textfiles/magazines/CURRENTCITIES/1998.9-8

			    _Current Cites_
 			    Volume 9, no. 8
 			      August 1998
   			      The Library
             	   University of California, Berkeley
                      Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
                  	   ISSN: 1060-2356
 	http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.8.html
 
                              Contributors:
 
                       Kirk Hastings, Terry Huwe,
              Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart, Roy Tennant
                       Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson

   
  DIGITAL LIBRARIES
  
   Noerr, Dr. Peter. The Digital Library Tool Kit. Mountain View, CA: Sun
   Microsystems, 1998
   (http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/libraries/digitaltoolkit.
   html). -- Although it is difficult for any single document to describe
   the emerging field of digital libraries in a comprehensive fashion,
   this nearly 100-page, seven chapter document does a fairly decent job
   of it. In Chapter 1 Dr. Noerr takes a look at a series of questions
   that can help librarians focus on a number of considerations
   concerning the creation and maintenance of a digital library. Chapters
   2-5 discusses planning and implementation issues. It ends with a
   couple chapters covering current research and existing systems, with
   resources for more information and a look toward the future. Sun
   Microsystems sponsored the creation of this document as part of their
   support for education and digital libraries. -- RT
   
  ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
   
   Allen, David Yehling. "Creating and Distributing High Resolution
   Cartographic Images" RLG DigiNews 2(4) (August 15, 1998)
   (http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews2-4.html#feature). --
   Creating digital map images presents particular problems. This brief
   piece serves as a useful introduction to some of those problems and
   the emerging methods by which they may be solved. Links to a number of
   example projects and resources are included for those wishing to view
   examples and find out more about the technologies discussed. One thing
   this article makes apparent, however, is that we are still in a period
   of experimentation with various technologies, and it is not yet clear
   which one (or none) will win out in the end. That makes it rather
   difficult for those of us who would prefer to do this only once. -- RT
   
   
   Ford, Charlotte E. and Stephen P. Harter. "The Downside of Scholarly
   Electronic Publishing: Problems in Accessing Electronic Journals
   through Online Directories and Catalogs" College & Research Libraries
   59(4) (July 1998): 335-346. -- Using Harter's previous study (along
   with Hak Joon Kim) (see Current Cites for July, August and October
   1996) as a springboard, this article examines the usefulness of four
   online e-journal directories and two online union catalogs in
   accessing electronic journals by comparing the coverage, accuracy,
   currency and overlap among the six sources. The fact that most
   e-journals have multiple homepages and sometimes multiple formats
   (http, gopher, ftp) makes the maintenance of an authoritative list
   extremely tricky. The authors suggest that e-journal producers can
   help the situation by removing dated files, by bouncing users from old
   sites to new ones, by informing the major directories of changes in
   their addresses, and by clearly listing mirror sites and alternate
   URLs on their homepages. At the same time, those who maintain the
   directories of e -journals should use software that periodically
   checks the accuracy of URLs listed. -- MP
   
   Resh, Vincent H. "Science and Communications: An Author/Editor/User's
   Perspective on the Transition from Paper to Electronic Publishing"
   Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship 19 (Summer 1998).
   (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/98-summer/article3.html) -- The
   publication of academic research, especially in the sciences, is
   driven by forces that are not necessarily in sync: on the one hand,
   technology is advancing and scientific output is increasing but
   library funding is decreasing. How does electronic publishing fit into
   this picture? Vincent Resh, a professor in the Department of
   Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, takes a
   look at this issue from the perspective of one who is an author,
   editor and user of electronic resources; he outlines and summarizes
   what he views as the popular perceptions held by his colleagues about
   the transition from print to online publishing. Among these
   perceptions: 1) Subscriptions costs will be reduced with a shift from
   paper to electronic media; 2) Lagtime between submission and
   publication will be reduced; 3) Information from e-journals is not as
   acceptable because they are not peer-reviewed; 4) E-journals offer
   value-added features like links video simulations and hyperlinks to
   other citations. In his analysis of e-publishing, Resh concludes that
   scientific journals are used most by young researchers yet editorial
   decisions are being made my older editors who may be entrenched in
   outdated paradigms. -- MP
   
  MULTIMEDIA & HYPERMEDIA
   
   Wang, Gene. "The Future of Digital Cameras" Web Techniques 3(9)
   (September 1998): 45-48. -- Consumer digital cameras are currently
   expensive play things that offer less picture quality than the
   cheapest film camera. But that, says Wang, will change by sometime
   next year when much higher image resolutions (over 2 million pixels)
   are achieved. These new cameras will also likely use better
   compression algorithms (to provide smaller images with less loss of
   data), run in-camera applications (perhaps on top of the Windows CE
   operating system), and even cost less. Although the technical tangent
   on how wavelet compression works was probably unnecessary, the bulk of
   the piece is very informative and worthwhile to anyone considering the
   purchase of a digital camera in the $500 - $3,000 range. Interestingly
   enough, this chairman and CEO of a company that builds hardware and
   software components for digital cameras is basically telling potential
   consumers to wait until the next generation of products hits the
   streets. I'd say that's good advice. -- RT
   
