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.

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.

Week 9 Readings - XML Schema Tutorial

This article was a bit easier for me. I have designed databases and I am very comfortable with data types, default values, acceptable ranges of values, formats, etc. For that reason, I can agree with the author's statement that XML schemas should supplant Document Type Definitions since schemas allow more definition. I am still unclear on the namespace concept though, so I am not sure why that is cited as a reason for schema over DTD.

I'll be interested to hear Dr. He talk about XML and making the concept more clear for me.

Week 9 Readings - Extending your Markup: a XML tutorial by Andre Bergholz

Well, this is the third tutorial on XML and I still don't think I could start using it! I'm not sure that XML makes it easier for humans to read--computers, yes I agree with that. But I think I would have to have a purpose for XML first, and then a "learn by doing" session second before I can firmly grasp it. I do understand what it is, but I'm still not clear on how to do it, or where I would personally use it.

Week 9 Readings - A Survey of XML Standards Part 1

This article was really beyond my level of expertise. When it touched on database schemas, which I work with, I was much clearer on the concepts. This is not to say that it's a bad article. On the contrary it is extremely well written and the layout is very easy to follow. I liked that Mr. Ogbuji explained what his definition of a standard is in the article. Though most of the technical parts were difficult for me because I have no base knowledge, I was impressed with the voluntary effort that exists in the computing community to develop systems and standards that make communication across the web better and more accessible by more people. I admire their dedication to maintaining a rigorous process to develop standards; though more than one group exists, they all recognize that not every concept is a good one and won't be accepted but they are at least given a hearing. Mr Ogbuji provided some great resources to learn more which I plan to check out--probably in a year because I will never be caught up from all the reading in the two courses I am taking. Mr. Ogbuji even covers the time concern though; he provided cautions for complex developments that don't have a large following yet and warnings about training sites that may provide older information. At any rate, I've bookmarked his site!

Week 9 Readings - An Introduction to the Extensible Markup Language (XML)

I have been interested in learning more about XML. Up to reading this article I knew that it is used in WWW pages, it is a very good development for web page authors and that Microsoft Office products can save a document in XML format--that's all. Though I work in computing I am not a web programmer and I haven't done a lot with creating my own web pages or web site. I would certainly like to so I have learned some html and I do understand more than the average WWW user does. So, I've used the WWW long enough to know that the wide range of hardware platforms, operating systems and web browsers have meant that web pages don't always look as they were designed to look in every situation due to different handling and different html versions used by the authors. What I learned from this article is that XML addresses this problem, allowing web page features to retain their attributes in a much broader range of situations, and updating those attributes is a lot easier since it only has to be done in one place.

After reading this article, I can't say that I could originate an XML document myself. Clearly some knowledge of creating web pages is prerequisite, but I did get a clear picture of what XML does to make web pages more widely usable.

Week 8 Readings - Content Management System article

This article shows what can be accomplished when IT staff and librarians collaborate. I was very impressed that the GSU staff decided to develop their own system, and I continue to be amazed that vendors aren't providing off the shelf integrated systems for libraries. Robust and mature integrated systems are common in just about every industry but libraries, it seems. I think they paid attention to the important details - lots of user input, and an emphasis on removing design conceptualization and implementation from the users so they could concentrate on content. Even more importantly, they realized the necessity of a coherently designed web page. It is very difficult to navigate a web site with too many different design standards. I was also impressed that they were willing to objectively identify where they need to improve--in training, for example, and that ongoing assessment will be done to keep the system usable and relevant. All in all, an excellent reading on how technology is improving library content management.

Week 8 Readings - HTML Tutorials and Cheat Sheet Items

I'm commenting on all three of the html information sites together. First, I continue to be impressed about how much free training on web tools is a available. The creators seem to be motivated by passion for their craft, and a competitive spirit; they want to be the best web resource available. And there are clearly differences. The W3Schools site has a professional look and functionality. It's forums have postings in the last week and appear to be extremely active. The home page provides links to articles about the latest web developments. For example one of the front page articles discusses HTML5 that was published in January 2008. The webmonkey training site on the other hand, appears not to have been updated very recently. There are only four user comments and one claims that the Html cheat sheet is the same one he read eight years ago. It's important to check a training website out thoroughly to determine whether or not it meets your needs. Certainly the basics could be learned on webmonkey, but you'd need to search for the next steps yourself, whereas the W3Schools seem to take great care to stay current, and be responsive to their users. The webmonkey page, too, while providing necessary data, isn't as well laid out and feels more difficult to use.

Week 7 Readings - How Internet Infrastructure Works

I thought this article was very well written. I never knew why IP addresses are considered 32 bit numbers until I read this. This article made a complicated subject easy to understand, and interesting, too. Like the author, it amazes me how powerful the system is behind the scenes, but I also find it amazing at the initiative taken by entities such as the University of Wisconsin to create the DNS system, and how quickly these concepts are accepted world wide.

Week 6 Readings - YouTube Common Types of Computer Networks

Hm, should have viewed this first before reading the other articles! This gentleman from Relativity Business Technology Solutions was very clear, and it was easier to hear this complex concepts explained in small amounts. Have I mentioned that I usually avoid network? These days, that is impossible; so it's a good thing people are sharing their expertise in this way.

This reminds me of the free classes offered at www.cnet.com, hp.com, and probably many others on single computing topics. I've taken several that are accompanied by video. They last about 4 to 6 weeks, and are self-paced. I highly recommend them, and I will be adding YouTube to my list for this purpose.