Muddy point class 12

I was just wondering when the final grades for the term will be posted on Courseweb.

Class 12 readings

Joseph E. Stiglitz "Intellectual-Property Rights and Wrongs"

I agree with Stiglitz's statement that "Ideas are the most important input into research, and if intellectual property slows down the ability to use others’ ideas, then scientific and technological progress will suffer."
I think that there is abalance to be considered with intellectual property laws. We need intellectual property laws to protect scientists' ideas. At the same time, if those laws are too strict, they may stifle further attempts in scientific research. Scientists should be able to use others' ideas in their research, as long as they give those ideas proper credit.

Clifford Lynch "Where do we go from here: the next decade for digital libraries"

I think that this article offers some very interesting perspectives on the future of digital libraries, patriculary in the area of preservation. Lynch writes, "how do you prove that your approach in fact will preserve data for a thousand years without having to wait that long?". I think that this is a very good question, and I agree with Lynch that it is one which should be investigated.

Muddy point class 11

I do not completely understand the Shibboleth process. Does this mean that the user only needs one user name and password for all resources that require authorization?

Week 11 readings

Arms "Implementing Policies for Access Management":
I agree with Arms that the technology for authenticating users can be frustrating, especially if the system requires a user ID and password. Many times, users forget their IDs or passwords, and then retrieving the information can be time-consuming.
Arms writes,"One question that frequently arises in access management is whether it is possible to agree on a standard set of attributes that will serve many different applications." This paper was published in 1998. I was wondering if any attribute standards for digital libraries have been created since then.

Lesk "Economics"
I agree with Lesk that it is cheaper for libraries to provide users access to journals online than to purchase paper subscriptions. However, a greater number of digital materials in a library's collection would mean that the library has to buy additional computers so that patrons can access those materials, which can be expensive.

Class 10 Muddy Point

This is not a question, but just a point I would like to make about whether Google Book Search will make physical libraries obsolete. I do not think this will be the case. We discussed in the beginning of class that 61.5% of households in the US have access to the internet, and this percentage is even lower in other countries. Until we truly have universal access, I think that libraries will remain a vital service to society.

Class 10 readings

1) "Social Aspects of Digital Libraries"
Agre, Philip E. "Research Topic for Social Aspects in Digital Libraries"
I agree with Agre's point that we need to place information usage "in the context of genres, activities, relationships, and subjective experiences". Information never exists in a bubble. To fully understand an individual's information need, one needs to understand the larger context of the information need.
Bikson, Tora K. "Identifying Real Information Needs and Developing Digital Libraries to Meet those Needs".
I agree that "User modifiable interfaces (including user-definable search templates) are available in other kinds of systems and should be extendable to digital libary systems". This is an important point because one interface may not be intuitive to all users.

2) Arms, William Y. "A Viewpoint Analysis of the Digital Library"
I agree with Arms' point that "A user who wishes to do serious work using online information will find that superficially similar services have deep semantic differences". The way that a library's online catalog searches for information is very different from the way that Google, for instance, searches for information. To ever truly to have interoperability among DL systems, there would have to be greater uniformity in the way that users use these systems to find information.

Class 9 readings

Kling and Elliott reading:
I do not understand what exactly Mosaic is. Does it work the same way as internet browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. It sees like Gopher would be confusing to use due to all the submenus.

Saracevic reading:
I agree with Saracevic's statement, "A major difficulty was establishing boundaries: what to include/exclude as to the first criterion? What falls under a 'digital library'" (2).
It is difficult to come up with an evaluation system for a digital library because digital libraries fall under such a broad scope.