Muddiest Point, week 14

I am curious to know more about Decision Support System software. Can it be used for data sets other than business-related data? Also, Dr. He mentioned some people thought DSS might have played a role in the current financial crisis. Is this because the DSS is inaccurate or because its results are hard to interpret? Will this change how businesses utilize DSS in the future?

Comments

Are here and here.

Muddiest Point Week 12

Might social tagging sometimes be less useful that we think? Some blogs -- popular ones, even -- use tagging as a source of humor, by putting in joke tags (the opposite of the actual content, overly specific, sarcastic or whatever). The point is to laugh when you see them, not to actually click on them. I think this is probably a small minority of tags, but I still feel like it's not addressed by all these authors who are so gung-ho about how social tagging is going to make everything super-easy to find forever.

Comments

Are here and here.

Week 12 readings

Reichard & Harder: Weblogs

Blogging applications = social software (bottom-up rather than top-down). Makes sense. Interesting they recommend disabling comments sometime.

Blogs seem to have really taken off in libraries (I say this from the article's examples and my own experience). Do they have potential in archives, too? Posting about the latest collection you've accessioned?

Allan: Wiki

This article makes wikis sound very useful for groups working together as a way to share information. I guess my question is, how is it different from having a blog with multiple contributors who have editing privileges? A wiki would have more formatting options I suppose (Allan talks about handouts which would presumably be printed and given to students).

Arch: Social Tagging

Oh, the word "folksonomy" is so cute.

Social tagging in a library catalog? I can see the uses -- PittCat can be tricky to navigate sometimes, and in closed-stacks libraries like the Frick Fine Arts Library where I work, students can't go wander in the shelves and browse. If they could see what books other had found useful -- grouped by subject rather than call number which can be misleading -- this could make life a lot easier.

Wales: Wikipedia

Wow, I have been reading/writing about wikipedia so much this semester and only now am I actually learning its history. This dude is proud of himself, huh? I mean, with reason. I like that wikipedia is not English-centric.

The Neutrality Policy allows people to express their views as long as couched in language like "some critics say" or something that indicates that Wikipedia itself remains netural.

But if you are "asked to leave the community," is it by contributors or by Jimmy himself? I imagine it must be a vote/dialogue similar to the process of deleting pages.

Muddiest Point Week 11

So are other institutions building their own Dspace-like respositories or just joining Dspace? Could Dspace become too big? I created an account and have been trying to look at presentations & articles but I keep getting the message "Internal System Error"....

Comments!

My comments can be found here and here

Week 11 Readings

Mischo. Digital Libraries: Challenges and Influential Work

I had no idea about the DL-1 and DL-2 initiatives. Funded by NASA and the FBI? How interesting. It seems that access to scientific journals and things like GIS really drove the project -- public libraries weren't really a concern at that point.

I am not entirely sure I understand the usage of "federated" here, as in "federated search." It seems to mean searching multiple databases at the same time. So is it interchangeable with "aggregated search"? And/or "harvested" search? I am getting a bit tripped up by the lingo, perhaps someone can clarify this in class.

Paepcke: Dewey Meets Turing

Interestingly structured article -- librarians v. computer scientists. It's too bad librarians didn't win; the article could have been called "Dewey Defeats Turing." LOL!!!!

Actually it's a pretty good lesson in why librarianship has turned into such a tech-savvy profession.

Also a quote that applies to a lot of what we've been reading for LIS 2000: "At the same time that they herald online self-publishing as the breakage of shackles from the tyranny of publishers, tenure committees cannot wrestle themselves into granting the same respect to online-only work that they afford traditional journal articles."

In this article's view, the role of the librarian in coming years will be to help create the organizational structure as academic fields switch over to an online scholarly presence. And once that is accomplished...?

Lynch: Institutional Repositories

This addresses similar issues of scholarly publishing. It goes a little further in describing exactly how institutional repositories function, and distinguishing between publishing and the broader "communication." Repositories are not a replacement for journals -- I keep thinking of all our Panopto videos from this semester. Do they have a repository or will they vanish? They could be a great future reference -- imagine rewatching a lecture years later, instead of trying to decipher your old messy notes...

