With this issue, Choice celebrates its tenth year of reviewing the Web.  The very first Web issue, published in August 1997, contained reviews of 190 Web sites selected by the Choice editors for their potential relevance to academic libraries.  This issue also offered several special features, including Laura Cohen’s bibliographic essay “Librarians on the Internet: The Search for Quality Begins” and the first ever Choice list of forthcoming titles on the Internet.

Ten years later the Web is a different place, but a quick comparison of the 1997 and 2007 issues also displays a surprising amount of continuity.  For starters, publishers are still publishing new books about the Internet.  This year’s “Recent and Forthcoming Internet Publications, 2007-2008” feature lists 65 new titles, 64 of which are print books, although a number of these are also available in e-book format.  By comparison, the August 1997 list contained 105 new titles from a larger group of publishers.  Similarly, a quick scan of the 1997 issue reveals a number of still-familiar names.  A decade later, names like Yahoo!, Project Muse, Collection Manager, and Wilson Web are still with us, as are a surprising number of the resources reviewed in August 1997.  Of the first five sites reviewed in Web I, at least four are still available at their original URLs: Biography (www.biography.com), Encyberpedia (www.encyberpedia.com), FedWorld Information Network (www.fedworld.gov), and The Foundation Center (http://fdncenter.org).  Only one resource, Accurate Eye’s Reference Desk (www.ozemail.com.au), appears to have expired, although a favorable review from C&RL News is still available at http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues1997/
january2/readyreference.htm.  A similar fate seems to have befallen The Great American Web Site (www.uncle-sam.com), an apparently defunct site whose popularity, particularly with educators, was such that a Google search on its URL even now generates multiple pages worth of dead links, including one in Yahoo!

While Yahoo! was not reviewed in the August 1997 issue of Choice, an annotated entry appears in Laura Cohen’s essay under the heading “Subject Directories.”  Her entry notes that “there are many high quality resources to be found at Yahoo!, but it is important to be aware that they are mixed in with those of questionable value.  Therefore each site should be carefully screened.”  Words of wisdom not just for 1997, but also for today?

Among the missing entries in 1997, perhaps the most noticeable is Google, but there are others, including some of today’s hottest Internet sites, YouTube, Facebook, and Second Life, and any mention whatsoever of Web 2.0.  In addition, a host of products and resources that are now standard Web resources, Bowker’s Books in Print for example, had not yet made the transition to the Web.

A decade later, much has changed, but traces of the past remain.  That was 1997, this is now, and none of us can really be sure what lies ahead.  But here at Choice our basic goal remains unchanged.  Simply stated, it is to continue carrying out our basic mission, reviewing academic books and resources, to the very best of our ability.  So far, it seems to be working for us.  Here’s hoping it works for you too, dear reader.—IER