Do indexing and abstracting have a future?

Abstract

The World Wide Web presents information access problems orders of magnitude greater than any encountered before. These problems are identified and discussed. Although the intellectual indexing of the entire Web is impossible and, in any case, not worthwhile, selective indexing of high value resources (e.g., by means of specialized portals) is essential. The summarization of Web resources (i.e., abstracting) is also important although acceptable abstracts for some purposes may be automatically constructed. Despite advances in automatic procedures, there will probably be a need for indexing and abstracting skills for a very long time, although this work may take on somewhat different forms