"Stewardship is easy and inexpensive to claim; it is expensive and difficult to honor." Another way of looking at the future of librarians -- stewards of these repositories.

Muddiest Point Week 10

Is Z39.50 any different than WorldCat? The description in class made them seem pretty similar, although I suppose WorldCat is technically a database rather than a search engine. But wouldn't they have the same results in the end?

Assignment 6: Website

Here is my website.

just in case, that's http://www.pitt.edu/~mec111

Comments

Are here and here.

Muddiest Point #8

HTML: so, if I were composing an html document in my notepad (almost as if I were doing some sort of assignment for this class or something), how could I see what it will look like on the web before I upload it?

Week 9 Readings

Introduction to XML

XML is a markup language with clearer boundaries than HTML -- each piece or entity is defined. The example of the memo, with the To and From fields encoded in the tags, seems to me like the metadata is already included? Later on the author says XML files are perfect for databases and I assume that this is why.

I wish this included an example of how an XML document displays on a screen.

Survey of XML Standards

Yes, article, I agree that this is intimidating for newcomers. I'm gonna wait for Prof. He to explain this stuff I think.

Interesting that ISO is involved in XML standards! Mostly I have heard about them in my preservation class.

Nice that there are a lot of links to other tutorials, though.

Extending Your Markup

I cannot get this one to work, even searching the e-journal from on campus. sorry.

XML Schema Tutorial

This website wants me to vote McCain-Palin, by the by.

XML schemas are better than DTD, and will probably replace DTD. So I am not going to have to learn DTD, that's good news.

XML restrictions: is this so new entries into a database will fit the correct format of all the other entries and be searchable/usable?

Koha Assignment

My shelf is here

Comments

for week 8 readings

are here and here

Muddiest Point #7

We talked a little about persistent urls. But even those seem in danger of vanishing at any moment. Besides the internet archive/wayback machine, is there any way of making info on the web permanent?

Week 8 Reading

Ok, back from vacation...

HTML Tutorial & HTML cheatsheet

Well, there isn't a whole lot to take notes on here. Obviously these will be great references for the next assignment. The tutorial especially is helpful because it has visual examples of what everything will look like (at first I wasn't sure what they meant by "forms" but I figured it out).

(Incidentally, the url for the cheatsheet is listed incorrectly in the syllabus. It should be http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/HTML_Cheatsheet.)

Do people still use frames? They seem so...old fashioned.

CSS Tutorial

Less familiar territory here. But the explanation makes a lot of sense: it's a way to separate design from content (on a practical level...whether or not they can be separated on a philosophical level is a different issue) as well as save time and maintain consistency.

The CSS can be internal or external. If external, you link to your style sheet within your webpage's html and it applies the design html from the style sheet. Is the css document just saved on your computer or does it have to be uploaded to the web? I can't find an explanation of this on the tutorial, it just says create the sheet in any text editor and save as a .css file.

Goans, Leach and Vogel: Beyond HTML

Here the web librarian uses CSS to make the library's website more consistent, and navigation and use easier. It's just one component of the overall content management system.

Interestingly, the university created this system in-house instead of using commercial or open-source software. This is clearly ideal because the system can be designed specifically for the purposed of the university. But not all libraries will have the luxury of the IT personnel to do this for them. Oh...maybe that's why we are reading this.

Beyond the technical aspect, this article emphasized the importance of getting input from all quarters - tech staff, librarians, students, even peer libraries to see what their experience has been like.

Comments

Here and here.

Muddiest Point #6

How can RFID technology be useful if it can only work at such a close range? Is there much development going on to make it stronger?

Jing Assignment

Here is my video.

(http://www.screencast.com/users/mecmec/folders/Jing/media/711c8f2d-ff83-4afa-8dea-82afd7f609f6)

Flickr photo set.

