Hear! Hear!  What good is the information highway, if it is
          used as a trash dump?  Your personal experiences exemplify
          clearly and well the problem about which I wrote yesterday.
          Thank you.
 
          Many folks, like BBB, live and work in small rural
          communities with either no local libraries, or small
          libraries.  These libraries do well to find classic novels
          and local newspapers, let alone grey literature, regional
          publications, dissertations and so on.  Their resources are
          limited by the amount of money local folks want to spend on
          a library.  In some places it isn't much.
 
          Small isn't the only problem.  Apparently, the Department of
          Energy (DOE; where I work, and which coincidentially funds
          some research at Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley) produces
          unclassified literature that some folks at Berkeley
          sometimes find difficult to locate. (Scientists at Berkeley
          have complained to me about it.)  For them, often a simple
          Internet e-mail to the right person at DOE HQ often gets the
          desired document.  Did the Berkeley inter-library loan
          system fail them?  Was the requestor to lazy to ask the
          library?  Did the requestor ask them the right question?
          Was the request lacking key words?  Who knows?  Who cares?
 
          The problem of having easy access to information is greater
          outside large industrialized countries, such as the U.S.
          Based on personal travel experiences (which are rather
          extensive) many less industrialized locations don't have
          libraries.  Far more locations have at least someone with
          Internet access and some type of computerized communication
          systems.
 
          IMHO, one of the greatest values of the Internet is its
          capabilities to be used as an International Information
          Highway.  When we use it more like an Information Eastshore
          Freeway in Berkeley, its potential benefits are severely
          limited.
 
          With appropriate disclaimers.
 
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