The literature is now beginning to have regular evaluations of Internet service providers, but there has been little time devoted to a method for evaluating information providers. Navigating the Internet is tough enough without having unnecessary obstacles littering the roadway. For years librarians have been in the business of evaluating print data sources, but now that we are zipping around on the Internet, we need some new standards. We all knew how to give grades and fill out a reportcard for the books on our reference shelves, however the electronic tools present some special problems.
Librarians also have to pay special attention to the services that they create.
Libraries have a special responsibility to provide good service. Not only are we at the beginning of a new service era, but we offer huge masses of data that can be time consuming to use. Bad enough for our patrons if we make them do extra work, but why would we want them on-line for an unnecessarily long time. A new set of measurements are needed for service provided on the Internet. The following four characteristics form the beginnings of a way to measure what we put onto and get off of the Internet.