Resources for research extend far beyond the traditional holdings of libraries, and even beyond informational World Wide Web sites, electronic journals and various internet databases. Newsgroups, electronic mailing lists, chat rooms and instant messaging have joined email as tools for collaborative research and for two way interactive research. The internet's rapid two-way communication has facilitated direct communication with experts in ways not dreamed of before the computer became part of information retrieval.
Discussion groups are an important example of the communication capabilities of the internet.
Good discussion groups attract the membership of experts and specialists in their fields. They read the groups messages to keep up with what is being said by other members, making valuable comments and offering useful advice to others. I am a reference librarian at Temple University's Paley Library in Philadelphia. Several years ago I began posting messages to online discussion groups and selectively indexing the New York Times' technology related articles for an online publication. I started adding introductory comments to the articles that I indexed, summarized small selections of the articles' text and sent these brief news items to discussion groups.