But it is not immune to irony. And with more and more information being created on computers and exchanged on electronic networks, that task is becoming more difficult. As University Librarian, Sharrow is working actively with information technologists, librarians, scholars and university administrators from institutions across the country to develop processes for capturing and archiving the scholarly works that are being created, edited and exchanged electronically. She serves on the California State Library's Network Planning Group, the Network Resource Libraries Group and the Network Steering Group. The issue is how the information that lives in electronic limbo will be saved and archived for posterity.
Librarians love to help people find information.
When information is exchanged on the network, it is instantly available to those who want it. But what happens to that information after the initial ingestion. Even if it remains in electronic form, Sharrow says there is no mechanism in place for librarians to organize or index it. For instance, having incomplete works of poetry gives scholars an opportunity to analyze why a certain word was used or changed. Because works created on computer are subject to constant and instant revisions, future scholars may not have the luxury of studying works in progress.