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Current Cities Volume 09 Number 11
_Current Cites_
Volume 9, no. 11
November 1998
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.11.html
Contributors:
Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart,
Roy Tennant, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Duguid, Paul. "Information and Libraries" Red Rock Eater News Service
(November 17, 1998) (reposted to DIGLIB and archived at
http://listserv.nlc-bnc.ca/cgi-bin/ifla-lwgate.pl/DIGLIB/archives/digl
ib.log9811/date/article-39.html). - Duguid uses a question facing the
San Jose State University Academic Senate, regarding whether to merge
the university library with the city's public library, to address
broader issues related to both print and digital libraries. In
particular, he takes to task computer scientists who assume to know
what goes on in libraries while accepting millions of dollars to build
digital versions. But the main point he makes is that obscuring, or
allowing to remain obscured, the differences between information
needs, information seeking behavior, and the clienteles doing the
seeking, can only lead to disasters -- whether they are of the digital
or institutional kind. - RT
Nunberg, Geofrey. "Will Libraries Survive?" The American Prospect (41)
(November-December 1998): 16-23
(http://epn.org/prospect/41/41nunb.html). - The title of this piece is
provocative but misleading. Nunberg ends up addressing not so much
whether libraries will survive at all, but rather in what form. But
that is a minor quibble about an article that is thoughtful,
informative, historically accurate, and in the end, compelling. As
those of us involved with creating digital libraries are well aware,
it is a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Nunberg is aware of
this, and is also aware of the hidden impacts of dropping computers
into public libraries and expecting the library budget to absorb the
costs of their care. So although the munificence of the Gates Library
Foundation in connecting public libraries to the Internet is welcomed,
it is important for us as a society to realize it is but a beginning
step. Nunberg uses as his historical parallel the donation of almost
2,000 public library buildings by Andrew Carnegie a hundred years ago.
Carnegie's donation was limited only to the physical facility, leaving
not one dime to stock it with anything worth reading. That American
communities eventually rose to the challenge of making libraries out
of the donated shells is a tribute to the capacity of American
citizens to realize the importance of such a cultural and intellectual
resource. Now, Nunberg asserts, we face no less of a challenge as a
society. We can either rise to the challenge of providing the needed
funds to stock our digital libraries, or fail to realize its
importance. - RT
Pack, Thomas and Jeff Pemberton. "Intranet Management, Content
Development and Digital Gift Shop: The Cutting-Edge Library at The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution" Online 22(6) (November/December
1998):16-24. - At first glance, the library for a daily newspaper
would seem to be a special case - too special to interest anyone
outside. However, there are lots of ideas here for exploiting the full
potential of networked information systems in any organization where
information is the product. The News Research Services (NRS) staff at
the Journal-Constitution have developed their intranet to put current
and archival files on the desktops in the newsroom, and trained
reporters and editors to do some searching, which leaves NRS staff
free to delve into lengthier or deadline-pressured research. The
corporate Web site has become a profit center for the company thanks
to the staff's creative arrangements for marketing the articles and
photos for which the paper holds copyright. While the article's focus
is on innovative new projects, there is also adequate description of
how the staff fulfills its traditional mission of fact-finding for the
writers. They seem to do a fine job of it, and use their
resourcefulness to provide background information through such media
as custom intranet pages full of relevant data for anticipated hot
topics. But this brings up a quibble: we never get to hear from the
end users. Throughout the article, there's plenty from NRS staff and
management about how well things are going, but nothing from the
reporters and their editors. I expect some boosterism from
publications like Online, where the editorial policy seems to be
"information professionals congratulating information professionals,"
but it's a lot more convincing when we're allowed to hear from the
people served by the information professionals too. - JR
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Bray, Tim. "Stretching the Document Concept" Web Techniques 3(12)
(December 1998): 43-46. - According to Tim Bray, who should know, the
Extensible Markup Language (XML) blurs the boundary between documents
and data. This blurring, Bray reasonably asserts, will lead to
interesting cominglings of document-centric users like humanist
scholars with data-centric users such as management information
systems (MIS) geeks. While bringing these two camps together in the
same room may not lead to the same kind of cataclysmic event as the
joining of matter and anti-matter would, it nonetheless may be
interesting. Bray thinks it is both inevitable and good that
document-centric people and data-centric people will be forced to come
together to share a common vocabulary and some common tools. So do I.
