Reading Comments week #12

Amanda's I.T. blog
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4815117704244121663&postID=7919017436162120728&page=1

Rebecca's Intro to IT blog
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5720842264846496247&postID=3966162379616194587&page=1

Muddiest Point Week #11

I was wondering about the physical set up of a digital repository. Is it on site at the university? Does it have built in redundancy either on site or at another geographical location? How are issues of equipment failure, natural disaster, and information loss handled?

Readings week #12

Week 12's reading seemed to center around so called "social software."
The first article was about weblogs or commonly called blogs. This article contained a brief history as well as some ideas for using blogs. I appreciated this article since it gave definitions for commonly used terms. I also found the discussion on push/pull types of technology useful.
The second article was about using wiki technology to better serve patrons in a library setting. As with blogs, free software is available to enable this technology. Wikis promote shared knowledge and cooperation to create resources.
The third article discussed social tagging, the creation of bookmarks for websites that are saved online. These tags have subject keywords and description attached for searching purposes. The del.icio.us site was described as a place to collaborate by sharing tags and discovering new resources. Problems with social tagging include variations in tags, user understanding of keywords, and spagging (spam tagging).
The final reading was actually a video of Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia. It was enlightening to realize the huge size of Wikipedia, the international use, and the number of paid employees-one. Additionally, it operates on a free license and is funded by donations and is run by volunteers. Jimmy Wales is also often misquoted by the media. It was also interesting to hear about how the entire Wikipedia functions with regard to deleting pages and who has the final word. Also of interest was the discussion over the citation merits of Wikipedia since this is a topic that has been of interest in other classes.

Comments week #11 Readings

Analog failure
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=84548656281186042&postID=1818833400642052070&page=1

Maggie's blog
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4657309357315020681&postID=1295012642050597602&page=1

Muddiest Point week #10

People manipulate a web crawler by increasing links in their work. How do web crawlers recognize this and fight against it?

Readings Week #11

Two of this week's readings were about digital libraries and one was about institutional repositories.
Digital Libraries Challenges and Influential Work
Federal support funded the Digital Library Initiative, DLI-1 in 1994 and DLI-2 in 1998. The purpose of the DLI projects were to make large scale digital resources and collections accessible and interoperable. University led teams worked with commercial vendors and software companies to define and identitfy important document, data, and metadata standards and protocols for Web based searching. The DLI program contributed to the development of best practices. Significant technology was transferred from this program. A spin off from DLI program resulted in Google.
Dewey Meets Turing Librarians, Computer Scientists, and the Digital Libraries Initiative
This article discussed the association of the National Science Foundation with the Digital Libraries Initiative in 1994 . It also mentioned that Google emerged from funded work. This article dealt mainly with the relationships between Librarians and Computer Scientists as a result of their working together on Digital Libray projects. Publishers are also mentioned as interested parties to Digital Library development. According to this article the DLI project is seen as broadening opportunities for library science since the core functions of librarianship, organizing, collating and presenting information still need to be preformed.
Institutional Depositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age
This article concerned the need for universities to move beyond their historically passive roles of supporting publishers and into the development and maintenance of digital repositories. Recent technological trends and developments, such as the drop in online storage costs and standards development, have made this possible. The development of an institutional repository requires collaboration among the institution's community as well as a commitment to organization, access, distribution, and long term preservation of digital materials produced by its members. In this article an institutional repository is seen as "complement and a supplement rather than a substitute for traditional scholarly publication venues." This author of this article warns of possible problems with institutional repositories, among which are the problems associated with material loss due to technical failure. Little built in system redundancy is also mentioned.

Comments week #10

Renee's Published as week 11
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7804417981817162815&postID=7468087571052576296&page=1

Analog Failure
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=84548656281186042&postID=8457762204976437600&page=1