textfiles/magazines/CURRENTCITIES/1999.10-5

                     _Current Cites_
                     Volume 10, no. 5
                         May 1999
                        The Library
             University of California, Berkeley
                 Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
 
    http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.5.html

                        Contributors:

          Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips, Rick Rinehart,
             Jim Ronningen, Roy Tennant, Lisa Yesson   
   
   Bosak, Jon and Tim Bray. "XML and the Second-Generation Web"
   Scientific American (May 1999)
   (http://www.sciam.com/1999/0599issue/0599bosak.html). - Two of the
   foremost authorities on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) have
   teamed up to provide a high-level overview of what it is and why it
   represents the next generation of the Web. You won't be able to create
   many XML documents based on what you learn here, but you will be able
   to use it to help explain XML and why it is so important to those who
   haven't run into it before. My one minor objection is the glibness
   with which they predict an "astonishing Internet growth rate" for the
   Resource Description Framework (RDF), which I think is being almost
   irresponsibly over-optimistic for a standard that appears to be about
   as fun as pulling teeth with pliers to implement. But chalk that up to
   a difference of opinion and you have an effective and authoritative
   introduction to this technology. I wouldn't drop it on my mother, but
   many of my colleagues should read it. - RT
   
   Coffman, Steve. "Reference as Others Do It" American Libraries 30(5)
   (May 1999): 54-56. - If I were you, I'd keep my eyes on this guy
   (Steve Coffman). Last month I reviewed an article of his that used an
   existing commercial system (Amazon.com) as an example of what
   libraries could collectively achieve (see Building Earth's Largest
   Library: Driving Into the Future"). Now he's at it again. Only this
   time he investigates customer call centers for what we may be able to
   learn about providing library reference service. Customer call centers
   typically have centralized staff, interactive voice response systems,
   automated call distribution, question analysis techniques,
   sophisticated software support, and training and monitoring. There are
   obviously differences between the mission and goals of customer call
   centers and library reference services, but there are nonetheless
   lessons that can be learned from this comparison. Coffman draws out
   some of those lessons and challenges us to rethink how we provide
   reference service in our libraries. - RT
   
   Everett-Church, Ray. "Why Spam is a Problem" OnTheInternet 5(3)
   (May/June 1999): 16-21. - At first I thought I didn't need this
   article to tell me why spam (unsolicited commercial email) is a
   problem -- I already know it is from personal experience (as do you,
   no doubt). But a quick glance at the piece showed me to be wrong.
   Everett-Church outlines six specific reasons why spam is a serious
   problem. And annoyance isn't one of them (I guess my list would have
   seven). His reasons are: cost shifting (making others pay your
   advertising costs, such as Internet service provider storage and
   delivery costs), fraud (in order to bypass spam filters, spammers will
   often take on other identities), theft (in as much as you may be
   paying the delivery or storage costs on their behalf), harm to the
   marketplace (a flood of messages places a load on the entire system),
   consumer perception (the annoyance and frustration caused by spam have
   caused consumers to view any request of their email address, even by
   legitimate businesses, with suspicion), and global implications (and
   here is where he gets fairly far afield, but the idea here is that the
   excesses of unscrupulous marketers will damage the growth of free
   speech and democracy around the world). Like I said, I'm already
   convinced that spam is a problem, but gosh, I guess I never knew just
   how much. An accompanying sidebar on spam law provides some basic
   information on recent legal developments and some useful links. - RT
   
   Garman, Nancy, ed. "Special Search Engine Section" Online 23(3) (May,
   1999) Miller, Kathy, managing ed. "Electronic Searching Tools and
   Methods in Flux" Computers in Libraries 19(5) (May, 1999)
   (http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may/cilmag.htm) - Like the little
   flowers that bloom in the spring, bits of good search advice seem to
   be popping up all over. A bunch of research and ideas is bundled into
   these two themed issues, each with a slightly different focus: in
   Online, the emphasis is on understanding the workings of search
   engines for the benefit of both Web searchers and Webmasters, and in
   CIL we have search strategies for librarians working in our usual "yes
   there's the Web but that's not all there is" environment. For example,
   go to Online to delve into topics like results ranking and natural
   language processing, and CIL for more Webology plus articles about
   online catalogs and mental models for searching. By the way, after
   enjoying these big bouquets of info on the subject, go check out
   Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) if you haven't
   before. The periodical literature may blossom and die away again, but
   this spot is consistent and current. - JR
   
