DIRECTING THE
PURSUIT OF ALTERNATE
INFORMATION ON THE WEB
The rapid expansion of the Internet and The World Wide Web has provided a vast landscape of possibilities for anyone to publish anything and get a readership. The Internet itself started out as a simple transfer of documents through the medium of two or more communicating computers. As the World Wide Web expands the possibility of publishing even further, more and more published material is created for more and more audiences. The wide appeal and growth of online magazines is an indication of how intuitive the medium of the Web has become to users. The use of the Web as a medium for publishing magazines has also provided many users with the motivation to begin their own ventures into the Web of publishing. The electronic counterpart to zines, the e-zine, has continued their role of creating fringe communities on the Web.
The pursuit of zines and gray literature both as alternative sources of gathering and sharing information is greatly expanded on the World Wide Web. The Web itself can be called a large network of gray literature. (Pace, p.44) The decentralized nature of the Web makes finding communities and writings of shared interest very difficult. Searches for such information can lead to overwhelming amounts of URLs or just a small handful of documents.
E-zines attempt
to solve the seemingly endless fishing expedition for pertinent gray
literature for the user. By creating communities of shared interest,
e-zines bring a collective of information for any user who is interested
in their particular subject. The cooperation between user and website
designer on e-zines is heavily promoted by email links directly to site
editors, bulletin board discussion forums, and the seamless line between
website writer and literary contributions from users. (Smith, p.94)
From an e-zine a user can springboard to many other related sites and
obtain more and more information, thus expanding the traditional definitions
of gray literature. E-zines make gray literature on the web, not only
widely available, but also gives it a characteristic of contributing
culture by the extremely creative way in which it is portrayed. Designers
of e-zines constantly push the expectations and possibilities of the
Web. Due to the inherent small communities from which they start e-zines
can fail and succeed in new techniques where many larger magazines could
not afford the risk. (Gill, p.7) E-zines give color to the world of
gray literature.
Created by: Michael
Ruzicka
Last Update: May 2, 2003
