Week 12 - Muddiest Point

What type of software is required to provide RSS feeds? Is this usually part of a web hosting service or do most institutions administer it internally?

Week Eleven Muddiest Point

Are library staff building respositories themselves using DSpace? Maybe it just looks complex on the diagram, but it seems there would have to be an ITS staff dedicated to the library for that purpose.

Week 11 Reading Comments

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Week 10 - Muddiest Point

I'm still uncertain about the differences between centralized and distributed indexes--why doesn't the distributed index have to harvest metadata?

Week 11 Readings - Institutional Repositories

This article was very interesting for me because my employer is a university. Our new library director wants to establish an institutional repository. From an administrative standpoint, it has been frustrating at times for me to find that institutional materials on past fundraising campaigns were not available, and this applies to many other documents that form our institution's history. I also agreed with Lynch's concern for faculty having to do their own digital work creation, dissemination and storage. In hard copy publishing, we don't expect to be able to escort faculty to the computers and printing machines to produce the manuscript, book or journal so why would we do the same with digital format? Even the simple systems can be daunting for people that have little training or aptitude for it.

I'm glad that there is movement toward making repositories a necessity rather than a luxury.

Week 11 Readings - Dewey meets Turing

From a post-MLIS degree standpoint, I was very glad to read this article, especially if the authors' are correct in their conclusion that developments in the digital library area will broaden opportunities for the library science field. Though the rise of the World Wide Web was an unwelcome distraction for a while, I think it has had a good outcome. If computer scientists and library scientists can continue to work together, the Web can be a valuable tool to showcase new library models and more; it can significantly facilitate the exchange of information between information seekers and producers. We will need to modify our ideas about librarians somewhat. I don't think we will ever replace (or even want to replace) the brick and mortar libraries we love. But librarians and library services will continue to evolve very rapidly.

Week 11 Reading - Digital Libraries Challenges and Influential Work

How nice to read a success story for government funded research. Actually, I know there are many funded programs that are accomplishing great things, but the Digital Library Initiatives really created some lasting success. We are in fact beneficiaries of this success; I've used a lot of full text digital articles for LIS 2000 and we have also used many in this class. Google came out of it and it would be a challenge to find anyone that hasn't at least heard of it.

The federated search model discussed in this article is a very ambitious goal, but well worth doing. Many of the pieces are in development and I for one will be glad to be a part of it, if I can. Certainly, libraries should be part of the development of such an integrated solution and be at the forefront of offering it as part of normal services.

Assignment 6 - Website

Right now my web site is at Google. Here is the link:

http://sites.google.com/site/cindyspittpage/

I am going to try to move this to Pitt's server but I am not sure how to export it. I know how to ftp, but I am not sure how to get this code from google to my PC then to Pitt.

I am already late (I had a major working session this a.m. for my big work project I am in charge of, that had to come first!) So for now it's at Google, but hopefully it will be moved to Pitt soon!

Final update: I finally found a template that worked for me, so my site can be seen at http://www.pitt.edu/~cmd89 or http://sites.google.com/site/cindyspittpage/

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Week 9 Muddiest Point

I was more clear on why XML is a better markup language after our lecture. However, I am still unclear on if it is necessary to create it from scratch as we did in the example--don't most people use a tool to generate it?

Week 10 Readings - The Deep Web

Clearly the theme this week is searching for content on the web! This article confirmed what I think we all instinctively know: there is a great deal of high quality information available that exists in formats that most search engines cannot index. I was particularly intrigued to read that most of Bergman's selected sites in what he calls the Deep Web for his survey are open sites. Yet a typical search done on a search engine most likely will not find it, and this is the way most people look for information on the Web. Many of these sites I've been to myself-Pubmed, NOAA, InfoUSA-and when I think about it, often I just went to the site directly for additional research AFTER using a search engine. I'm sure many in our class will have had that same experience. This really gives me a lot to think about for the role of libraries in providing the "directed query technology" that Bergman advocates. We clearly have a role to play.

Week 10 Readings - Shreves Article

After finishing this article it occurred to me that the relationship between data providers and service providers using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting has the same pattern as that of search engine companies and every day Internet users. Both are trying to find the right way to index content and provide tools for users to find the appropriate content. I think there is one important difference though; the OAI community relationship are clearly mutually desired and collaborative whereas the search engine to user relationship is desired but not usually collaborative and sometimes adversarial. In the search engine world, search engine providers are often fighting off content providers whose sites clearly won't meet most search queries. OAI providers are working to a "customized
" set of standards to most closely meet their constituents' needs. The search engine providers are operating in a more or less standard less environment--they may have the tougher job!

Week 10 - Web Search Engines Part 1 and Part 2

I thought this two part article gave a mostly easy to understand overview of how search engines work. There were a few highly technical concepts in part 2 that I'm not quite clear on (for example, it wasn't clear to me how the engines identify what a term is) but I was able to understand the basics of the hardware needed and database design required for search engine creation and optimal performance.

Clearly good redundant hardware configuration as well as index design are critical to efficient performance for a search engine. I had no idea that these servers numbered in the hundreds of thousands. After reading through the issues encountered in indexing - spamming and cloaking attempts, dead links, outdated information, secured information - I can understand why no one attempts to index all the content. It's absolutely incredible that these search engines work as well as they do given the formidable challenges that exist in organizing the information.