Individual image links:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/2910347528/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/2910369410/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/2909533777/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/2909541233/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/2910408330/

Week 7 Readings

Tyson -- How Internet Infrastructure Works

I am intrigued by this Internet Society. Tysons says they oversee policies and protocol for how we use the internet, but I am reminded of a quote from a reading for LIS2000 in which Terrence Brooks calls the internet "a lawless meaning space." But maybe their policies are more about the technical side of things and less about meaning and/or morality. How powerful is The Internet Society? Are they like the Masons?

I clicked over to the page on how routers work. That explanation makes them seem even more important -- there would be no way to deal with the massive amounts of information zooming around. It has some pictures of gigantic industrial-sized routers. Are those really the same thing as what I think of as my wireless router in my apartment?

IP addresses: So, my computer gets assigned a new IP address every time I connect to a different wireless network. Is the old IP permanently erased or is it stored somewhere? If it were permanently erased, it would be much harder for internet activity to be traced back to one computer/user (ie for the government to spy on us). Right now I'm in a coffee shop but if I go home or to campus I'll be connected to a completely different network.
Pace -- Dismantling Integrated Library Systems

If this article is to be believed, libraries are at a dramatic juncture (or were 4 years ago). Old systems have been rejected but the new ones aren't up to the same standards.

Searching on PittCat, for example, isn't at all as intuitive as Google. If only it had that "Did you mean _____?" misspelling fuction! Now that most people are used to natural language internet searching, library systems need to catch up to that level of sophisitication.

Of course, the need for new systems means more profits for vendors, so they are less intersted in supplying products that are just a one-time purchase. This article makes open source sounds appealing (even if the costs balance out -- why NOT spend the money on tech staff rather than expensive software? Seems like a better use of funds to me). I'm sure advances have been made since 2004 -- I believe we looked at some of them in class.

Brin and Page: Inside the Google Machine

Not to sound like a PC jerko, but is anyone else slightly uncomfortable with the whole "Africa = the Dark Continent" thing? Is there a way to talk about access disparities without sounding like missionaries/colonialists? It seems self-evident now that increased access to technology benefits everyone; I just hope history bears us out on that one.

Google incorporating principles of Montessori education is pretty fascinating. Sounds like a great workplace, anyway. I honestly think some of Google's success is due to that somewhat playful attitude -- the logo changing, etc. Obviously their product is the main draw, but I think the non-intimidating yet non-condescending (unlike yahoo and aol, which seemed to be designed for 80 year old using the internet for the first time) feel really helps.

Zotero/Citeulike assignment

http://www.citeulike.org/user/mecmec

I tried to keep it semi-topical to the course.

Week 6 Readings

Wikipedia/ Local Area Networks

Funny, I have never heard or seen the term WAN (wide area networks) used. Perhaps they are not very useful. But...wouldn't the internet itself be a WAN?

"... from about 1983 onward, computer industry pundits would regularly declare the coming year to be 'the year of the LAN.'" Har. Sort of like how the Paperless Office is always just around the corner.

MAN (metropolitan area network) is also a thing I have never heard of. In Philadelphia, the city government was forever trying to set up a huge wireless network so that everyone would have internet access, but something kept going wrong with it, they kept switching providers, etc. If it ever works, though, I suppose it will be a MAN.

So, when we access PittCat databases through SSLVPN, we are "tunneling" across the internet to join our LAN to Pitt's LAN.

Wikipedia/ Computer Network

I probably should have read this first as a LAN is a type of computer network. Oh well.

"In this regard the visual and operational characteristics of a network are distinct; the logical network topology is not necessarily the same as the physical layout." This reminds me of our discussion of databases; just because the database looks like a table to us does not mean the underlying structure is a table. Similarly, although our computers may actually be connected in a straight line and look to us like a bus network, the underlying structure may be one of the other network configurations.

Another acronym: PAN. This would be my computer and the things it is hooked up to with a USB cable, like a printer (if I had one) and sometimes my digital camera.

Would the PittNet wireless network be a LAN or a campus area network (CAN)?

I am a bit confused on the difference between a bridge and a router. They both connect multiple networks...the former at the data layer and the latter at the network layer. I guess I need to understand the OSI model better. Hopefully we will go over this in class.


