256 lines
15 KiB
Plaintext
256 lines
15 KiB
Plaintext
_Current Cites_
|
|
Volume 8, no. 2
|
|
February 1997
|
|
The Library
|
|
University of California, Berkeley
|
|
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
|
|
ISSN: 1060-2356
|
|
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1997/cc97.8.2.html
|
|
|
|
Contributors:
|
|
|
|
Campbell Crabtree, Terry Huwe,
|
|
Margaret Phillips, David Rez, Richard Rinehart,
|
|
Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
|
|
|
|
|
|
Electronic Publishing
|
|
|
|
Arms, William Y., Christophe Blanchi, and Edward A. Overly. "An
|
|
Architecture for Information in Digital Libraries" D-Lib Magazine
|
|
(February 1997) (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february97/cnri/02arms1.html)
|
|
-- Although it may not seem like it at first, it is well worth trying
|
|
to understand such terms as "key metadata," "structural metadata,"
|
|
"digital object," and "meta-object" that pepper this article. Arms and
|
|
company describes a digital library architecture that is based on
|
|
previous projects (at least one of which still exists as a production
|
|
service) and work with the U.S. Library of Congress National Digital
|
|
Library Program, which is digitizing content at a rapid pace. The
|
|
architecture outlined here is an intriguing one, and it will be
|
|
interesting to see the prototype system promised for early 1997. But
|
|
while the article is long on detail in some areas (such as the use of
|
|
"handles" to handle persistent naming), it is quite short on other
|
|
details, like what metadata scheme they propose to use and in what
|
|
container they will store it. But nonetheless, anyone building or
|
|
thinking of building digital collections must be familiar with the
|
|
work described in this paper. -- RT
|
|
|
|
Ester, Michael. Digital Image Collections: Issues and Practice The
|
|
Commission on Preservation & Access, December 1996. -- In this brief
|
|
(36 pages) report, Ester distills a great deal of information and
|
|
discussion of issues relating to creating, organizing, and managing
|
|
digital image collections. Anyone faced with such a project would do
|
|
well to spend $15 and learn a lot about what is involved, as well as
|
|
being forewarned about a general lack of standards and rules of thumb
|
|
related to digital imaging. Major sections include discussions of the
|
|
original object and its reproduction, assessing image quality, color
|
|
matching, integrating image and text information, building
|
|
collections, reproduction rights, and user access. One disappointment
|
|
is the lack of any substantive discussion of the metadata issue --
|
|
what information is kept about each image and how. Despite this minor
|
|
point Ester has put together a quite useful document for those of us
|
|
still laboring under the misconception that one needs only slap a
|
|
photo on a scanner to start building a digital image collection. -- RT
|
|
|
|
Kirriemuir, John. "The Professional Web-zine and Parallel Publishing"
|
|
D-Lib Magazine (February 1997)
|
|
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february97/ariadne/02kirriemuir.html) --
|
|
This article, and a related one by John McColl, describes the
|
|
experiences of the editors of a magazine that is published in both
|
|
print and Web versions. The freely available Web version has all the
|
|
content of the print version, along with additional content not
|
|
available in print. This article provides some history regarding the
|
|
creation of this dual publishing model. Of particular note in this
|
|
piece is the interesting and frank discussion about how to make it
|
|
pay, from someone faced with making the transition from a grant-funded
|
|
project to the cold fiscal realities of the real world. -- RT
|
|
|
|
MacColl, John. "The Professional Magazine and Parallel Publishing"
|
|
D-Lib Magazine (February 1997)
|
|
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february97/02maccoll.html) -- In this
|
|
companion piece to John Kirriemuir's article in the same issue of
|
|
D-Lib Magazine, MacColl waxes more philosophic than his compatriot in
|
|
looking at the issues behind the parallel publication of a journal in
|
|
both print and Web versions. He contends that parallel publishing, at
|
|
least for the type of professional literature of which Ariadne is a
|
|
part, is likely to be a useful publication model for some time into
|
|
the future. -- RT
|
|
|
|
Multimedia and Hypermedia
|
|
|
|
Sauer, Jeff. "New Tools Give QuickTime Muscle" New Media 7(1) (January
|
|
6, 1997):71-74. -- This is a bit of a hands-on article, and not very
|
|
theoretical, but it should prove very useful to all those who made an
|
|
investment in putting their digital video content into the QuickTime
|
|
