the material, but will actively add their own links when they see connections in the documents being studied. Scott Meeks