esearchers looking for material on the Net waste a great deal of time sifting the good from the bad, for the Net contains a great deal of information, but much less knowledge; a great deal of noise, but little signal. This becomes especially important if we note a problem raised by Thomas Mann (no, not him; this is Thomas Mann the General Reference Librarian at the US Library of Congress), something he calls the 'principle of least effort'. Most researchers tend to latch on to the most easily available sources, even if they are of low quality. Good research, however, is like any good craft. Competent carpenters don't use termite-infested wood, and competent researchers will have patience and take time to acquire decent material - but the temptation is there, and under the pressures of research exercises and assessments, it may be difficult to withstand. In this light, the near instant accessibility of on-line material - ostensibly one of Internet's great strengths - suddenly becomes a weakness.

Another factor in favour of traditional research is that the Internet, as it stands, must be considered an uncitable source (an argument I have developed elsewhere).* Certainly there are guides for technically sourcing information found there - see Mel Page's work at East Tennesee State University, for example gopher://h-net.msu.edu/00/lists/H-Africa/internet-cit) [this link not working as of Jan 17th 1996] - but there are important constraints.

Technically, Net information is unstable information. In general, there is a single electronic copy of the document, often with no paper equivalent. That single copy can be updated, changed and altered as often as the author (or any dedicated hacker) wishes to do so. Its electronic address may also change. Thus, anyone accessing such a document may either not find it where it was supposed to be, or find that it has changed from its original. When was the last time that happened to a book? The only way such information could be considered stable and academically useful is if multiple copies exist, preferably in unalterable CD-ROM format.

Apart from the technical restraints of citing on-line material, there are social consequences to digitising information. If we are going to make a dedicated move from paper documents to electronic ones, and if, at some later date, all that exists are electronic documents, how will we ever be able to trust that any event actually happened? The simple truth is that it will not be possible. History itself can be rewritten. Multiple copies, multiple locations, and unalterable formats currently prevent this, and must continue to do so.

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