   McKay, Sharon Cline. "Accessing Electronic Journals" Database 22 (2)
   (April/May 1999): 17-23.
   (http://www.onlineinc.com/database/DB1999/mckay4.html) - If you have
   been charged with the daunting task of leading your organization
   through the maze of the electronic journal (e-journal) world <20> fear is
   not an unfounded response. While this article may not completely ease
   your anxiety or answer all your questions, it should help anticipate a
   few unexpected issues in your decision making. The initiated may not
   find too many insights here, but McKay does make some good points on
   reporting considerations and provides a brief profile of services from
   major subscription agencies. She also predicts that e-journals will
   eventually be ordered through a single subscription agent, like print
   journals today. Hopefully this will be good news to information
   professionals, as well as to subscription agencies such as the
   author's. - LY
   
   Members of the Clever Project. "Hypersearching the Web" Scientific
   American (June 1999)
   (http://www.sciam.com/1999/0699issue/0699raghavan.html). - This is a
   fascinating article on how research scientists are trying to do a
   better job of providing search tools for the Web. An IBM research team
   called the Clever Project is using mathematical analysis of links to
   identify Web sites that are "authorites" (the best sources of
   information) and "hubs" (collections of links to those locations) for
   any particular query. Also described briefly is similar work
   undertaken at Stanford University, which has resulted in the Google
   Web search engine. - RT
   
   Nardi, Bonnie A., and O'Day, Vickie. "Information Ecologies: Using
   Technology with Heart." Special Issue. First Monday 4 (5) (May 3,
   1999) (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_5/nardi_contents.html).
   - First Monday offers substantial excerpts from Nardi and O'Day new
   book, published by MIT Press in January 1999 under the same name. The
   authors argue persuasively that "the common rhetoric about technology
   falls into two extreme categories: uncritical acceptance or blanket
   rejection." Such extreme positions leave poor choices for action and
   critical thinking about what we really want from technology. They
   sustain the myth that whatever technological changes come along must
   be accepted out of hand. Nardi and O'Day go on to stake out a "middle
   ground" where managers, technologists and plain old folks might build
   a better awareness of the complex, "organic" nature of both technology
   and information resources. The chapters excerpted here do not cover
   librarians, but in the book, an entire chapter is devoted to
   librarians and the library as an "information ecology." This article
   (and the full book) should be required reading for any information
   specialist who is concerned about the impact of technology. - TH
   
   Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. and B. Tommie Usdin, editors. Markup Languages
   MIT Press, ISSN 1099-6621
   (http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=10996621). - The first
   and second issues (Winter 1999, Spring 1999) of this new journal
   demonstrate a very useful resource for anyone managing information
   which uses SGML, XML, or may be deployed on the Web<65>which means many
   professionals in information science today. This journal has articles
   from international authors, and aims at an intermediate to advanced
   reader. The journal contains several articles per issue, along with
   book and article reviews. Articles range from the theoretical ("SGML
   for electronic publishing at a technical society: Expectation meets
   reality" by Sally Fahrenholz-Mann in issue 2) to the practical ("A new
   generation of tools for SGML" by R.W. Matzen in issue 1). High quality
   printing and helpful (essential?) illustrations round out the utility
   of this publication. - RR
   
   Tyckoson, David A. "What's Right with Reference" American Libraries
   30(5) (May 1999): 57-63. - In this piece, Tyckoson revisits the
   seminal article on modern library reference service by Bill Miller,
   "What's Wrong with Reference: Coping with Success and Failure at the
   Reference Desk" (American Libraries, May 1984, p. 303-306; 321-322).
   Tyckoson notes that the problems remain, and in fact may be even more
   true now than they were then. But he also casts a critical eye at the
   various attempts to solve these problems over the intervening years,
   which he asserts have largely failed. After running through each
   attempted reform and why it has failed, his conclusion is that
   reference service as we know it isn't broken <20> just under-supported.
   Give us more support, he says, and get out of the way. - RT
   
   Young, Jeffrey. "A Yale Professor's Software Aims to Bring Order to
   Your Hard Drive." Chronicle of Higher Education (May 21, 1999). - Yale
   University computer science professor's new operating system, called
   Lifestreams, has been reported on by Cites in the past (see
   http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/bibondemand.cgi?query=lifestr
   eams). Now, Gelertner is ready to go to market with a commercial
   product. Lifestreams offers users a visually-oriented display of files
   on their hard drives, eliminating the requirement of knowing directory
   paths. The visual appearance is strikingly similar to what Gopher on
   Macintosh looked like seven years ago, but this program is far more
   powerful and flexible. Lifestreams "rests on top" of MS Windows and
   lets users organize files and information in very personal and
   idiosyncratic ways, yet promises quick retrieval by weaving disparate
   items together by idea, theme, data bit or other indicators. "I don't
   ever want to see a directory again," explains Gelertner. The crucible
   of the marketplace will help determine if average users share
   Gelertner's wish. - TH
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   Current Cites 10(5) (May 1999) ISSN: 1060-2356
   Copyright (c) 1999 by the Library, University of California,
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   Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library.berkeley.edu, (510)
   642-8173