YouTube/ Common Types of Computer Networks

A recap of the wikipedia articles. Always nice to have a person explaining things to you out loud (and he nicely says we can email him if we have questions).

This answers my question about Wireless PittNet, I guess it is indeed a CAN.

Coyle, K. (2005). Management of RFID in libraries. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(5), 486-489.

If any authority figures are reading, this was kind of hard to access, maybe you could provide a link for future classes.

So: a radio frequency identifier is a sort of high-tech barcode. Similar to getting a chip implanted in your dog's ear or an EZ-Pass for toll roads.

It seems less useful for security than for locating items that get lost within the library, which in my experience happens a lot, especially in a big multi-library system like the ULS.

I would support a change from barcode to RFID -- this article makes it sound fairly inevitable anyway -- but I would like to read more on the privacy issues that come with this technology.

Week 5 Comments

First comment

Second comment

Muddiest Point #4

If metadata can't be standardized for the various reasons we discussed in class, is the development of crosswalks that can translate between different schema developing quickly enough to be useful? How much of a problem is the lack of standarization for most librarians and archivists, or are these communities insular enough that their own professional standards are adequate?

Week 5 Readings

Wikipedia: Data Compression

Hey, something I know a little about! JPEGS! In college I did a lot of layout work for a student magazine, so we were always trying to figure out how little we could compress image files so that they'd look as good as possible, while not making the entire document too big to fit on a disk for the printer.

The thing that gives me pause about this article is that it gives the impression that lossless and lossy systems are these two black-and-white polar opposite choices. With most image-editing programs (and some digital cameras), the degree of lossiness is on a sliding bar. So there are actually many different ways of striking the balance between fidelity to original and file size.

The example of run-length encoding is nice and straightforward (storing 25.888888888 as 25.[9]8). The "Theory" section is a little confusing to me, though. What are the 4 stages of the 4-stage model of lossless compression? Perhaps it depends on the content of the document?

Data Compression Basics

Very well-written for the layperson. Analogies are so helpful (such as thinking of acronyms as a sort of mental data compression).

Predictive compression works best with "natural" images. Based on the examples given it seems that these are also the hardest to reduce in lossless compression.

I think the description of lossy compression as preserving meaning rather than data is a big improvement on the wikipedia article's definition. I have to revise my earlier statement about photo compression -- we weren't trying to compress the photo as little as possible, but to lose as little meaning as possible.

Imaging Pittsburgh

As a big proponent of online archival photo databases, it's interesting to see the challenges in putting together such a collection. One of them being metadata of course.

"The team has spent tremendous energy cataloging the images; what better way to tell some of Pittsburgh’s stories than by leveraging the controlled metadata? This will allow us to provide curatorial context and guidance to the images in the collections. Our avenues for exploring the collections will encompass time, place and theme. Some of our theme ideas include 'Pittsburgh at Work,' 'Pittsburgh at Play,' 'Pittsburgh at Home,' and 'Pittsburgh Personalities.'"

Metadata = better access/searchability for users. I wonder if they have thought about letting users themselves help tag photos? Maybe someone looking at the photos will recognize a person or street previously unidentified.

Youtube and Libraries

youtube is a great teaching tool! Especially for kinetic things that are hard to understand through verbal description or still pictures.

like sign language:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cayMkVidpc&feature=related

or cooking roti:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg0p5TXi_Cc

I don't know if instructional videos should be a top priority for libraries at the moment-- it doesn't seem worth taking time/staff away from other duties. But if the resources are available it could be a nice idea, especially for online students, or those working from off-campus (Lord knows I could have used help the first time I was trying to access the online journals from home). Sometimes I feel like college librarians in particular spend a little too much mental energy trying to seem hip and with-it for the benefit of the undergrad population.

Flickr Update

I have put the 20 pics for the assignment in a set located here. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/sets/72157607316574091/detail/ if that link is weird.)

Week 4 Comments

First comment

Second comment

Muddiest Point #3

Why do the computers in the SIS lab run Unix instead of Linux? My impression was that Linux was more user-friendly. What are the advantages of Unix for academic institutions?

