New to the Internet

Four distinct types of knowledge and day-to-day information are involved in operating successfully as a decision-maker in a city:
personal knowledge, e.g., likes and dislikes, rivals for power, etc.; knowledge of the immediate situation in a city, e.g., pressures from residents for action, major power blocs, most influential people, what is breaking down; ideology, e.g., what values should be achieved, who should be helped, who is considered "the enemy"; scientific and technical knowledge, e.g., how a bridge can be engineered to stand the load, what the requirements of specific financing tools are, etc. The knowledge available on the Internet does not cover all four types equally, and cannot address important aspects of decision-making, such as charisma and personal following, much or at all. Here is a "map" of what the Internet can provide most effectively, and some of its main limitations:
Type of Knowledge	Internet Offers	Limitations
Personal	Electronic mail contact with colleagues in other cities; news of what colleagues and rivals are doing.	Electronic contact is not the same as daily personal contact; suppliers of news may be biased or providingincorrect information.
Situational	Media reports; indicators of positive and negative trends; public opinion polling results.	Internet may transmit biased or incomplete information on local scene; most content is still supplied by American sources and emphasizes this vantage point.
Ideological	Political publications and news; analysis of partisan positions; intelligence about political positioning; philosophical publications and commentary.	Ideology tends to be deeply rooted in personal experiences and social situation; it usually changes only slowly or through significant personal crisis.
Scientific and technical	Wide access to scientific findings, statistics, innovative products and services. The improvements in knowledge flows arising from the Internet.	Much information supplied is a "commercial" to buy full publications, but very large amounts of data are in the public domain.
The purpose of this map is to help you use the Internet more effectively, and to help establish reasonable expectations about what it can and cannot do. Certain promoters of this new medium give the impression that it is a "magic bullet" that can solve many problems quickly and easily. In fact, like most human inventions, it both solves and creates problems. Among the problems created is "information overload". This can help cause decision-makers to rely on purely personal and ideological choices, just to cope with their situation of feeling overwhelmed.

Click here to view an Internet Orientation Presentation. This presentation is in an Adobe Acrobat file. To view the presentation you must download an Adobe reader. The reader is provided free of charge at the following website address:

http://www.adobe.com/supportservice/custsupport/LIBRARY/acrwin.htm

You may also wish to visit the following sites for useful tips on how to use the Internet effectively .

The Health Care Libraries Unit (HCLU) Internet Training kit
http://wwwlib.jr2.ox.ac.uk/training/overview1.html

An Introduction to the Internet , by Bill Bradley:
http://www.philb.com/dpa2.htm

Northern Webs’ Beginners’ Central :
http://www.northernwebs.com/bc/index.html

Making the Internet Connection Count - Effective Use of the Internet in Seven Steps (available in English and French):
http://www.info.usaid.gov/regions/afr/leland/manual.htm

Ithaca College Library’s Guide to the World Wide Web:
http://www.ithaca.edu/library/Training/ICYouSee.html

For tips on how to evaluate the quality of research material obtained from the Internet , please consult the following document:

Finding quality on the Net, Hope N. Tillman, Director of Libraries, Babson College, Massachusetts, USA.
http://www.tiac.net/users/hope/findqual.html

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