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.

Readings Class 8- Preservation

Rieger reading:
This is an interesting report because I have heard a lot about how digitization is a means of preserving print materials, but I have not heard a lot about what happens once the materials are digitized, and how companies such as Google will maintain long-term access to digital book collections.

Hedstrom reading:
I agree with Hedstrom that in order to preserve digital materials long-term, we will need systems that are self-sustaining and require little human maintanence. Another concern is that many digital library technologies will become obsolete. I also agree with Hedstrom's point that the preservation of digital materials will require new systems for identifying digital objects since current identifiers, such as PURLs, require updating to stay current.

Muddy Point class 7

I was wondering if there were any privacy issues with regard to Google Desktop. I would be worried about a corporation being able to view the personal information on my computer.

Access in Digital Libraries II readings

Miller article:
I agree with Miller's point that the success of Google lies in its simplicity. Users want to be able to type a query into a search box and quickly find relevant information, nat spend hours searching for it. The problem with Google, however, is that the search results may not always be relevant.
I also agree with Miller's point that the library catalog is no longer always a library's primary source of information.

"The Truth about Federated Searching":
I am having trouble understanding exactly what federated searching is. From this article, I understand that a federated search engine is a service that a library can subscribe to that will search all of the library's databases simultaneously. Is the Zoom! service in PittCat an example of a federated search engine?