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Current Cities Volume 07 Number 08
_Current Cites_
Volume 7, no. 8
August 1996
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1996/cc96.7.8.html
Contributors:
Campbell Crabtree, Terry Huwe, John Ober,
Margaret Phillips, David Rez, Richard Rinehart,
Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
Electronic Publishing
Dietz, Steve & Margaretta Sander. "Unlocking Museum Information
with SGML" Spectra (http://world.std.com/~mcn/): Journal of the
Museum Computer Network 23(4)(Summer 1996): 16-17. -- A concise,
informative introduction to the benefits of applying the SGML
(Standard Generalized Markup Language) standard for electronic
publishing and document management. The article will be a useful
resource for any type of organization considering its document
access needs; the writers cite examples of successful
applications in the museum world for illustration of how SGML can
work in the real world. -- RR
Harter, Stephen P. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly
Communication: A Citation Analysis." The Public-Access Computer
Systems Review 7(5) (1996).
(http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n5/hart7n5.html) -- Electronic
journals have been available on the Internet for years, but there
have been few studies on their impact on scholarly communication.
This citation study attempts to answer that key question by
comparing citation statistics of electronic journals begun prior to
1993 with citation statistics of print journals. The author
concludes that "the great majority of scholarly, peer-reviewed
e-journals have had essentially no impact on scholarly
communication in their respective fields," but nonetheless
acknowledges that this is the case partly due to publishing far
fewer articles, in general, then their print counterparts.
Therefore, even though the overall impact of e-journals appears to
be slight, the impact of the typical e-journal article is high. Of
all the e-journals examined in this study, PACS Review (in the
field of library and information science) emerged as the most
successful. -- RT
John, Nancy R. "Putting Content on the Internet: The Library's
Role as Creator of Electronic Information" First Monday 1(2)
(http://www.first.monday.dk) -- The University of Illinois-Chicago
launched a large scale project to offer digital libraries with four
partners, including the Chicago Public Library, the U.S. Department
of State, the Illinois State Archives, and Pemberton Press. The
project is titled the "Great Cities Initiative," and the goal is to
leverage academic library skill in the greater context of the urban
community. Each project varied according to the "content" of the
partner institution, with Illinois-Chicago coordinating the overall
shape of the service. The author reviews the development,
challenges and future prospects of the collaborative venture, which
seem bright. Since launching the project the Illinois-Chicago
library has also become the publisher of an online journal titled
the AIDS Book Review Journal, further evidence of a strong
commitment to digital collections. -- TH
MacEwan, Bonnie, and Mira Geffner. "The Committee on Institutional
Cooperation Electronic Journals Collection (CIC-EJC): A New Model
for Library Management of Scholarly Journals Published on the
Internet" The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 7(4) (1996).
(http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n4/mace7n4.html) -- An overview of a
cooperative project to catalog, archive, and provide structured
access to a collection of electronic journals. Access to all titles
is provided by linking to the publisher's site, but they are also
building an archive to serve as a permanent record should the
original be destroyed or discontinued. The Web site provides for
searching and browsing by topic or title. All journals in the
collection are cataloged with standard MARC records that are
distributed to OCLC and member institutions. The URL for each title
is included in the 856 field of the MARC record to facilitate
access from the catalog record. Future plans include a Persistent
URL (PURL) server. -- RT
"The Property of the Mind" The Economist 340 (7976) (July 27 -
August 2, 1996): 57-59.
(http://www.economist.com/issue/27-07-96/wbsf1.html) -- For a
clear look at the challenges facing intellectual property
regulation in a global context, step beyond the U.S. debate and
read this issue's feature article and leader, titled "Copyrights
and Copywrongs" (p. 16). The Economist traces the development of
copyright (Jefferson: "...he who lights his taper at mine
receives light without darkening me") and analyzes the dramatic
changes wrought by digital media. In effect, the Internet is one
big copying machine, some argue, while others wish to hold to the
Jeffersonian high ground. Meanwhile, most Americans (and many
others too) feel that what they do (and digitally replicate) in
the privacy of their own homes is no one else's business. UC
Berkeley law professor Pamela Samuelson argues that the
attitudes of the public ("Don't Tread On Me") and of publishers
is moving farther apart. Although no strong solutions are in sight,
Esther Dyson thinks original content could be enhanced, or perhaps
publishers could discover new ways to make money from it.
Unregulated recording at Grateful Dead concerts is one example of
this, Netscape's long-lasting giveaway of its browser is another.
-- TH
Stewart, Linda. "User Acceptance of Electronic Journals: Interviews
with Chemists at Cornell University" College and Research Libraries
57(4) (July 1996): 339-349. -- Based on interviews with a group of
students and faculty affiliated with the Cornell University
Chemistry department who participated in a project that loaded the
full text of twenty American Chemical Society (ACS) texts, this
paper explores the potential of electronic journals to accomplish
the scholarly role traditionally associated with printed journals.
