textfiles/magazines/CURRENTCITIES/1998.9-6

			    _Current Cites_
 			    Volume 9, no. 6
 			       June 1998
   			      The Library
             	   University of California, Berkeley
                      Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
               		    ISSN: 1060-2356
        http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.6.html
 
             		      Contributors:
 
           	 Christof Galli, Kirk Hastings, Terry Huwe,
              Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart, Roy Tennant
                  	Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
   
  DIGITAL LIBRARIES
   
   Guthrie, Kevin. "JSTOR and the University of Michigan: An Evolving
   Collaboration" Library Hi Tech 16 (1) (1998): 9-14. -- This special
   issue of Library Hi Tech features the dynamic cultural and
   technological changes affecting the University of Michigan library
   arena. With the recent attention on scholarly communication and
   collaboration, it's timely to take a closer look at Michigan's
   relationship with JSTOR (short for Journal STORage, at
   http://www.jstor.org/), and their progress in making backfiles of
   selected journals available in electronic form. Originally a grant
   project of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with ten test journals and
   six test libraries, JSTOR is now an independent, not-for-profit
   organization with approximately 250 paying library participants and 70
   journals committed to contributing content. Guthrie, JSTOR's
   President, chronicles the history of this collaboration and notes that
   it provided the flexibility necessary to meet the administrative
   structures, organizational processes and physical plant requirements
   of a fast-growing entrepreneurial enterprise. While Guthrie
   acknowledges the challenges involved in a distributed organizational
   model, he believes that the benefits outweigh the costs. He expresses
   the organization's commitment to maintaining its close relationship
   with the university community to ensure that JSTOR remains responsive
   to user needs. Ideally their lessons can be applied not only to other
   digital library initiatives, but also to other areas ripe for
   self-sustaining enterprises. -- LY
   
   Payette, Sandra D. and Oya Y. Rieger. "Supporting Scholarly Inquiry:
   Incorporating Users in the Design of the Digital Library" The Journal
   of Academic Librarianship 24(2) (March 1998):121-129. -- Through a
   series of questionnaires and interviews with faculty and students, the
   Mann Library at Cornell University conducted a study to find out how
   users engage in research using its digital Gateway. The study sought
   to assess the effectiveness of the existing design, and to develop
   principles to be used in developing the next generation of the
   Gateway. Users, it seems, do not engage in scholarly research that is
   linear, highly structured and logical and therefore digital libraries
   need to be designed in a way that minimizes hierarchical, linear
   metaphors and that create features that can be customized to an
   individual's personal style and technical capabilities. The Gateway
   was designed with input from earlier focus groups but, interestingly,
   the more recent user survey showed that users were not, in fact,
   taking advantage of features developed in response to their expressed
   requirements! In addition to describing the experiences at Cornell
   University, the article provides an excellent review of the literature
   of user studies in the digital library context. -- MP
   
  ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
   
   Balas, Janet. "Copyright in the Digital Era" Computers in Libraries
   18(6) (June 1998) (http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jun/story2.htm) --
   The title doesn't offer a clue that this is a great annotated
   collection of sources for researching current issues in copyrighted
   information. You may be burying your head in the sand while chanting
   the "fair use" mantra (which is pretty hard to do with sand in your
   mouth), but aren't you curious what the United States Copyright
   Office, the American Library Association, the Digital Future
   Coalition, the Creative Incentive Coalition and others have to say
   about it? URLs are given for the relevant pages from each
   organization, along with commentary about the role each one plays in
   shaping copyright policy or depicting the current state of affairs
   (which might be analogous to a strobe-lit snapshot of a nighttime mob
   scene). Here's a shortcut to one document which is highly relevant for
   many of us: "Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and
   Librarians" (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ21) which is
   U.S. Copyright Office Copyright Information Circular 21. Curl up with
   your favorite TV lawyer (surely preoccupied with other things) and
   have a good long read. -- JR
   
   Kasdorf, Bill. "SGML and PDF: Why We Need Both" Journal of Electronic
   Publishing 3(4) (June 1998)
   (http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-04/kasdorf.html). -- Discussions
   about appropriate digital file formats often degenerate to the level
   of a debate, in which advocates of one format slug it out with
   proponents of another. Thus this article is a refreshing perspective,
   in which the benefits of two very different publication formats are
   examined for their utility in different situations. The not
   unsurprising conclusion is that one format does not prevent
   publication in the other, and publishing in both is often beneficial.
   -- RT 
   
  INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
   
   Digital Future Coalition (www.dfc.org) -- This is not an article per
   se, but a web resource and organization. DFC is an umbrella lobbying
   and information sharing organization concentrating on issues of
   intellectual property and copyright legislation and policy worldwide.
   Members include the American Library Association and the Society of
   American Archivists, etc. Their explicit aim is to lobby for balanced
   legislation that protects access to information as well as the ability
   to regulate and produce profit from information. Whether one agrees
   with their approach or not, the site is a useful place to get the full
   text of major new legislation and critical responses to everthing from
   the Conference on Fair Use to (U.S.) National Information
   Infrastructure (NII) bills to the international WIPO agreement. -- RR
   
   Dyson, Esther. "Privacy Protection: Time to Think and Act Locally and
   Globally" First Monday 3 (6) (1998)
   (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_6/dyson/) -- Noted social and
   technology critic Esther Dyson surveys the current state of privacy on
   the Internet, examining the interplay of cyberspace and local
   jurisdictions. While various, "non-central" groups advocate new types
   of encryption protocols to help us gain a semblance of privacy,
   different cultures around the globe--and the laws they
   promulgate--have little common ground. Therefore privacy on the Net is
   not only a technology issue, but a key issue for global society. -- TH
   
   
   Williams, Leonard. "Teaching Cyberian Politics" First Monday 3 (6)
   (1998) (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_6/williams/) --
   Williams describes his experience in teaching a college course on the
   "politics of cyberspace"--using Web-based syllabi and other dynamic
   tools. The close match between the course subject matter and the
   learning process students employed in using the Web was a powerful
   combination. Williams argues that the approach he took, with its
   emphasis on direct experience, boosted students' critical thinking
   skills about technology and society. -- TH 
   
  MULTIMEDIA & HYPERMEDIA
  
   National Council on Disability. Access to Multimedia Technology by
   People with Sensory Disabilities. Washington: The Council, 1998. 86
   p. (http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS764) -- This report focuses on
   barriers to the use of computerized multimedia technology by people
   who have visual or hearing impairments. It's a good source for an
   overview of what types of problems are encountered and what remedies
   are in place or coming up. As with most government reports by
   committee, there's a bit of a lag regarding new technology, but it
   wasn't intended to be a list of what's cutting edge; rather, it's an
   attempt to enlighten about the uses of broader categories of
   technology, like under what circumstances audio description elements
   can be most appropriate. For policy-watchers, the relevant sections of
   the Rehabilitation Act and Telecommunications Act are discussed, with
   recommendations for specific areas needing stronger enforcement. -- JR
   
   
  NETWORKS & NETWORKING
  
   Boutin, Paul. "Browser Beware" Wired 6.06 (June 1998): 185.
   (http://www.wired.com/wired/6.06/) -- If you're trying to make the
   best of a 16-bit Windows computer or are fed up with the memory
   demands of your current browser, a 7-person engineering team from
   Norway may offer hope with Opera (in Wired's words, "a 1.2-Mbyte
   marvel"). Opera puts Microsoft and Netscape in their place when it
   comes to speed and HTML standards compliance. It is also adept at
   juggling multiple windows, and only requires a 386 with 6 megs of RAM.
   So have they built a better mousetrap? Well, there are no non-Windows
   versions currently available and Opera is weaker on support for
   Unicode 16-bit international character sets, but it does meet the need
   for speed. Opera 4.0 (with Java and CSS2 style sheet support) is due
   out this summer and for $35 (less for education customers) can be
   found at http://www.operasoftware.com/. -- LY
   
   Clark, Kathleen A., Priscilla C. Geahigan, Thomas R. Mirkovich, and
   Anita D. Haynes. "Internet Resources: Cruising for Travel Information"
   College & Research Libraries News
   (http://www.ala.org/acrl/resjun98.html) 59(6) (June 1998): 427-431. --
   Just in time for summer, this month's list of Internet resources looks
   at travel. Included in the list are addresses for sites that can give
   you information (mostly oriented to travel in the United States) about
   accommodations, restaurant guides and other mega travel sites (like
   Yahoo!'s travel page: http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Travel/). Also
   handy are sites for traveling abroad like the Centers for Disease
   Control (CDC) Travel Information (http://www.cdc.gov/) and the
   Intellicast World Weather guide
   (http://www.intellicast.com/weather/intl/). -- MP
   
   Khare, Rohit, and Rifkin, Adam. "Trust Management on the World Wide
   Web" First Monday 3 (6) (1998)
   (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_6/khare/) -- The authors
   describe a new concept for managing sensitive information on the
   Internet, which encourages open, decentralized systems that span
   multiple domains. The system, called "trust management," aims to
   disperse decision-making and analysis about how to protect sensitive
   data throughout organizations, asking "why" instead of "how." The
   basic elements of the system are "principles, principals, and
   policies." Document authoring and distribution is used as a concrete
   example of how the system would work. -- TH
   