format, and now want to make that content available on the web without
|
|
the expense of a server-side option for web-video. -- RR
|
|
|
|
Networks and Networking
|
|
|
|
Cortese, Amy. "A Way Out of the Web Maze" Businessweek (3515)
|
|
(February 24, 1997):95-108
|
|
(http://www.businessweek.com/1997/08/b35151.htm). Special Report. --
|
|
Suddenly everyone is reporting on rapidly emerging "push"
|
|
technologies, and Businessweek is no exception. The "push"
|
|
technologies are, simply put, new services that learn what you want to
|
|
receive via the Web and bring it to your desktop. Instead of
|
|
struggling with links, URLs, and "no DNS entry" messages, push
|
|
technologies do the searching for you. Corporate firms use push
|
|
technologies (also known as "webcasting") to bring news and
|
|
information to employee desktops. Both Microsoft and Netscape are
|
|
working on products that would provide "channels" on a personal
|
|
computer that would allow custom configurations and "productivity"
|
|
services (such as spreadsheets or word processors) on demand. Push
|
|
technology is estimated to grab up to one third of Internet
|
|
advertising revenue by the year 2000. This article provides a handy
|
|
overview of the key players (ranging from Berkeley Systems to
|
|
Microsoft), as well as likely development trends. -- TH
|
|
|
|
Guernsey, Lisa. "A Humanities Network Considers What Lies Beyond
|
|
E-mail: Debate at H-NET Reflects Ideas of Two Men Who Run the Popular
|
|
Project" Chronicle of Higher Education 43(20) (January 24, 1997):
|
|
A23-A24. -- H-NET, which won the American Historical Association's
|
|
award for contributions to the teaching of history, is a lively
|
|
community of over 51,000 humanities scholars. This article charts its
|
|
growth and future goals, which will increasingly involve Web
|
|
applications. Until now, the network has largely been a series of
|
|
email discussion lists. This is a relatively low-tech use of networked
|
|
communications, but clearly of interest and value to the participants
|
|
as a scholarly aid. The founders will retain a commitment to material
|
|
that can be accessible with slower machines and access times, in
|
|
recognition of the full range of technology available. -- TH
|
|
|
|
Hof, Robert D. "Netspeed at Netscape" Businessweek (3513) (February
|
|
10, 1997):78-86 [http://www.businessweek.com/1997/06/b35131.htm]. --
|
|
This profile of working life at Netscape will be of interest to
|
|
librarians who are watching the development of Internet culture for
|
|
two reasons. First, it showcases the mindset and values (such as
|
|
speed, speed, speed in development cycles) that have helped Netscape
|
|
keep an edge on Microsoft. Second, it reveals how Netscape developers
|
|
and marketers have combined an understanding of desktop ease-of-use
|
|
with new ways handling "content." Fans of Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a
|
|
New Machine will enjoy a peek at this one. -- TH
|
|
|
|
Johnston, Leslie and Katherine Jones-Garmil. "So You Want to Build a
|
|
Web Site" Museum News (Jan/Feb 1997):41-44 -- After you thought you'd
|
|
seen all you needed of introductory articles on how to make web
|
|
sites... this one is worth looking at. The authors cite URLs to back
|
|
up each section, but more importantly they give a good overview of
|
|
issues to consider when planning a website, including server options,
|
|
access issues, etc. This is an up-to-date, concise, and
|
|
well-considered introduction to being an information provider on the
|
|
web. -- RR
|
|
|
|
Wilson, David L. "Internet Managers are Poised to Change the System of
|
|
On-line Address" Chronicle of Higher Education 43(22) (February 7,
|
|
1997):A25-A26. -- Corporate vanity is not the only reason that the
|
|
Internet International Ad Hoc Committee is recommending the addition
|
|
of new "top level domain names" for Internet addresses, but you can
|
|
bet it has played a big role. "Internet domain names" (that's the part
|
|
on the right side of the final period, such as ".edu" and ".com") are
|
|
being assigned quickly and more capacity is needed; also, new
|
|
top-level names will give firms another chance to grab a vanity
|
|
address that's similar to their overall corporate identity. The final
|
|
recommendations aren't done yet, but look for new domain names like
|
|
"paramount.ent" that offer better top-level classification. The
|
|
committee will recommend at least seven new choices, but the final
|
|
recommendation may grow to 20. -- TH
|
|
|
|
Wilson, David. L. "With 98 Colleges Taking Part, Internet II May Start
|
|
within Six Months" Chronicle of Higher Education 43(22) (February 7,
|
|
1997):A25-A26. -- This article gives an interesting overview of the
|
|
new, high-speed alternative to the current Internet, "Internet II."