Week 4 Readings

Wikipedia : Database

While reading this, I tried to think which sorts of models and operations were used by the database I worked with at my old job. I'm not sure, though -- it seems like the interface made everything obscure to the user. I would think it was a network database, but I'm not sure. I definitely remember issues with locking. With the database I used, it seemed to work in the manner than an OS makes a computer usable -- the software's interface made the data easily retrievable without much IT knowledge. Of course, when there were problems, I had to go to a supervisor or IT person.

Interesting that wikipedia notes a bibliographic database (ie library catalogue) as its own type of database. How does it function differently than other kinds?

Gilliland: Metadata

I'm glad this article is giving such specific examples of metadata (library metadata could be Library of Congress subject headings; archival metadata could be a finding aid). Although the term may have been borrowed from geodata specialists, it can be used for information in lots of forms, digital or not.

The issue of standardization is interesting. In the archival preservation course, we've been learning about international standards for microfilming & other materials. Although the guidlelines here aren't as physical; they seem to be organizational/content standards.

So metadata records our interactions with data as well as the information object's content. So it will increase over time as we process/preserve/modify data -- is this part of the information boom or a sort of shadow-boom?

Dublin Core

This deals with the previous question of standardization of metadata. Have these semantic guidelines been widely adopted? By whom? Have they been revised since this was originally published?

Flickr Account

My flicker account is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michellinor/

Comments for Week 3 Readings

First comment

Second comment

Muddiest Point #2

So I think I understand the difference between random access and serial access pretty well. However, when we were discussing the RAM component of the computer, I was a little confused about which part of memory retrieval it actually does. I wrote in my notes that it assigns "addresses" to different pieces of information. Does it also do the work of retrieval? Or does it just tell some other component which address to go to? Does it store the info or just do the work of labeling?

Week 3 Readings

Garrels

Last week, one of the readings on Moore's Law stated that software developed at a much slower rate than hardware. This article makes it easy to see why -- rather than fitting more transistors on a chip, a whole computing language has to be written and it has to actually be usable. The average user doesn't have to understand how the CPU and RAM and etc work, but they have to be able to navigate the software.

"When programmers can read, distribute and change code, the code will mature... This software will be more flexible and of a better quality than software that has been developed using the conventional channels, because more people have tested it in more different conditions than the closed software developer ever can."

This reminds me of some ideas we talked about in the Understanding Information class. Like how large numbers of people anonymously "tagging" things on the internet can actually create a better organizational structure than one person/company trying to do the work. More testers = more data.

Maybe I will download OpenOffice.

Mac OS X

Wow, I really cannot get through this first one. Lot of jargon I don't understand. I am trusting that if this technical stuff is important,we will discuss it in class, so I am skipping to the "Why" section to read the discussion of different operating systems. I've always used Windows, myself, so I am curious to see how this guy thinks it compares. His attitude seems to be "it's fine for people who don't care." Right on. Maybe I should care? Will I need to care for this profession?

The wikipedia article notes that Mac has switched from PowerPC to Intel processors. I wonder what factors were at play in that decision?

Thurott

We can see here how the process for Microsoft software is very different from Linux. Instead of constant testing and fluid development there's a much more structured system of consumer feedback and corporate response.

Interesting, too, that they say the next version of Windows is scheduled for three years from the release of Vista. Again, very structured. There seem to be cycles both in Mac and Microsoft software where they will release an operating system that's very different from the previous one, then the next few releases are subtle improvements on the it, and then another dramatic change followed by more less-dramatic upgrades. As one commenter notes, it may be best to change systems right when there is a more dramatic change (like from xp to vista) because you will learn how to be comfortable with it early: "Put in the time now to at least learn the technology and be prepared to roll out Windows 7 or else you're still going to be running an 8 year old operating system in 2010."

