How Stuff Works
Dismantling Integrated Library Systems
Google video
My first impression after these readings/viewing is the incredible amount of activity that is going on at any one time. Besides all the technical advancements, the size and scope of the Internet and the World Wide Web as an industry in and of itself is mind boggling. Watching the Google video was very interesting and impressive. Seems like a cool company to work at...it always seems that the most successful companies treat their employees not as commodities but as contributors. I'm not sure whether Google is as employee friendly as they seem but they obviously treat their employee's creativity as welcome and necessary asset.
I found Dismantling Integrated Library Systems annoying, jargon filled and slightly whiny. Not a good combination. I think I understand the issues but it seems to me that it is very difficult to combine the amount of information available on the Internet and "integrate" all of that into a library system that still accomplishes all of the tasks central to a library database. Maybe trying to force the two together is not something that is supposed to happen, the Internet and WWW were not created by librarians or information specialists. I completely support the efforts but wonder if starting from the ground up may be the answer.
As usual, I found the How Stuff Works article very informative- wish I had known all of this a lot earlier!
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2 comments:
I agree that Google seems like a cool place to work I have heard from classes a took as an undergrad about how well they treat their employees. Also your comments on the Dismantling ILS are interesting. I had not thought of that idea when i read the article, but your comment got me thinking. It would be time consuming and difficult to integrate the two together. It is important to have information from the internet at a library for people to use when needed, bu there is no way they can have it all so they could stick to having relevant items such as online journal and online databases where people can find the articles needed.
I agree that the Internet is not library friendly, especially considering most sites do not use any metadata standard. However, I don't think libraries can completely ignore the fact that it contains a lot of the information that our users want. I think that is why the Google video and the ILS article were paired together. The Internet is a hard thing to manage, but Google has found a way to do it. Now, I realize that libraries don't have the same funding, but I think we need to learn to how to incorporate even the unstructured, messy resources. We might not succeed at first, but at least we're trying.
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