Search Pros May Need to Search for a New Line of Work

It’s 9 a.m. You’re on a deadline and need to find out how many pet groomers do business in Los Angeles. So you log on to the Internet and begin searching for information you know exists on the Web.

Two hours later, you’re tangled in Web hyperlinks, unable to find the information. Who you gonna call?

The searchers.

These information specialists possess the know-how to maneuver through the Web maze, deftly dodging hyperlink dead-ends and successfully retrieving information, quickly and efficiently.

Searchers have been around as long as books, reports, articles, periodicals and other papers have been archived. Many have master’s degrees in library science and work at public libraries, educational institutions and corporations, while some go it alone as independents.

And the Internet is now turning this venerable profession upside down. On the one hand, it’s making far more information readily available, and the savvy searcher can thus do far more in far less time for far less money. On the other hand, it’s vastly expanding the range of what anyone with a Net connection--or access to a public library--can do for themselves.

Search professionals are split on what this means for their future.

“I see it as a real opportunity,” said Lysbeth Chuck, a senior partner in CQ&A;, a consulting firm that helps companies handle information flow and design information policies.

She says the chaotic nature of the Web means business and individuals quickly get frustrated with the time and effort they have to spend to do research themselves. “The key is how fast we can educate people about the value of information,” she said.

Others are much less optimistic. “I don’t think this business of being an information broker or independent researcher is any longer financially viable,” said Paula Berinstein, whose Berinstein Research in Woodland Hills specializes in entertainment industry needs.

She’s moving away from full-time research in favor of writing about it and recently published “Finding Images Online” (Pemberton Press, 1996, https://www.onlineinc.com/pempress).

The art and science of retrieving information really began to change about 25 years ago with the launch of Lexis-Nexis, a commercial online database of legal information and news that could be accessed by dialing up a particular computer system.

Other online databases began to spring up, some of them accessible through fledgling online services such as CompuServe. But like Lexis-Nexis--which currently offers an archive of 1 billion documents and adds 9.5 million each week, charging a basic commercial subscription fee of $125 per month plus individual search fees--they were often expensive enough to be out of the reach of many potential customers.

In the early 1980s, the pre-Web Internet began to add another dimension to searching.

“We used the Internet before anyone knew there was an Internet,” said Barbara Quint, an independent information specialist based in Santa Monica who is also editor of Searcher magazine (https://www.infotoday.com).

Initially, she said, the Internet’s main value was in making it easier to contact experts at universities and making university archives more accessible.

And then came the Web. It allowed Internet users to jump from page to page and directly link to other areas by clicking on highlighted text. When the first graphical browser, Mosaic, made waves in 1993, information specialists were among the first to surf them.

The Web has enabled many information specialists to push aside or limit use of the expensive online database services. And even when they continue to use the same resources, accessing them through the Web can be much more convenient.

At the same time, though, the simplicity of the Web, its reams of free information and the increasingly sophisticated Web search engines are opening up the field to do-it-yourself searching.

Still, while anyone with a modem and an Internet connection can access information, it’s easy to get lost amid the millions of Web pages. Much of the most valuable and best-organized information still resides in commercial databases.

And since so much of the Web is peppered with entertainment, advertisements and publicity, it’s easy for an online user to be confused by the quality of information, Chuck said.

She cited the example of a business executive who searched the Web for the top 10 mutual funds to use in a presentation. He hit Fidelity’s Web site and downloaded the top 10 Fidelity funds, believing they were the top 10 mutual funds.

The perception that anyone can obtain accurate information on the Web is a dangerous notion for companies or individuals whose business or personal lives depend on an information search, Quint said.

“Librarians know what they’re doing. They know how to ferret out information,” she said.

Still, many independent searchers are finding it necessary to branch out or abandon the business.

Larry Krumenaker of Hillsdale, N.J., moved out of full-time information brokering and into information publishing.

“I got much more interested in where the information is being stored,” he said. “I wanted to ferret out those places on the Web.” Krumenaker started Hermograph Press (https://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hermograph) and publishes on paper the Net.Journal Directory, a guidebook of online archives.

Quint, though, remains optimistic: “Once people who need good information realize the poor quality of information they’re getting versus the quality of information they could get,” she said, “the information professional will rise again.”

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Freelance writer Troy Corley can be reached via e-mail at troycorley@aol.com