270 lines
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Plaintext
270 lines
17 KiB
Plaintext
_Current Cites_
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Volume 11, no. 3, March 2000
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Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
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The Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720
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ISSN: 1060-2356 -
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http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2000/cc00.11.3.html
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Contributors: Terry Huwe, Michael Levy, Leslie Myrick,
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Margaret Phillips, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Rowlison, Roy Tennant
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Arms, William Y. Digital Libraries MIT Press, Cambridge, MA: 2000. -
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As the founder of D-Lib Magazine, Arms certainly has enough
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credentials to attempt this book. The problem is that it's clear that
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he hasn't ever had to keep the doors of a real library open. The book
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is a hodge-podge of history, technologies, and research projects, but
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by the end you may not be any clearer about how to build functional
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digital library collections and services, and you certainly won't have
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any idea about how to integrate digital library collections with
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existing print ones, or virtual services with actual ones. As an
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overview, it may be useful to have a brief explanation of a particular
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technology, but it would help if some criteria for decisionmaking were
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included. The index is overly selective. - RT
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Cliff, Peter. "The Oxford English Dictionary Online"
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(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/oed-review/) and New, Juliet.
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"'The World's Greatest Dictionary' Goes Online,"
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(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/oed-online/) Ariadne Issue 23
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(March 23, 2000). See also free tour of the online OED at
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http://oed.com/tour/. - The UKOLN-based journal Ariadne features two
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informative articles covering the March 14th release of the OED Online
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Edition, one an announcement from a member of the OED team, and the
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other a user survey by a member of UKOLN staff. The venerable Oxford
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English Dictionary now exists in three recensions: the original
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fascicles spanning the period from 1884 to 1928; a 1989 second
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edition, which consolidated further supplemental entries, but without
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revising extant materials; and now an online version, the fruit of a
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core group of about 300 OED staff, with technical support from
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Stanford-based High Wire Press. The OED Online will benefit from a
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20-year, 55-million-dollar program of revision, which will take into
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account recent advances in research, for instance, in the field of
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etymology. It will also encompass the addition of some 9000 words
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researched over the last decade, an ambitious 3000 new words per
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quarter during the year 2000, and untold thousands more through to the
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end of the revision period, in 2010. Planned additions could actually
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double the dictionary's present length. Whereas dictionary thumbers
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might well bewail the curtailment of browsability and of the joys of
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serendipitous discovery (only one word can be accessed on screen at a
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time), the online OED promises to compensate with wildly increased
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accessibility and searching through hyperlinks, full-text search with
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wildcard features, and synonym finders. Some solace to dictionary
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browsers may be found in the 25 side-barred links provided to entries
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in direct proximity to the queried word, according to how they were
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sorted: alphabetically, chronologically, and so on. Another nice
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feature, of interest to historical lexicographers and others, is the
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ability to compare the treatment of any given lexeme amongst the three
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different editions. The major downside seems to be that the licensing
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costs for such a gargantuan undertaking are bound to be, in a word,
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prohibitive, starting at $550/individual, $795/institutional. - LM
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Coyle, Karen. "The Virtual Union Catalog: A Comparative Study"
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D-Lib Magazine 6(3) (March 2000)
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(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march00/coyle/03coyle.html) and Dovey, Matthew
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J. "So You Want to Build a Union Catalogue?" Ariadne 23 (March 2000)
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(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue23/dovey/). - These two articles both
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look at how libraries can create union catalogs -- either virtually
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(simultaneous searching of multiple catalog systems) or physically.
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Dovey covers differences between the two models, and identifies where
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each is relatively good or bad. Coyle's piece is the outcome of a
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recent effort to decide how best to replace the aging MELVYL
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catalog, the crowning achievement of the University of California
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libraries. In testing a possible virtual union catalog replacement for
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MELVYL, Coyle identified four areas that would require more testing
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and analysis before determining if a virtual union catalog could
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replace MELVYL: 1) database consistency and search accuracy (searches
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of different catalog systems must retrieve comparable items), 2)
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system availability (individual systems must be available 24x7), 3)
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capacity planning for campus OPACs and the network (a virtual union
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catalog would place a heavier load on campus network infrastructure),
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and 4) sorting, merging, and duplicate removal. - RT
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Gladney, Henry M. "Are Intellectual Property Rights a Digital
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Dilemma? Controversial Topics and International Aspects" iMP:
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Information Impacts Magazine (February 2000)
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(http://www.cisp.org/imp/february_2000/02_00gladney.htm) - As one of
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the Committee members who authored the report "The Digital
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Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age" (see:
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http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/) published by the Computer
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Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), Gladney's article touches
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on topical aspects of the Report which did not reach Committee
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consensus. In an intellectually biting tone Gladney brings to light
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some of the controversial issues surrounding intellectual property
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rights, and takes a non-partisan role in exposing some of the rhetoric
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of both copyright maximalists as well as copyright minimalists.
