Unit 14 - Cloud Computing & The Future of Libraries

I had not heard of cloud computing before this. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, what a useful tool. People and companies can access software and computing capabilities without having to install it. It seems as if the services are immediately available on the Net.
But not owning the applications seems as if we would end up having some of the problems we have with databases. There is no guarantee that it will be available in the future or that we will have access to it. If it changes how will we be able to access our old material? Everything seems to cycle though, getting to one extreme and then reacting. It is weird to me that in many senses we are moving toward individualism and smaller ways of living and then there is this other trend towards the collective.

I had the same mixed feelings towards the article about the future of libraries. In many ways the changes that could occur in libraries is exciting to me and I look forward to them, especially the transformation of libraries into cultural centers. In many ways, libraries are already moving that way with the inclusion of music and films among others included in collections. Some parts of the article scare me. Can libraries keep up with the changes? More importantly, can library employees make the changes? How can we handle the continuing pressure to do more? It is hard for me to see how the library is going to change. So many people currently in the field that I have talked to have no concern for theories and trends in librarianship. They do the day to day work and don't think about what is next. I find it discouraging. Using the tools we learned about in this class in a library setting is exciting to me, but I don't know where I will find a library that is embracing these world views.

This week I commented on Sr. Becky's blog and Nelida's blog

Unit 13 - Monitoring web activity

Learning that the government is actively watching people's activity online and using private information to create profiles is highly distrubing. It's something you know is happening, but don't really think about. I suppose this means everytime you order something online, the company you buy from, now has that information of yours to sell. I was particularly disturbed by the ease that the Total Information Awareness gave to the government to gather information on people without probable cause or a warrent. It's like knowing you have your own personal policeman to monitor everything you do. The other point that popped out at me from the TIA article was the blurb on the name change on the TIA. This seems to be a common practice in government workings. If something becomes controversial, we will just change the name and everything will be fine. The web site said the program was no longer being funded; I wonder if that means the datamining was turning out to be as useful as was hoped or if the project has just gone underground.

I'm glad No Place to Hide was written because now I dont feel quite like a conspiracy theorist. I have long though that the key tags for stores and the On Star programs were just ways to keep tabs on our movements. Someone with a cell phone, an email address, a GM and a Grocery key tag is all set to be watched. I understand that this can be a great way to find potential threats, but it is such an invasion of privacy. And we thought Big Brother was going to come in through the TV. Who knows when everyone switches to HD?

I found it ironic that the YouTube video had been taken down due to a pending copyright issue with Viacom.

This week I commented on Maggie's blog and Miquel's blog

Unit 12 - Wikis, blogs, and social tagging

I enjoyed watching the video from the creator of Wikipedia. It is fascinating that such a useful encyclopedia can be created so chaotically. I'm glad too, that he addressed many of the beliefs about Wikipedia and its lack of credibility. I think that many people use Wikipedia, but then say they wouldn't recommend it for scholarly work. In reality, encyclopedias are never an acceptable source of information as a citation. They are where you start to get a general idea on a subject and then do the actual research from there. The added benefit of Wikipedia is the links it has to other 'legitimate' works.

One of the libraries I worked at created a wiki for the employee handbook. That way things could be updated and changed immediately, instead of being 2-3, 5 years outdated. It was nice too because anyone could access it and using the side bar you could find what you wanted relatively easy. The down side was you had to be online to be able to see the handbook.

Learning the history of blogs and how they are used in the library setting expanded my knowledge of their use. I had known of using blogs for announcements, but using them for communication between staff was new. I like the idea of a reference blog. It seems practical and easy to use. The self filing system would be very useful. That has always been a concern to me about blogs. They are not so easy to search because the page goes on forever and they are only archived by date.

I'm glad we read the article of social tagging because I didn't know much about it. I had heard the term, but didn't really know how it is used. It makes sense to me to have a location where all of your links are kept. I had not started to use my bookmarks until recently, but I could see how this could get filled up relatively quickly. I have to actually see how a site like del.icio.us works, but I'm curious to find out.

This week I commented on Jabari's blog and Eric's blog

Unit 11 - Digital Libraries

Digital libraries seemed to really be targeted towards the scholarly field with the creation of the Digital Libraries Initiative. Universities began creating databases of specified fields as what seemed alternatives to the systems controlled by vendors. The beauty of these systems was the way they could be organized and searched. As the article, Digital Libraries: Challenges and Influential Work said, the invention of the Open Archives initiative as a protocol helped to make these digital libraries uniform. Institutional Repositories went into greater detail about the use and structure of repositories or digital libraries. Mentioned several times was the concept of "federation" which allows inter-searching of the different repositories, sharing of resources.