Comments

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Reading Notes for Week 1

OCLC Report: Content, Not Containers

Interesting term, "format agnostic." The authors use it to refer to information consumers who have no preference between various information delivery systems. Perhaps the information itself could be called agnostic as well -- so much information is now available in multiple formats, none more definitive than another, such as newspapers available in print and online, and tv shows that can be watched on television or purchased from iTunes or watched on youtube. In which container should this information be preserved for later access? Does it matter?

Another interesting element of this report concerns the effect on academic publishing. The idea that scholars would rather publish on the web, in order that their ideas reach the maximum audience, does present a real conflict of interest with the fact that their books are supposed to make money for the university press and thus for the university, said scholar's employer. Cornell's bind-on-demand program sounds like a possible solution that perhaps could be applied to the publishing industry at large. Has it met with success?

These sorts of articles always seem to overstate the role of blogs, as far as I'm concerned. I doubt so many people actually use them as a news source. More often, they serve as a portal to news sources, with a list of links tailored to a specific topic or mindset, and offer commentary. They seem to perform the role of contextualization rather than providing the information itself (and any original information is usually, like, pictures of the blogger's dog).

Lynch

Lynch has managed to write this in a general enough way that it doesn't sound as terribly dated 10 years later as it might. Are his definitions of Info. Literacy and IT Literacy still used?

What maybe has changed since 1998 is the IT skills students have already equipped themselves with outside of the classroom. Most already have "an appreciation of interactive media, and also a recognition of the fluid nature of many digital forms, plus an understanding of the computer’s
growing ability to edit or even fabricate what have traditionally been viewed as factual records of events (such as images)." [Obviously this is going to differ between world regions and cultures, but for now I will assume we're talking about in the US.] What Lynch terms as the second perspective on IT literacy -- an understanding of the underlying principles of technology and infrastructure -- is what most general education programs don't provide.

Vaughn

So basically, keeping a library technologically current is very expensive and requires constant vigilance. That's one thing for universities with tuition-paying students, but quite another for public libraries. Do they have any hope of catching up with technological advancements? Although, for disadvantaged communities in particular, state-of-the-art technology isn't necessary, as long as the library can provide some sort of access that patrons can't afford otherwise.

Reading Notes for Week 2

(Week 1 will be next.)

Computer Hardware/ wikipedia

Honestly, so much of this basic information is new to me (such as, I did not know that RAM stood for Random Access Memory). Considering I just bought a new laptop, that's pretty irresponsible. If you look at the Dell website, for example, where I bought my laptop, these terms are not explained very well -- they just try and convince you to buy a more expensive model because the processor is "better."

I guess I've never taken any sort of IT or Comp Sci class because I've never been interested in doing much besides using Microsoft Word and the internet, and that has always been fairly intuitive. But that's sort of like learning to drive without knowing anything about how a car works -- certainly possible but not a great idea.

Obviously lots of women work in IT, but as far as mainstream culture goes, I think it's still perceived as a more male realm of knowledge. Sort of like...cars.

Moore's Law/ wikipedia & Scientific American

The video brought up my comparison between cars and computers -- except to say how they are completely different. At least in terms of how quickly the industry advances.

Interestingly, wikipedia notes that although consumer prices decrease as the transistor density increases, the cost of production goes up. So how do computers/cell phones/etc keep getting cheaper? Purely from increased consumer need? (Or perceived need -- no wonder Apple has so many ipod and iphone ads.)

Important to note that Moore's law does not apply to software or other things that actually make computers usable, so the advances will not neccessarily be seen in our daily lives at the same exponential rate.

Computer History Museum

Another explanation of Moore's law -- the photos of microchips are helpful. The glossary might be worth bookmarking along with the index of people and companies.

Lots of old brochures, love to see how advertising strategies have changed -- really a great barometer of how people and companies actually saw themselves using technology.

This site will be a good reference this semester; it explains things in understandable language, something wikipedia is not always good at.

Muddiest Point #1

What are the "discussion topics" on the syllabus? Are they more required reading, we just don't need to comment on them in our reading notes because we'll discuss them in class? Or are we supposed to discuss them in our blog? Or in those chat room things? Does anyone else find this sort of confusing?