|
|
The new network will focus on the needs of research universities. This
|
|
initiative, which originally sought a mere dozen participants, now has
|
|
nearly 100 campus partners. A key element of the infrastructure of the
|
|
new network will be known as "gigabit points of presence," or
|
|
"gigapops." There may be as many as 50 gigapop locations (one per
|
|
state) that will enable local traffic to move at speeds many times
|
|
faster than is currently possible. Computer scientists forecast that
|
|
the new system may be on-line in six months. -- TH
|
|
|
|
Information Technology and Society
|
|
|
|
Anderson, Kurt. "The Age of Unreason" The New Yorker 72(45) (February
|
|
3, 1997):40-43. -- Anderson explores the impact of the "culture"
|
|
business, and dueling statistics in particular. He finds a growing
|
|
reluctance on the part of intellectuals to accept the existence of
|
|
indisputable facts; instead, facts are constantly disputed by parallel
|
|
survey research, number crunching and counter-claims that are made
|
|
against all viewpoints. He cites the Internet as a case study, because
|
|
quasi-factual web sites that look reliable may in fact be riddled with
|
|
half-baked reasoning. How do those in pursuit of critical thinking
|
|
navigate through all the half truths? A growing dilemma. Anderson also
|
|
analyzes the well-publicized claims about TWA Flight 800 that
|
|
journalist Pierre Salinger obtained from the Internet. Although
|
|
Anderson doesn't focus solely on Net culture, this article is
|
|
interesting for those who watch the digital Zeitgeist. -- TH
|
|
|
|
Druckery, Timothy, ed. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual
|
|
Representation New York: Aperture Publishers, 1996. -- Comprehensive
|
|
and in-depth, this book contains essays by over 30 artists,
|
|
information scientists, designers and academics on the cultural impact
|
|
of extended visualization via computer imaging and networks in the
|
|
fields of art, the sciences and history. The first articles start with
|
|
an historical look at representation, then move through photographic
|
|
and para-photographic imaging technology. The authors then consider
|
|
theory and end by addressing media, identity and culture. It's a lot
|
|
of slippery material to cover, but it's done well, and helpful to step
|
|
back from the daily work and consider what we're doing. -- RR
|
|
|
|
General
|
|
|
|
Chepesiuk, Ron. "The Future is Here: America's Libraries Go Digital"
|
|
American Libraries 27(1) (January 1997):47-49. -- In this brief
|
|
overview article Chepesiuk identifies many of the higher-profile
|
|
digital library projects that are trying to reinvent the future of
|
|
libraries. He also describes some of the toughest issues such projects
|
|
are trying to resolve, including preservation, copyright, and
|
|
interoperability. Chepesiuk also acknowledges, as does probably
|
|
everyone involved with such projects, that print materials and library
|
|
collections of them will not be replaced by digital libraries.
|
|
Included are addresses (URLs) for some important digital library
|
|
projects and resources. -- RT
|
|
|
|
Verity, John M. "Coaxing Meaning Out of Raw Data: How Software Can Now
|
|
Find Patterns Never Seen Before" Businessweek (3512) (February 3,
|
|
1997):134-38 (http://www.businessweek.com/1997/05/b3512127.htm). --
|
|
This is a really interesting article that describes exactly what "data
|
|
mining" and "data warehousing" are all about. Data mining refers to a
|
|
class of software analysis tools that can parse very, very large
|
|
datasets and find "meaningful" patterns. For example, we're talking
|
|
combinations like US Census data, 10 years of product sales history in
|
|
50 states, every telephone call from millions of numbers, plus any
|
|
number of other factors. Data warehousing systems analyze datasets in
|
|
the trillions of bytes on ultra-fast servers, and can help managers
|
|
pinpoint trends and inventory levels almost instantly. This approach
|
|
is especially helpful at catching fraud like cell-phone theft, or
|
|
strategic planning like customer-retention. But it also has big
|
|
implications for qualitative information management of the sort that
|
|
happens in libraries. Keep an eye on this trend in programming! -- TH
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Current Cites 8(2) (February 1997) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright (C) 1997
|
|
by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. _All rights
|
|
reserved._
|
|
|
|
All product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their
|
|
respective holders. Mention of a product in this publication does not
|
|
necessarily imply endorsement of the product.
|
|
|
|
[URL:http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/]
|
|
|
|
To subscribe, send the message "sub cites [your name]" to
|
|
listserv@library.berkeley.edu, r eplacing "[your name]" with your
|
|
name. Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computerized
|
|
bulletin board/conference systems, individual scholars, and libraries.
|
|
Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collections at no
|
|
cost. An archive site is maintained at ftp.lib.berkeley.edu in
|
|
directory /pub/Current.Cites [URL:
|
|
ftp://ftp.lib.berkeley.edu/pub/Current.Cites]. This message must
|
|
appear on copied material. All commercial use requires permission from
|
|
the editor, who may be reached in the following ways:
|
|
|
|
trinne@library.berkeley.edu // (510)642-8173
|