Unit 12: My comments elsewhere

Commented on a colleague's blog

Commented on a colleague's blog

Unit 12: Reading notes

Reichardt, R., & Harder, G. (2005). Weblogs: their use and application in science and technology libraries. Science & Technology Libraries, 25(3), 105-116.

• Written by an engineering librarian and a biological/computing sciencs librarian- interesting perspectives
• Good background on the history of blogs
• Applications in science and technology libraries: managing teams and projects, reference desk blogging, student blogging, current awareness
• "The challenge for librarians is to become familiar with the weblog and its potential, and explore new ways to further its development and application in science and technology librarianship." Good point - I wonder how much this has changed since this article was written in 2004.

Charles Allan, "Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program: Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons." C&RL News, April 2007 Vol. 68, No. 4.

• Wiki - multi-author, collaborative software
• "A library instruction wiki can create better information sharing, facilitate collaboration in the creation of resources, and efficiently divide work loads among librarians."
• Library instruction wikis can be used to share knowledge between librarians as well as allow them to work collaboratively to create training materials.

Xan Arch, "Creating the academic library folksonomy: Put social tagging to work at your institution." C&RL News, February 2007 Vol. 68, No. 2.

• Social tagging - allows users to create bookmarks (or “tags”) for Web sites and save them online. Tags are usually subject keywords. These tags become a folksonomy. Del.icio.us is a popular site.
• "The library is meant for discovery of information, through the catalog, through the reference librarian, through browsing a shelf. This discovery often stalls at the Internet because it is frustratingly uncatalogable. But still many students turn to the Internet as a resource, without guidance and without a critical eye. What if the library could provide an index to quality Internet resources, created by the librarians at the institution?"
• PennTags (tags.library.upenn.edu) - University of Pennsylvania site that allows students and faculty to create folksonomies

Jimmy Wales: "How a ragtag band created Wikipedia"

• 2005 numbers: over 600,000 articles in English, 2 million articles across all languages.
  
• I looked up current numbers on Wikipedia - as of today, there are 2.6 million articles in English, and more than 10 million articles in more than 250 languages.
  
• Neutral point of view policy - social cooperation
• "The majority view is not necessarily neutral"

Unit 11: Muddiest point

I'm still confused about the definition of ontology. Are there some other examples?

Assignment 6: My website

My Website

Here's my website, created with the help of iWeb. I was glad that we could use a website editor for this assignment - I feel like figuring out how to use the program was more beneficial than messing with the actual HTML.

Unit 10: My Comments elsewhere

Commented on a colleague's blog

Commented on a colleague's blog

Unit 10: Reading notes

David Hawking, Web Search Engines: Part I and II, IEEE Computer, June 2006

• Interesting point - today's search engines not only index many more sites, they provide "much higher quality" answers to queries.
• "For redundancy and fault tolerance, large search engines operate multiple, geographically distributed data centers"
• Crawling algorithms are used to search webpages in incredibly high numbers
  
• "If each HTTP request takes one second to complete—some will take much longer or fail to respond at all—the simple crawler can fetch no more than 86,400 pages per day. At this rate, it would take 634 years to crawl 20 billion pages. In practice, crawling is carried out using hundreds of distributed crawling machines." Wow.
  
• "Search engines use an inverted file to rapidly identify indexing terms—the documents that contain a particular word or phrase"

Shreeves, S.L., Habing, T. O., Hagedorn, K., & Young, J. A. (2005). Current developments and future trends for the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting. Library Trends, 53(4), 576-589.

• Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) - means to federate access to diverse e-print archives through metadata harvesting
  
• OAI-PMH was initially designed to meet the needs of the e-print archives community - and could be applicable in a broad range of communities, including libraries, museums, and archives.
  

The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value by Michael K. Bergman

• "Searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean"
• Survey in 2000 concluded that public information on the deep Web was 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web - what about today?
  
• Deep Web documents are on average 27% smaller than surface Web documents
• Largest deep web site: National Climatic Data Center (NOAA)
• "These observations suggest a splitting within the Internet information search market: search directories that offer hand-picked information chosen from the surface Web to meet popular search needs; search engines for more robust surface-level searches; and server-side content-aggregation vertical "infohubs" for deep Web information to provide answers where comprehensiveness and quality are imperative."

Unit 9: Muddiest point

I'm intrigued by the idea of comments embedded within XML. Is it common to use this function? Is it something programmers and webpage authors actually use?