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Sections on the ideological meanings of copyright, the limits of fair
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use, distinctions between private use and piracy, and viewing
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copyrighted materials in light of the 1997 No Electronic Theft (NET)
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Act make for engaging reading. For example, as Gladney points out,
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loading a copyrighted work into RAM for viewing via the web
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constitutes a "copy" of copyrighted material and as such, users may
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unwittingly be in violation of section 506(a)(2) of the Act -- which
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calls for fines and imprisonment. However, examples such as this
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explify the reasoning behind the Committee's conclusion that
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legislative remedies ought to hold off in favor of accumulating
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further experience with both digital IP issues and technological
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solutions/developments. Gladney's examples of copyright conundrums and
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his articulate explication of their surrounding legal environment
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makes this a valuable and easy to read article. Additionally, the
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international treatment of the subject creates a broader context in
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which to view the U.S. stance. A significant bibliography points users
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to most of the key articles, papers, and reports on the subject. - LR
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Morrison, Alan, Michael Popham, and Karen Wikander. "Creating and
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Documenting Electronic Texts: A Guide to Good Practice" AHDS Guides to
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Good Practice. London: Arts and Humanities Data Service, 2000
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(http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/documents/creating/). - Every publication I've
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seen to come out of the Arts and Humanities Data Service has been
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top-notch. This one is no different, and in fact should stand as one
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of the best explications of digitizing textual material for some time
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to come. The completely online publication takes you from initial
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considerations (analysing the text) through digitization and markup to
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documentation and metadata. The staff of the Oxford Text Archive
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have been doing this since well before the web, and their experience
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shows. If you're digitizing textual material, run, don't walk to the
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one resource that will help you more than any other. - RT
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Museums and the Web 2000. International Conference by Archives and
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Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, PA.
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(http://www.archimuse.com/mw2000/). - This web site epitomizes one of
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the great things about the web. Here is a conference, which at the
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time of this writing hasn't happened yet, and meanwhile most of the
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papers of the presenters (over 45 of them) are available online. Those
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of us who can't make it to the conference can nonetheless attend
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"virtually," albeit without the hallway chats and in-person networking
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over drinks. If you have anything to do with a Museum web site, the
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papers here will be interesting and informative. If you have anything
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to do with a web site at all, there may still be something of use here
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as well. If you are interested in past papers presented at this
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conference, see http://www.archimuse.com/mw.html. - RT
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Peterson, Ivars. "Beyond Hits and Page Views" JEP: THe Journal
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of Electronic Publishing 5 (3) (March 2000)
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(http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/05-03/peterson.html) - Most articles
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about web log analysis portray it as a powerful tool in the hands of
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e-commerce marketers, but Peterson has shown how it can also be
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fruitfully wielded in the hands of scholarly journal editors. This
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article is a particularly good read for any scholarly publisher whose
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interest in log analysis might stop short at a tally of hits and page
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views to add pleasing statistics to a grant report. Peterson, the
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online editor of Science News Online
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(http://www.sciencenews.org/), has demonstrated here how careful
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analysis of daily traffic logs has helped him to tailor the content of
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his site to provide timely delivery of relevant information to his
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audience and thereby ensure repeat visitors. For instance, the perusal
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of log analysis reports can give a picture of the amount of time spent
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during a visit, in order to ascertain which articles are being most
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carefully read, or perhaps whether users are reading onscreen or
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printing pages to read later. On a different level, they can also be
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used to track a visitor's trails through a site, or from a referring
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site to one's own. In the former case, analyses can be made of site
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architecture; in the latter, one can get a sense of who is linking to
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one's site. This sort of exercise can produce amusing results, e.g.
