The pitfall of search is that the search box makes us think we can see and access everything but it fact it's hardly the size of a mail slot on a door.
When we search we are like Ned Kelly on a horse looking at the horizon seeing only a tiny slice.
Ryan Tracey reflects on the Ted Canberra lecture by Dr Whitelaw who recommends we deal with this problem by showing everything through data visualization techniques. He notes that this may be good for exploring but not necessarily for learning. The learner needs "scaffolding" - a structure to the subject area. This can be provided through "categories and tags". Taxonomies, essentially - and taxonomies built by subject experts. He says (and I agree wholeheartedly), "I still believe in the value of an expert guiding a novice. I maintain the expert has an obligation to contribute his or her expertise to the knowledge repository, and to tag it appropriately."
Article also links to the excellent TedXCanberra lecture.
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