Unit 9: My comments elsewhere

Commented on colleague's blog

Commented on colleague's blog

Unit 9: Reading notes

Introduction to XML, by Martin Bryan

• XML = eXtensible Markup Language
• start and end of elements in documents are clearly marked
• XML is not a predefined set of tags like HTML
• flexible enough to use for any logical text structure
• "XML differs from other markup languages in that it does not simply indicate where a change of appearance occurs, or where a new element starts. XML sets out to clearly identify the boundaries of every part of a document, whether it be a new chapter, a piece of boilerplate text, or a reference to another publication."

Uche Ogbuji. A survey of XML standards: Part 1. January 2004

• "All the technologies I present here are standards, although that word is itself a bit slippery. Standards come in all forms, and multiple standards often compete in the same space. I follow the practical approach of defining a standard as any specification that is significantly adopted by a diversity of vendors, or is recommended by a respectable, vendor-neutral organization."
• This article was a bit over my head, but it would be a good resource to come back to if I was confronted with an XML standard I didn't know much about.
• This article is also a good source for tutorials and additional resources on XML

Extending your Markup: a XML tutorial by Andre Bergholz

• "Both SGML and HTML heavily influenced the development of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a semantic language that lets you meaningfully annotate text. Meaningful annotation is, in essence, what XML is all about." This puts XML in context better than the previous articles.
• DTD = document type definition
• example of a prologue:
• These examples more clearly illustrate the functions of XML

XML Schema Tutorial

• "The purpose of an XML Schema is to define the legal building blocks of an XML document, just like a DTD."
• XML Schemas are written in XML and secure data communication by standardizing elements
• Must conform to XML syntax rules
• Schema element:

Unit 8: Muddiest point

Regarding website editors: I haven't used these programs before, but I'm hoping to use Dreamweaver for Assignment 6. Are all website editing programs using HTML under the surface? Is it just the user interface that is different?

Assignment 5: Koha

My virtual shelf

Week 8: My comments elsewhere

Commented on a colleague's blog

Commented on a colleague's blog

Week 8: Reading notes

W3schools HTML tutorial

• HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language - markup tags tell the browser how to display the information
• HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters <> = angle brackets
• tags are not case sensitive, but usually written with lower-case letters
• some tags do the formatting for you, like heading and paragraph
• tag attributes are case sensitive
• viewing HTML source code for webpages can help in understanding HTML
• This site has lots of good tips about HTML, but the ads are a little distracting.

HTML cheatsheet by WebMonkey

• This would be really helpful to have open while working in HTML
• Provides definitions for a lot of tags, but not a lot of context - would be best paired with the previous resource.
  

W3schools Cascading style sheets tutorial

• CSS = cascading style sheets
• Allows the user to change the look of many pages at once, by editing one document (the style sheet)
• Three parts of CSS syntax: selector - the HTML element/tag you wish to define; property - the attribute you wish to change; value - the value given to each property
• User can include comments within the CSS code - not seen by browsers
• Plenty of examples

Goans, D., Leach, G., & Vogel, T.M. (2006). Beyond HTML: Developing and re-imagining library web guides in a content management system. Library Hi Tech, 24(1), 29-53.

• GSU library wanted to develop web-based research guides, so each librarian made his/her own by subject - disparities of training and skill among librarians resulted in guides that were not similar to one another
• As a result, the library hired a web development librarian to handle these issues, who developed their content management system
  
• "In a CMS, the content is disconnected from the layout and design elements of the page. Librarians create their guides in a forms-based environment, which levels the playing field for possessing HTML skills. Anyone, regardless of previous experience creating web pages, can create a basic guide in the system. Instead of devoting time with HTML or FrontPage to create the structural or presentational display where the content resides, the librarians can focus instead on identifying, creating, annotating, and selecting the content itself. "
• "ASP-generated templates using cascading style sheets (CSS) are used for the GSU guides to control how content is delivered and presented to the users, from fonts to text placement to branding. By controlling how content is presented, arranged and structured, the templates create a common style as well as navigational consistency across the guides."

Week 7: Muddiest point

I'm curious about how popular virtual reference services are here at Pitt. Do the University librarians keep track of the numbers of reference questions that are addressed via IM/email? If so, is there a way we can see that data?

Assignment 4: Jing

How to install add-ons in Mozilla Firefox

Jing video on Screencast.com

Flickr slideshow (5 images total)

Individual image URLs:
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5

Week 7: My comments elsewhere

Commented on colleague's blog

Posted two comments in "RFID and Libraries" thread on CourseWeb

Week 7: Reading notes

How Internet Infrastructure Works by Jeff Tyson

• No one owns the Internet, but the non-profit Internet Society oversees its policies and procedures
• NSF created the first Internet backbone in 1987; today man companies operate their own backbones
• IP (Internet Protocol) address - each computer's unique identifying number, either "net" or 'host"
• Domain Name System (DNS) - directly maps text names (like google.com) to a website's IP address - much easier for users
• URL: Uniform Resource Locator
  

Andrew K. Pace (2004). Dismantling Integrated Library Systems. Library Journal, 129(2), p.34-36.