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the discovery that a perfume company was providing a busy link to a
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Science News article on pheromones. - LM
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Rosenzweig, Roy. "The Riches of Hypertext for Scholarly Journals"
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The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 17, 2000
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(http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i28/28b00401.htm) - Rosenzweig,
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Director of the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George
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Mason University (http://chnm.gmu.edu/), a collaboration between GMU
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and the American Social History Project at the CUNY Center for Media
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and Learning, uses experiences gained from various CHNM projects to
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map the face and the direction of the new digital media. Because of
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the extended and comfy-chair-seeking readerly shelf-life of humanities
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scholarship (over against, say, physics or medicine), coupled with the
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uncomfortable experience of onscreen reading, Rosenzweig does not
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foresee cyberjournals replacing their print analogues anytime soon,
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but rather, standing as a "digital supplement." With reference to
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Janet H. Murray's formulation, in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future
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of Narrative in Cyberspace, of hypertext's potential for additive and
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expressive form, Rosenzweig explores what, exactly, cyberjournals
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allow us to do differently from print journals, culling examples from
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CHNM-sponsored projects. It has been clear from the beginning that
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online scholarship can offer more -- more material behind every
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hyperlink, and a far wider field of dissemination. This primarily
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additive aspect is well demonstrated by the Interpretation of the
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Declaration of Independence Through Translation project
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(http://chnm.gmu.edu/declaration/), which serves as a prime model of
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Rosenzweig's conception of hypermedia as archival "digital
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supplement." Whether online journals can achieve something radically
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different has been explored in an American Quarterly project
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(http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/) featuring four experimental hyper-essays
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("Dreaming Arnold Schwarzeneggar" especially stands out) which all, in
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their own way, press the envelope of scholarly form. In the end, as
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Rosenzweig suggests, it would seem that at some level, more =
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different. The images he conjures to describe how cyberjournals will
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look and function -- clone, hybrid, digital supplement -- foreground
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the potent marginality of media which promise, as he claims, to
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rewrite the scholarly social contract between readers and writers. -
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LM
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Wurman, Richard Saul. Understanding USA
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(http://www.understandingusa.com/) Newport, RI: TED Conferences, 1999.
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- This work, as complete on the web as it is in print, manages to
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embody some of what's best and worst about the latest uses of
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information technology. Wurman, who refers to himself as an
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information architect, envisioned a project which would address a
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perceived overabundance of data about the United States and come up
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with graphical ways to clarify the information, leading to a greater
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understanding. Picture a standard reference title such as The
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Statistical Abstract of the United States
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(http://www.census.gov/statab/www/) worked over by a group of
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creative, cutting-edge designers, skilled in information display
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through computer graphics and typography. Visually stimulating it is,
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with a wide variety of pictorial representations for statistics in
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demographics, government spending, crime, etc. Desktop computing power
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has vastly increased the realm of possibilities for designers, and
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here that's clearly a double-edged sword: it's become very easy to use
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this wide array of tools to promote subjective interpretation and
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selective emphasis, which are common in this work and take away from
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its credibility. Statistics taken out of their original context and
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given visual prominence take on an aura of being 'more true.' For
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example, on a page about information anxiety, close to a picture of a
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woman holding her head, is the debatable assertion that "75% to 90% of
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all visits to physicians are stress-related," accompanied by the
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skimpy citation "National Mental Health Association, 1997." It's there
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in boldface, in something which claims to be a reference work,
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encouraging the reader to take it at face value. But if you have some
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doubts (like maybe this notion is predicated upon some hypothetical,
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impossibly stress-free world of no hunger, war, debt, divorce or
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traffic jams) there's no context here to help you -- you'll have to
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dig elsewhere. In a brief, laudatory article titled "Information
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as if Understanding Mattered"
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(http://www.fastcompany.com/online/32/benchmark.html) in the March
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2000 issue of Fast Company (http://www.fastcompany.com/homepage/)
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magazine, one of the designers, Nancye Green, is quoted thus: "People
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don't care about cold facts. They care about pictures or stories that
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are connected to themselves in some way. That's what learning is all
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about. That's what leads to understanding." The phrase 'dumbing down'
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comes to mind here, but maybe that's a little harsh. Those of us who
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help people find information know that they do indeed want cold facts,
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including numbers, and they want them complete, accurate and
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verifiable. For people doing such research, the fact that a dataset
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can be rendered now as a graphic resembling some multicolored mutant
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eggplant may be amusing, but not highly useful. So take a look at this
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collision of information technology, statistics and graphics, but
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don't expect a reputable scholarly resource. Treat it as
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great-looking, browsable infotainment. - JR
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_________________________________________________________________
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Current Cites 11(2) (February 2000) ISSN: 1060-2356
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Copyright <20> 2000 by the Library, University of California, Berkeley.
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All rights reserved.
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Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computerized bulletin
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board/conference systems, individual scholars, and libraries.
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Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collections at no
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cost. This message must appear on copied material. All commercial use
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requires permission from the editor. All product names are trademarks
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or registered trade marks of their respective holders. Mention of a
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product in this publication does not necessarily imply endorsement of
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the product. To subscribe to the Current Cites distribution list, send
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the message "sub cites [your name]" to
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listserv@library.berkeley.edu, replacing "[your name]" with your
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name. To unsubscribe, send the message "unsub cites" to the same
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address. Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library. berkeley.edu.
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