  NETWORKS & NETWORKING
   
   Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption
   Research, Wiretap Politics, & Chip Design. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly &
   Associates, 1998. -- Some of you may be old enough to remember when
   The Progressive printed an article that described how to build an
   atomic device in enough detail to be useful for anyone wishing to do
   it (November 1979). The publication of the piece had been blocked six
   months earlier by a U.S. Federal Court, in what was the first case of
   "prior restraint" of the freedom of the press. What followed was a
   firestorm of outrage, support for freedom of the press, and further
   litigation. This book is similar in that it is also a highly political
   "cookbook." Its entire purpose is to once and for all blow the
   government's Data Encryption Standard (DES) out of the water. DES uses
   a 56-bit key to encrypt data. The FBI and the National Security Agency
   as recently as 1997 testified before Congress that DES was extremely
   difficult to crack. A team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
   (EFF) cracked it in 56 hours. This book tells how, in great detail,
   and also provides some historical background and supporting research
   papers. Current U.S. law prevents EFF from publishing on this
   information on the Web, so they have taken the extraordinary measures
   of printing their information (which is legal) in such a way as to be
   easily scanned, specifying which free software is required to perform
   turn the scan into text, and providing step-by-step instructions on
   how to do it. They have done all this in the hope that others living
   in countries without laws restricting its publication on the Web will
   do so. EFF can then legally point to any and all such sites around the
   world. Their goal, as that of their spiritual colleagues before them,
   is to demonstrate that "official secrecy in this area serves no useful
   public purpose" (The Progressive (November 1979, p.15), and is, in
   fact, detrimental, by providing a false sense of security where none
   should exist. -- RT
   
   Maxwell, Bruce. How to Find Health Information on the Internet.
   Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998. -- Log onto any
   search engine and lookup the medical issue of your choice; you'll
   probably retrieve tens of thousands of hits. This guide provides a
   highly selective, manageable, annotated list of health sites and
   includes sections on specific diseases, preventative medicine, and
   health care issues. Particularly valuable in the guide is the
   introduction which provides guidelines on how to judge the quality of
   health information on the Internet. Maxwell is quick to note that the
   Internet is but one source in an information landscape which includes
   print journals, books and commercial databases as well, that can help
   you become a better informed health consumer. - MP
   
  GENERAL
   
   Flower, Eric. "Price, Performance and System Selection in the
   Intel-Based PC Market" Computers in Libraries 18(7) (July/Aug 1998):
   8-18. (http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jul/story1.htm). -- There's no
   lack of articles which focus on various aspects of the PC market, but
   this one really pulls it all together. Of course the year's biggest
   desktop computer news is the arrival of sub-$1,000 machines, but
   Flower explores many levels of "Wintel" systems and their suitability
   for different needs. (Although this article appears in Computers in
   Libraries, he doesn't try to match PC functions to library tasks, and
   wisely avoids placing a rigid frame around a changeable landscape.) An
   appropriately large amount of space is devoted to the recent history
   of Intel chip development and expectations for its future. Typical of
   the thoroughness here, processors from oft-ignored competitors AMD and
   Cyrix are included. After the CPUs are described, whole system
   configurations are compared. Armed with this kind of information,
   individual shoppers or institutional buyers will have a much easier
   time of it. Read the Web version to take advantage of the links to
   related analysis and relevant manufacturer Web sites. - JR
   
   Healy, Leigh Watson. Library Systems: Current Developments and Future
   Directions Washington: Council on Library and Information Resources,
   1998. -- The preface cautions the reader against using this report as
   "a comparative study of integrated library systems," but it is
   difficult to resist the temptation. Following four case studies of two
   academic libraries, a public library and a special library (all large
   institutions), the bulk of the report consists of vendor profiles.
   These profiles can be handy references to basic information on twelve
   of the most important library automation vendors. While anyone seeking
   to purchase a new automation system will need to do more research (as
   is pointed out in the preface) this is nonetheless an excellent place
   to start to get an idea of the present products and future directions
   of the major players. -- RT
   
   Wiley, Deborah Lynne. Beyond Information Retrieval: Ways to Provide
   Content in Context" Database 21(4)(August/September 1998): 18-22.
   (http://www.onlineinc.com/database/DB1998/wiley8.html) -- This article
   should be a wake-up call for information providers who are slow to use
   the latest information retrieval technologies to provide better
   solutions for their customers. Wiley chronicles the history of
   information retrieval in the pre-Web world and provides a helpful
   overview of recent Web-based, search-enhancing technology features.
   These technologies include collaborative filtering (software that
   offers recommendations to users based on what other users have done),
   data extraction, data visualization, agent technologies, pattern
   recognition, classification/clustering and virtual communities. Wiley
   argues that basic search and retrieval functions alone are not enough
   any more, and provides specific examples of companies that are using
   these advanced technology features to add value. In trendy circles
   this may be known as knowledge management. Wiley hails it as "content
   in context" or, more simply, moving from finding information to
   providing answers. -- LY
     _________________________________________________________________
   
 Current Cites 9(8) (August 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright
1998 by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. _All rights
reserved._
 
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