• "Today, interoperability in library automation is more myth than reality. Some of us wonder if we may lose more than we gain in this newly dismantled world." Sounds grim!
  
• Starting over with a new ILS can be a nightmare - better to build on what you have
• "Better" ILSs will be considerably more expensive - libraries must be able to reconcile this cost
• "Library vendors have two choices. They can continue to maintain large systems that use proprietary methods of interoperability and promise tight integration of services for their customers. Or, they can choose to dismantle their modules in such a way that librarians can reintegrate their systems through web services and standards, combining new with the old modules as well as the new with each other."

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google machine

• Serget Brin and Larry Page - Google co-founders
  
• That graphic, showing Google's activity around the world at an given time? Awesome.
• Interesting insight about queries - could be vital, could be just for fun
• Google Foundation and Google Grants - good to know they exist
• "Cult picture" - nice to know that Google has a sense of humor about their cult status as an employer
  

Week 6: Muddiest point

Here's what I don't get about RFID tags - how are they powered? It takes some sort of electricity for the chip to transmit its signal, right? Where does that power come from?

I think my dog has an RFID chip... do they use RFID for microchipping pets?

Week 6: My comments elsewhere

Answered a question in "technical discussions" board on CourseWeb: "Foxfire and VPN" thread

Answered a question in "general discussions" board on CourseWeb: "RIS or Bibtex question" thread

Commented on colleague's blog

Assignment 3: Personal Bibliographic Management Systems

My library at CiteULike

Week 6: Reading notes

Wikipedia article on Local Area Networks

• Local area network = LAN
• Covers a small geographic area - advantages include higher transfer rate and smaller range
• Developed as a response to the personal computer - small areas now had a large number of computers, and networking them could save a lot of money on printers and storage space
• Ethernet was common originally, but now most LANs use Wi-Fi

Wikipedia article on computer networks

• Computer network = any group of interconnected computers
• Most common types of networks: personal (PAN), local (LAN) campus (CAN), metropolitan (MAN), wide (WAN), global (GAN)
• Network interface card (NIC): allows computers to be networked using MAC addresses
• Repeater: receives and retransmits a signal so that it can travel long distances with minimal loss
• Hub: contains ports, copies signals for transmission
• Bridge: sends signals only to particular ports
• Switch: filters signals between ports, depending on MAC addresses
• Router: forwards data between networks

YouTube: "Common Types of Computer Networks"

• Hmm.
  
• Watching this video didn't add much to my understanding of computer networks. Perhaps it would be a good resource for someone who wanted the "elevator speech" on computer networks?

"Management of RFID in Libraries" by Karen Coyle

• Coyle briefly mentions "privacy issues" - I'd like to know more about this. I understand the privacy issues in using RFID in things like passports, but what are the issues for libraries? Would the chips store information about who has checked out the book?
• Interesting that Coyle notes how easily the RFID signal could be blocked, making it ineffective as a security device.
  
• Will RFID replace the barcode, despite the larger start-up cost? Can libraries justify the start-up cost?
• Why are the RFID tags so big, when the chip itself is so tiny? Coyle calls them "somewhat bulky two-inch square tags."
  
• Challenge of creating durable RFID tags for libraries, that can function on an item for a long time - most RFID tags are not made to last that long.
  

Week 5: Muddiest point

One image format that wasn't discussed in class is RAW. Is this a specific format, or does it simply refer to an image that has been uncompressed? I've noticed that different digital cameras produce different RAW formats.

Week 5: My comments elsewhere

Comment on colleague's blog

Comment on colleague's blog

Week 5: Reading notes

Data compression Wikipedia entry:

• aka "source coding"
• Data compression is the process of encoding data using less information (bits) than the original file
• Both the sender and the receiver must understand the encoding scheme.
• Lossless vs. lossy compression - clumsy language?
• Lossless: uses algorithms of statistical redundancy to reduce loss of information
• Lossy: guided by data of perception research - assures that information lost in compression will not be critical
• Lossy compression schemes are often used with music and images, because a certain amount of information can be lost without changing the user experience, due to limits of human perception

Data compression basics (DVD-HQ article)

• This series of articles, though long, did a good job of explaining the differences between lossless and lossy compression.
  