In any case, this piece provides an interesting insight to a possible
watershed event that may slip past almost unnoticed by those too busy
watching the XML hype machine roll on. - RT
Soojung-Kim Pang, Alex. "The Work of the Encyclopedia in the Age of
Electronic Reproduction" First Monday 3 (9) (September 9, 1998)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_9/pang/) - The author
explores how the advent of e-text literature affects the "craft" and
everyday work of editing. He focuses on the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
which has actively navigated from print, to CD-ROM and to the World
Wide Web. He asserts that the digitization of the encyclopedia has
affected the structure of articles, and that it also has begun to
affect the character of editorial work, the responsibilities of
editors, and their relationships with authors, animators, and others.
This is a useful exploration of how Net innovations affect other
professions besides libraries. Soojung-Kim Pang goes beyond the usual
analyses of the fate of linear narrative, and copyright. - TH
NETWORKS & NETWORKING
Bambury, Paul. "A Taxonomy of Internet Commerce" First Monday 3(10)
(October 5, 1998)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_10/bambury/) - Bambury offers
a clarifying piece that de-mystifies the terminology of the interplay
between commerce and the Internet. He utilizes an "empirically derived
classification system" (or taxonomy) of existing Internet business
models. His taxonomy has two main branches: "transplanted real-world
business models" and "native Internet business models." After
comparing the two modes of description, he evaluates the role of
business, governments, regulation and ideology. He asserts these two
branches of Internet commerce are at odds, and may not be able to
co-exist indefinitely. The aggressive nature of the real-world
business model tends toward domination, whereas the native Internet
economy and culture is "largely free, disintermediated, deep-rooted,
ecological, decentralized, radical and politically sophisticated."
Most likely, one or the other will prevail -- though we can always
hope for a hybrid or new entry. - TH
Raymond, Eric S. "Homesteading the Noosphere" First Monday 3 (10)
(October 5, 1998)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_10/raymond/) - Despite a
grandiose (and frankly Rheingoldian) title, this critique of "hacker"
culture is really a rather interesting article. Raymond compares the
so-called "gift economy" of the Internet with the belief system of
property rights. He argues that there is a contradiction between the
official ideology defined by open-source licenses and hacker culture.
He examines the "customs" that regulate the ownership and control of
open-source software, and suggests that they imply an "underlying
theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land
tenure." He concludes with an analysis of the implications and the
need for better conflict resolution tools. - TH
Schwartz, Alan and Simson Garfinkel. Stopping Spam: Stamping Out
Unwanted Email & News Postings. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates,
1998. - These days there are only two kinds of people: 1) those who
have been victims of spam (unwanted, mass-distributed messages), and
2) those who are not on the Internet. Of the latter category, many are
less than three years old or are in a coma, and can hardly be blamed
for not being victimized like the rest of us. But hold the phone. Now
help is here, albeit of the "help yourself" variety. That is, as this
book so completely documents, there is no silver bullet for slaying
spammers. Rather, there are a variety of tricks and techniques which
may render one somewhat spam-proof, but they will hardly rid the
universe of these vermin. But if that's all you're after, then go to
it. And as for those of us who may not wish to spend several days
setting up various barriers to block this garbage, the beginning of
this book is an amusing (in a twisted sort of way, perhaps) and
thorough historical account of spam, dating back to the 1970's (yes,
Virginia, the Internet is indeed at least that old). Given the size of
the Internet these days, if misery loves company we've never had it so
good. - RT
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 9(11) (November 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright © 1998 by the Library, University of California,
Berkeley. All rights reserved.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.11.html
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