   Mace, Scott. "DSL's Devilish Details" BYTE 23(7) (July 1998): 72-80.
   -- As any Internet user knows, you can never have too much speed. This
   is certainly true of home connections. Even with a 56K modem, Web
   pages never seem to come up fast enough. But now that Asymmetric
   Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), or xDSL, or now simply DSL, is on the
   horizon, at least some relief may be at hand. But as this article
   points out, what exactly is "at hand" is still very much an open
   question. Perhaps the most telling evidence of uncertainty in the
   marketplace is depicted in the chart " ADSL Trials and Service
   Deployments," which identifies no fewer than 19 companies worldwide
   offering or soon to be offering ADSL service to a particular region of
   the world. Virtually all of them are offering a different mix of
   upstream and downstream speeds, from 9.6 Kbps upstream (this is
   progress?) to 5.5 Mbps (Singapore) and 7Mbps (Nova Scotia) downstream.
   Hmmm...all of a sudden cable modems are looking real good to me. -- RT
   Sowards, Steven W. "A Typology for Ready Reference Web Sites in
   Libraries" First Monday 3 (5) (1998)
   (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_5/sowards/) -- "Librarians
   and non-librarians alike may overlook important lessons about
   information management if they misinterpret the lessons of
   librarianship as being confined to the realm of paper," the author
   argues. He embarks on a tour and analysis of how librarians are
   organizing their Web-based reference guides, so be prepared to add
   lots of URLs to your bookmark file when you review this article. He
   makes several conclusions that will surely influence your own thoughts
   about what works -- and what doesn't -- on the Web. Moreover, it's
   refreshing to see someone use blunt language to advocate for the
   common sense approaches that librarians employ to help people. Here's
   an example: "After the difficulties we meet in navigating relatively
   large Web sites remind us why libraries -- which deal with truly large
   numbers of elements, running into the millions -- rely on redundancy
   and alternative methods to manage content." -- TH 
   
  GENERAL
   
   Bales, Susan Nall. "Technology and Tradition: The Future's in the
   Balance" American Libraries 29(6) (June/July 1998): 82-86. --
   Following up on their report Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Libraries
   and Communities in the Digital Age (see the December 1996 issue of
   Current Cites), the Benton Foundation has conducted and analyzed six
   focus groups aimed at the issues identified in that report. Their
   findings will be released in a publication scheduled for release in
   July 1998 (watch Current Cites for news of its availability).
   Meanwhile, Bales shares some of their findings in this article. Among
   them are: "1) Libraries must be portrayed as high touch and high tech,
   and in that order, 2) Root all discussions of technology in books and
   reading, 3) Teach the public that the librarian is an information
   navigator, 4) Emphasize that the library you trust can help you make
   the transition to technology, and 5) Recognize the powerful
   connections Americans make between libraries and effective parenting."
   Libraries are at a critical juncture between the past and the future.
   How well librarians meld the traditional with the technical and
   present themselves to the public will dictate the role of libraries
   in modern society for decades to come. My advice is to get the
   original Benton report, this article, the new report when it comes
   out, read them, and pay close attention. -- RT 
   
   DeJesus, Edmund X. "Year 2000 Survival Guide" BYTE 23(7) (July 1998):
   52-62. -- In the thorough and authoritative manner in which BYTE
   readers have come to expect, DeJesus outlines the good, the bad, and
   the downright ugly aspects of the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. The bad
   news is that even if you start right now, your large legacy systems
   will probably not be ready for the millennium in time. The good news
   is that you if apply triage strategies and contingency plans well
   enough, you may just make it. Out of all the press out there on this
   problem, this article cuts through the rhetoric with a hot knife and
   summarizes key information in tables, diagrams, and timelines. And
   it's the timeline that helps provide comic relief amidst the disaster.
   Just think, on January 1, 29602 the Microsoft Windows NT file system
   will fail. Better start planning now, Bill. - RT
   
   Smith, K. Wayne, ed. OCLC 1967-1997: Thirty Years of Furthering Access
   to the World's Information New York: Haworth Press, 1998. -- When
   library historians review the major milestones of the profession over
   the last thirty years or so, there will be three developments that
   will stand head-and-shoulders above the rest: the creation of the
   Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) format, the codification of the
   Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2), and the rise of
   the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC, since changed to the Online
   Computer Library Center). OCLC has evolved to become the hub of
   library cataloging records, interlibrary loan transactions, and many
   other essential services for thousands of libraries across the United
   States and beyond. Although anyone not curious about OCLC would
   probably not be interested in this volume (simultaneously published as
   the Journal of Library Administration, 25 (2/3 - 4) (1998), it serves
   as a useful chronicle of a good idea that helped to transform
   libraries and library services. -- RT
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Current Cites 9(6) (June 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356
   Copyright 1998 by the Library, University of California,
   Berkeley. All rights reserved.
   http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.6.html
   
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   Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library.berkeley.edu, 
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