• Good background on the physiological reasons that lossy compression works
• The greyscale example was particularly helpful
  
• Raises some interesting philosophical arguement - is there value to archiving the entirety of a file, without compression, even though the information lost during compression is imperceptible?
  

Edward A. Galloway, "Imaging Pittsburgh: Creating a shared gateway to digital image collections of the Pittsburgh Region."

• Purpose of project: to create a single Web gateway to the photographic collections of the Archives Services Center (Pitt), Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Historical Society of Western PA.
  
• Project partners had communication difficulties between the different institutions
• Challenges in selcting photographs to be represented
• Metadata complications - agreed on elements of Dublin Core, but each institution had their own needs concerning metadata that were not being met
• Site is still in operation, and appears to have been expanded quite a bit - http://digital.library.pitt.edu/pittsburgh/

Paula L. Webb. YouTube and libraries: It could be a beautiful relationship. C&RL News, June 2007. Vol68, No. 6.

• This simple article describes several ways libraries could use YouTube to promote their services.
• It does not address the fact that some libraries block YouTube entirely, so that patrons would only be able to access these videos elsewhere.
• It makes sense for libraries to use YouTube for promotion, especially when working with young people.
  
• YouTube is very simple to use, so it shouldn't be intimidating for librarians.
• But - how many libraries have a way to capture video?
  

Week 4: Muddiest Point

I was surprised that PostgreSQL is an open-source product, and that Evergreen uses it. Are libraries not wary of using systems with an open-source foundation? Or is it perhaps a benefit, in terms of cost and customization?

Digitization in the news

Here's an article from CNN.com, about the Smithsonian's decision to digitize its entire collection.

Smithsonian to put its 137 million-object collection online

Assignment 2: Flickr

Here is a link to my Flickr page. I uploaded twenty images, as per the edited assignment directions.

Valerie's Flickr assignment

Week 4: My comments elsewhere

Commented on colleague's blog

Responded to colleague's comment on my blog

Week 4: Reading notes

Wikipedia article on databases:

• This article provided a lot of information about the history and development of databases. It helped me to think of a database in terms of its information structure, rather than simply as a product (i.e. a Microsoft Access database).
• Most databases today are in the relational model, with rows and columns: "The ordering of columns is immaterial, Identical rows are not allowed in a table, Each row has a single (separate) value for each of its column."
• Users request information from a database using a query, which is usually in the SQL language. The database then provides a result set (list of rows).
  
• Normal forms?
  
• Object databases are a result of the object-oriented trend.

Anne J. Gilliland. Introduction to Metadata, pathways to Digital Information:
Setting the Stage

• Metadata= data about data.
• All information objects have three features that can be expressed through metadata: content, context, and structure.
• "Library metadata includes indexes, abstracts, and catalog records created according to cataloging rules and structural and content standards such as MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging format), as well as authority forms such as LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings) or the AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus)."
• Types of metadata: administrative, descriptive, preservation, technical, use.

Eric Miller. An Overview of the Dublin Core Data Model

• As I understand it, Dublin Core is a metadata model (like MARC records) meant to be used for diverse, often electornic information items, including online resources.
• RDF = Resource Description Framework - metadata architecture for the web.
  
• "A resource can be anything that can be uniquely identified" - interesting definition. Also, an item does not have to be "retreivable" to be a resource.
  
• Dublin Core records are written in XML - a list of fields would be helpful.
• This article was a bit difficult to understand - it might be possible to find a better introductory description of Dublin Core.
  

Week 3: Muddiest point

In class, it was stated that there are far more choices in software and applications for Windows than for Macintosh, due to licensing regulations. Can't this also be attributed to economic reasons (more people have PCs, so it is more profitable to develop software for PCs - more potential consumers)?

My comments elsewhere: Week 3

Answered a question in technical discussions board on CourseWeb: "Chat Sessions and Blog Comments-Help, Please" thread

Posted in "Week 2 Discussion Point: Digitization" board on CourseWeb

Posted a comment on colleague's blog

Posted a comment on colleague's blog

Week 3: Reading notes

Machtelt Garrels: "Introduction to Linux: A Hands-on Guide"

• This seems like a good introduction to Linux, not too technical and easy to understand
• I have experience with Linux as a user, but I've never done any programming or troubleshooting. Personally, I love the idea of Linux - free (as in beer and as in speech), user-developed, and versatile. I wish it were more user-friendly, and didn't have the stigma of being more appealing to programmer-types.
  
• Linux has great potential - it has already been used to produce low-cost laptops and computers. It could make computers more accessible (how much of the cost of a computer comes from software and brand licensing? I'd guess a whole lot) - but it may need to become more user-friendly to make this a reality.

