Stephen P. Gant School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Problem Statement. Telephone and cable television providers are competing to bring Internet access to a much larger segment of the American population than the 15-30 million current users. The Web makes it possible for everyone from elementary school children to multinational corporations to publish information about themselves and the products or services they provide. Furthermore, new material is being published so quickly that the contents of the Web are growing at an exponential rate. Unfortunately, this huge amount of information is not organized in such a way that people can easily find relevant information.
Information filters are programs that act as current awareness services, or clipping services.
People can give profiles of their interests to the filter and it will report to them periodically with lists of items that match their interests. This initiative is in response to the widespread dissatisfaction with the length of time it takes to review and publish articles in print journals. In the age of the Web, waiting two years to publish one's results generally means publishing too late to have an impact. The results are often obsolete, or have been developed by someone else and put to use in operational systems. ACM's electronic publishing guidelines call for accepted articles to be immediately available through the Association's database.