The second D-Lib article Dewey Meets Turing, showed how librarians and computer scientists have come together to create these digital libraries and the challenges that have come with working between the two fields. This was very interesting to me and I wonder how much of a continued struggle there is between these two worlds? So much now of library work has to do with the digital world, that it is almost necessary to have the technical background.

I appreciated the point the authors made in this article that "the core of librarianship has remained." That is, while things have moved to the digital world, there is still a need for organization, collocation and presentation of the resources. Librarians working to harness the benefits of the digital while bringing the foundation of librarianship which has been so valuable for so long is a needed skill and will make the future of information gathering and accessing all the more valuable.

This week I commented on http://oliverlis2600.blogspot.com/ and http://nicplana.blogspot.com/

Unit 10 - Searching the Web

The readings this week were informative and understandable. Search engines work incredibly well considering all the space that must be covered. And for many searches they seem to provide at least a kernel of the answer people are searching for. I had never really taken into consideration the need to break the tasks of search engines up nor realized how many hundreds of computers would be necessary to be able to search and store and answer and advertise. The use of hypertext to add to the Web knowledge of the search engine is such a great idea. In fact, it is how I find new classmates blogs to read, but I questioned what happens then to the information that is not linked? It doesn't get found.

The article on Deep Web touched on the drawbacks of search engines, the huge results with little relevance and particularly a lack of access to Web sites that are not connected to other sites. This web site, while plugging the particular search tool, explained that a significant amount of useful and relevant information is in the Deep Web, but is not accessed. The article listed Web sites that are considered to be Deep Web, mostly databases. The list made sense, but again I was struck by the fact that a searcher would have to be aware of the site to be able to access it. The article never made it clear how this particular search tool would make is possible to find these sites. But this brings up a interesting point: if the only way to use these sites it to know about them, where is the library's role in this?

The last article on OAI - Protocol for metadata harvesting nicely tied in last week's lecture with searching. A number of people were validly asking why we needed to know metadata or why it is important. I think when it comes to searching, metadata, while it may not be seen by human eye can be read by computers and helps to find sources while also keeping them in order.

Unit 9 - XML

It took to about the third reading for it to sink in that XML does not replace HTML. What I don't understand is why XML is necessary, if HTML functioned before XML existed.

XML is a way to structure documents for the Internet so that they remain in the same structure as they were created. XML defines the elements, attributes, and child elements. The three type of markups of XML documents are processing instructions, Document type definition, and consists of a root element name that matches the DTD. DTD is not a well liked markup; people prefer XML Schema, DDML, or SOX.

The great thing about XML is that it can cross platforms, which is great. But beyond that, I can not keep track of all the different parts of XMLand keep element and attribute separate.

I am drowning in the sea of XML.

This week I commented on https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22269039881496164&postID=2121290396052537746&page=1
and http://jymst.blogspot.com/

Unit 8 - HTML

I had a lot of fun with the HTML tutorial. The try examples were very helpful in reinforcing how the tags work. I could have spent much more time playing around with different tag sets. As usual, the beginning descriptions were easy to follow, but as the tutorial continued, the complexity of the tags became difficult. I was still able to follow the concept, but was no longer able to read the coding. I will definitely return to that site to try more of the examples. The HTML Cheatsheet will be something I print off for reference.

The CSS tutorial was much more complex, but I was able to follow the idea and understand why style sheet would be valuable for web page designers. My understanding of the purpose of style sheets is too make the job easier to create the page and keep the basic style through out the web site. It seemed though that even the CSS became fairly complicated and would require a fair amount of work. I wonder though how much more useful style sheets would be for pages that vary greatly. Do they save much more time than cutting and pasting?

The report from GSU on creating a content management system was interesting. It was clear from the article though, that to be able to create such a useful device, a library would need a very skilled technology person and a lot of feedback and involvement from the librarians. The problems identified, such as a lack of continuity between the librarians' pages and the inexperience with Web design were major flaws for a library expecting its staff to contribute to the web page. That the web development librarian was able to create a way for librarians to contribute content to the system without needing to understand the design was a brilliant idea and allowed information to remain fresh without needing to rely on a technology expert to enter everything. I appreciated the detail the article gave on the steps the library went through to create a functional system, but was also honest about some aspects that people were not happy with. With this demonstration I was able to see how using CSS would be beneficial.

This week I responded to Oliver's LIS 2600 Blog and Amanda Pike writes about Information Technology