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X

• The first article was really too technical to hold my interest. As librarians, I think it's important to understand the fundamental differences between operating systems, it terms of anticipating user preferences and problems. But this level of technicality just isn't for me.
  
• That being said, I use OS X every day and enjoy doing so. I think Singh's overview did a decent job of summarizing why OS X works for him, without falling into the "Mac/PC/Linux is the best, and everything else stinks!" argument that seems so common. Rather, he emphasized that each operating system has its own strengths and weaknesses.
• The Wikipedia article provided a decent overview of OS X. I found the screenshots of the different operating systems through time to be interesting. I admit that I still feel uneasy having wikipedia articles assigned as required reading in this program, though...
  

An Update on the Windows Roadmap

• This article seems to be adressing the concerns of Windows users regarding the switch from XP to Vista. It looks like XP is still preferred by many users, and as such Microsoft will continue to offer support for it.
  
• I don't use Windows - but this article reminds me of an important point. Many schools and libraries use PCs, and as a Mac user, I cannot just be ignorant of the Windows opertating system. I need to pay attention to what's happening with it, in order to provide better service to my users.
  

Week 2 - Muddiest point

Just to clarify - for the Flickr assignment, we are uploading three separate images for each of the ten items - the original photo/scan, the "screen display" version, and the "thumbnail" version - is this correct? So, we should be uploading a total of thirty images to Flickr?

And to reiterate my muddiest point from last week - would it be possible to get a list of the due dates for the rest of the assignments? It would really help me (and others too, I think) in planning out the rest of the semester.

My comments elsewhere: Week 1 and 2

Commented on a colleague's blog

Commented on a colleague's blog

Answered a question on colleague's blog

Answered a question on colleague's blog

Answered a question in technical discussions forum on CourseWeb: "VPN access issue" thread

Answered a question in technical discussions forum on CourseWeb: "Also have problem with Ad-Aware" thread

Week 2: Reading notes

Computer Hardware Wikipedia page:

• Important to note that a very small part of the computer hardware produced (0.2% in 2003) is for personal computers - hardware is a much bigger picture than we tend to think.
• This article was a good, basic review of the main components of a PC.

Moore's Law:

• Concept stating that the number of transistors on a circuit increases exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.
  
• Moore's law has since been applied to many other digital capacities, including memory and processing speed.
  
• This concept can also be thought of as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as many companies have set Morre's law as a goal and increased production in order to meet it.
  
• Moore's law gives us an interesting perspective on the incredible rate of growth in this field.

Computer History Museum:

• Appropriately located in Mountain View, CA - home to Google and the heart of Silicon Valley
• Interesting exhibits, many of which are available online - I enjoyed "Selling the Computer Revolution"
  
• This would be a great resource to use with today's young people, who may have little to no knowledge of the history of computing
  

Week 1: Muddiest point

I see the six assignments listed in the syllabus - is the date that they are listed the date they will be assigned? I don't see any information indicating when these assignments are due. Would it be possible to get this information now? Thanks!

Week 1: Reading notes

OCLC report: Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers (2004)

• content consumers are becoming “format agnostic” in that they do not care much what sort of container—such as a book, journal, blog or a Web page—the content comes from.
• "Traditional print publishing is indeed slowing. E-books have entered the adoption phase. And good quality content is leaking out of its containers and making its way to the open Web, facilitated by self-publishing tools and communication devices and technologies." Also - e-publication of journals?
• "By 2006, IDC predicts 60 billion e-mails will be sent each day" !!!
• "Worldwide, almost 2 billion SMS (Short Message Service) text messages are sent daily using mobile devices." !!!
• Increase of e-learning at universities and even high schools (cyber-schooling)

Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy: New Components in the Curriculum for a Digital Culture

• Information literacy vs. information technology literacy - related but different aptitudes
• Information technology literacy - use of tools (computers, internet, etc) and understanding of concepts (even at superficial levels)
• Information literacy - understanding how to find, access and utilize information in beneficial ways.
• Where do schools come in? Traditionally students are educated in information technology literacy, but information literacy is becoming more popular and takes a more direct role in many school library curriculums.

Vaughan, J. (2005). Lied Library @ four years: technology never stands still. Library Hi Tech, 23(1), 34-49.

• Interesting case study of one library's struggle to stay current on information technology issues.
• "complete replacement of every desktop PC in the main and branch libraries, over 600 units, in 2003" - fascinating to think of what a complex operation this would be! Academic libraries have the advantage of performing such operations over the summer, when traffic is greatly reduced - this is not an option for public libraries.
• Interesting insight into the need to balance student and community needs at an academic library - students are the priority, but community members must get some benefit from the library as well.