Readings for week #5

Data compression
Imaging Pittsburgh
You Tube

This weeks' readings gave insight into some of the cababilities of digital technology developments and how they apply to library science. I was particulary impressed with the First Monday article Imaging Pittsburgh about the collaboration between three institutions, University of Pittsburgh Archives Servies Center, Carnegie Musuem of Art and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania and their photograph collections. I found this to be a perfect example of what the benefits of digital improvements in technology are to libraries and patrons alike. This collaboration represents all that is good about digital advances; the sharing of information on a new and expanded platform, reaching a larger audience and the obvious increase in communication between participating agencies.

Similarly, the You Tube article gave another good example of how libraries can harness the digital age to their benefit. Having made a simple, online tutorial about basic library information, the university was able to reach a much larger number of students in a much more exciting medium than having students read the information.

Data compression was more of the same computer information that is remarkable but not easy for me to follow. I understand, I think, that data compression ,is useful because it "helps reduce the consumption of exspensive resources,such as hard disk space..."
This is great and must explain why we are able to do so much within limited size files, etc.

I found the readings this week to be much more palitable due to the fact that I could apply them directly to library science, not just computer science.