Friday, November 28, 2008

Readings for week #13

Total "Terrorism" Information Act and No Place to Hide (website):
Honestly, kind of scary...it is interesting how technology that libraries get excited about (RFID tags) has such negative possibilities. After reading through the website, No Place to Hide, and reading the chapter (10) that was available I really found myself feeling pretty weirded out. All of these "conveniences" such as "free" wifi in Starbucks, Amazon "suggesting" titles you might enjoy and your car keeping tags on you have more implications to our privacy or lack of than we could ever imagine. Not sure the "personalization" is worth it.

Total Information Act: Scary project, although I do understand where the ugency came from after 9/11. The technology is amazing and could be used to gather all the information necessary in order to keep tags on whomever is in question- the problem is differing opinions on where to draw the line. I suspect, like all espionage movies, if the information falls into the wrong hands, massive invasion of privacy ensues.

You Tube: no longer posted

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Comments Week #12

I have commented on Rand's blog: Rand's Blog
Amanda's blog: http://amarti27.blogspot.com/
and Lori's blog: http://lhmorrow.blogspot.com/

Friday, November 21, 2008

Muddiest Point #12

I thought the lecture by J.Park was very informative but I need a little clarity on what "persistent identifier's " mean. Also, how are url's broken easily?

Readings for week #11 (unit 12)

Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program, Creating the academic library folksonomy and How a ragtag band created wikipedia (video):
I found the article on using a wiki to manage library instruction pretty interesting. I think that the applications for these free software tools are huge and we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I'm do not consider myself to be too technologically savvy but I think I understand the gist of what a wiki is and how it is created. I'm actually kind of excited to give this a try at my own workplace.
I was less impressed with the article on social tagging, honestly because I did not understand it very well. I get that while searching it would be nice to have a way to save important url's or bookmark information, but I'm not sure that this is something that is user-friendly - I think I need to learn more about it.
As for the wiki creation video, I loved it! I am not a wiki-snob- I take it for what it is, a noble effort that is not perfect to give everyone free access to a wealth of knowledge. Better still is the fact that it is not some huge, private company with its' own "product" to promote. For all you doubters- take it with a grain of salt, use it as a starting point and be grateful for people in the world who are trying to improve the lives of others at no cost to you or anyone else!

Friday, November 14, 2008

Readings for week #10 (unit 11)

Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age: Interesting article for me, due to the fact that I work in an academic library. I work at a small college and although we have a great library we do not have any type of institutional repository. I actually have never heard of this. I think that larger, research based institutions would greatly benefit but my question is would other people outside of the school have access to the repository? I do think that having a safe, preserved, free place to "store" one's work would be a great benefit.

Digital Libraries and Dewey Meets Turing: I thoroughly enjoyed both of these articles. Dewey Meets Turing was funny and so so true- It and librarians are, trdaitionally, very different types of people. It was nice to see evidence that they both care about the same outcome, maybe just not the way to get there. It was encouraging to read articles that speak freely about the conflicts, some real, some manufactured, between librarianship and information technology. I think that for a long time people thought that librarians would not be needed with the internet and the web. This, as we all know, has turned out to be false but I do think that libraries and their approach to gathering and filtering information has had to change and develop in order to keep up with the changing technology. I think that IT is just as important as good librarianship technique.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Comments Week #9

I have commented on Jabari's blog:http://jay292-librariantalk.blogspot.com/
I have commented on Alesha's blog:http://hesheroes.blogspot.com/
I have commented on Joan's blog:http://joansfolly.blogspot.com

Friday, November 7, 2008

Readings for week #9

How Things Work (part 1 and part 2)-
Actually, not a bad article considering that it was all in computer lingo. I really am impressed/fascinated with the entire notion of a computer program/algorithm that “crawls” through the content on the web. Of particular interest were the passages that explained how the search engine reject low-value content and save time by employing a number of techniques: skipping, early termination, etc. Also, I now understand what “caching” means!
Current Developments and Future Trends for the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting-
A few months ago the above title may as well have been in a foreign language but I actually know what it means. I found the reading to be both interesting and informative. I found the three examples Open Language Archives Community (OLAC), the Sheet Music Consortium and the National Science Digital Library to be very impressive. I think trying to organize, not only the information, but information about the information to be a worthwhile project that will help provide some structure to the massive complexity of the web.
Through the OAI protocol projects, metadata will have a “standard” form that will make searching/browsing much easier. My only question- the article referred to “unqualified Dublin Core” a number of times-I know what Dublin Core is, but what does “unqualified” mean in this context?

The Deep Web-Interesting article about the unseen and unknown depths of the web. The article actually seemed to be an advertisement for Bright Planet, a company who is developing a multi-layered search technology just for the "Deep Web". Good job explaining the depth and complexity of the web.

Muddiest Point #8

My muddiest point for the previous lecture (on campus) is HTML, etc. as a whole. I feel like I have just barely touched the surface and when I start to understand a little bit of it, a new concept, direction, code, etc. is added and I have to start all over again. Definitely something that I need more practice at!