Лако-красочные материалы — производство

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the last decade of the twentieth century was the growth of the Internet and access to it. Starting as a tool of the defense and academic establishments to facilitate scientific communication, the Internet has grown to encompass every segment of industry and society. There is an absolutely astonishing amount of information and data available on the Internet and the World Wide Web. That being noted, it must be pointed out that some of the information is not very good, some of it is expensive, and sometimes for some situations, all that is there is still not enough. In fact, more people still have access to a library than have access to the Internet, although most libraries themselves now have computers available for patrons to search the Internet.

The Internet is a remarkable tool for many users and can be extremely helpful, depending on the types of information desired. But it can also come up short in finding the specific information needed because, even with the exponential growth of recent years, not everyone, or every company, is on the Internet or World Wide Web yet. In many cases, even with a presence on the Web or Internet, not every company or association has posted, or even plans to post, all of the data and information at their disposal. However, most of the information sources mentioned above, and listed in the appendices, have some sort of presence on the Internet to permit easier accessing of information. In fact, part of the rapid Web growth is simply a result of companies placing pages and pages of data about their products online. Specific data, such as marketing studies, are harder to come by since most of that information is copyrighted and generally not readily available except through shielded and paying portals. Most magazines have not put full articles on the Internet simply because it devalues the magazine itself, thus losing a source of revenue from subscriptions and/or advertising sales.

Searching for information on any topic requires a great deal of refining and review­ing, and wading through the duplications, to find the few sites most appropriate for detailed reading. A keyword search using such entries as adhesive, sealant, encapsulant, cement, glue, or tape brings back anywhere from dozens to thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of site addresses, depending on the search engine used. Which is good, because that means that there is lots of adhesive information on the Web. But it is also bad from the standpoint that most search engines are indiscriminate. Depending on who has updated most recently, or who has paid for priority listing, certain sites show up early. Many ‘‘hits’’ are simply additional pages of the same site. And truthfully, rare is the researcher who will manually sift through even a few hundred websites. Most search engines use Boolean logic as a structure for querying, which does help reduce the number of responses that are reported, if used properly. A few minutes reading through the Help instructions at each search engine site helps focus and speed searches. Be aware that a study reported in 1999 that no single online search engine tracks more than 17% of all websites, and all search engines combined barely exceed 50% of all websites. It is likely that results from certain search engines have improved since that study was conducted, and results may be even better by using available metasearch engines which cover all, or a series of, search engines.

There are a number of adhesive sites that are very well done and very user-friendly. There are others that are nothing more than a sophisticated form of business card, and many that are somewhere in-between these extremes. One other point worth noting is that some sites are updated regularly, some not at all, and some disappear after a period of time. Most corporate, association, trade publication, and even government websites pro­vide for contacting the home office, usually by e-mail, but occasionally by phone, fax, or regular postal routing. Some websites, however, do not include all of this information, which can reduce the effectiveness of online searches.

There are only a few websites, at this point in time, which warrant a specific listing in Appendix H. Some sites are being established as gateways, portals, or shopping marts, but it remains to be seen if this practice will grow as the influence of the Internet continues to spread, and the number of companies with a presence online continues to grow.