Important to participants in the study was ease-of-use and the
ability to browse regardless of the format; most users felt that
printed copies (or at least the ability to create a print copy) was
important and some questioned whether electronic journals would
allow them to discover articles serendipitously or read the
articles in comfort (eyestrain and the awkwardness of reading in
front of a terminal were cited as problems). On the other hand,
participants thought that electronic journals would allow them to
read more complete articles, spend their reading time more
efficiently and read articles sooner. As libraries face the
challenge of choosing between electronic and printed journals, this
article offers an excellent snapshot of how academic users feel
about electronic journals. Also helpful are the footnotes which
cite some important research in this field. -- MP
Multimedia and Hypermedia
Nov'Art [ISSN: 1165-37x] -- This quarterly publication from France
covers a range of issues in new media, usually from a conceptual
or social angle rather than purely technical. The February 1996
issue (118pg), for instance, focused on writing and multimedia;
articles ranged from the role of the artist in new media to the
network blurring the line between spectator and actor. A website
is not listed, however you may contact them via email at:
art3000@Calvanet.Calvacom.fr. -- RR
Networks and Networking
Theme issue of _Computer_ on the U.S. Digital Library Initiative
(May 1996) (http://www.computer.org/pubs/computer/dli/) -- This
special issue covers the six digital library projects funded by
the National Science Foundation. An overview article entitled
"Building Large-Scale Digital Libraries" (by Bruce Schatz and
Hsinchun Chen) leads into articles on each of the six projects
based at U.S. Universities:
Schatz, Bruce, et. al. "Federating Diverse Collections of
Scientific Literature" (University of Illinois)
Wilensky, Robert. "Toward Work-Centered Digital Information
Services" (University of California, Berkeley)
Wactlar, Howard D., et.al. "Intelligent Access to Digital Video:
Informedia Project" (Carnegie Mellon University)
Smith, Terence R. "A Digital Library for Geographically Referenced
Materials" (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Paepcke, Andreas, et. al. "Using Distributed Objects for Digital
Library Interoperability" (Stanford University)
Atkins, Daniel E., et. al. "Toward Inquiry-Based Education
Through Interacting Software Agents" (University of Michigan)
The cutting-edge digital library research reported in these
articles is interesting, but don't hold your breath waiting for
much of it to appear in an application on your desktop. It is,
after all, research, which need not concern itself with
practicalities or products. -- RT
Fleischhauer, Carl. "Access Aids and Interoperability"
(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/award/docs/interop.html), "Digital
Historical Collections: Types, Elements, and Construction"
(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/elements.html),"Digital Formats for
Content Reproductions" (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/formats.html).
Library of Congress, 1996. -- This trio of Web documents provides
the best source for practical, up-to-date advice on various aspects
of building digital collections that will interoperate well with
other such collections. They were drafted by the Library of
Congress to provide guidelines for organizations competing in the
LC/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition, but their
utility goes far beyond that. For anyone who is involved with
creating or managing digital collections, these documents provide
important advice and assistance on some of the key decisions to be
made as well areas of continuing ambiguity. You won't by any means
find all the answers here, but you'll find a few as well as
many of the pertinent questions that must be answered before a true
National Digital Library can be a reality. -- RT
Gardner, Elizabeth. "Keeping Users Hot on Your Site's Trail"
WebWeek 2(6) (May 20, 1996): 48.
(http://www.webweek.com/96May20/undercon/webweaver.html)
-- This article introduces the idea of PURLs or "Persistent
URLs" as a better way of identifying and locating webpages.
URLs of course are dependent on the location of a specific
filename at a specific machine, domain, and directory location.
If any element in that structure changes, the document is as
good as lost to most users, at least until all relevant links
are laboriously updated. OCLC (Online Computer Library Center)
proposes to keep the URL's for web documents centrally on a
local PURL server. Then when someone requests the page, the
central PURL server sends them along to the document. This way,
a user merely needs to know which online system a document
resides at, and all updating of URL's happens at the location, by
the people who know best. While this is not quite the nirvana of
each document having a unique identifier which travels with it,
regardless of system, it would be quite an improvement to current
document location systems, especially if PURL Servers could be
networked and updated like newsgroup servers, so one need only ever
find the local World-Wide PURL server to locate any document on the
web. -- RR
Varian, Hal. "Differential Pricing and Efficiency" First Monday
1(2) (http://www.firstmonday.dk) -- Varian, an economist and
Dean at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems,
lays out the reasons why several core economic suppositions are
turned upside down by digital media. Specifically, he argues that
a key market concept--marginal pricing--is not relevant where
digital media allows for increasing returns to scale, large fixed
costs (such as telecommunications infrastructures) or economies of
scope are at play. "Willingness to pay" is an equally important
principle. The solution he argues, lies in differential pricing
that can allow both forces to work in an inter-related fashion.
Economists will enjoy the thorough treatment (with beautifully
rendered graphics of economic formulae), while laymen will be able
to follow Varian's plain English. This is a useful guide to the
economic issues underlying impending commercial uses of the
Internet. -- TH
Wilson, David. L. "Campus 'intranets' Make Information Available to
Some but Not All, Internet Users" Chronicle of Higher Education
62(47) (August 2, 1996): A15-A17. -- Higher education was the
primary launching pad for Internet information systems (along with
the defense industry), but higher education is just beginning to
catch up the corporate sector in the development of "intranets."
Where corporations have moved quickly to implement web-based
internal services that are safe behind firewalls, higher education
has moved more slowly, mainly due its open computing environment.
The author explores several of the issues that arise when colleges
seek to define who should and who should not have access to college
intranets, and some of the technological challenges of distance
learning and remote registration (to name just a couple issues).
There's an interesting discussion of the downstream impact of
choosing proprietary software (like Lotus Notes) over Internet
software; and, according to many quoted, there's plenty of room for
improvement in all the options. -- TH
Information Technology & Society
Reagle, Joseph M., Jr. "Trust in Electronic Markets: The
Convergence of Cryptopgraphers and Economists" First Monday 1(2)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk) -- This is one of those studies that
skillfully summarizes a tried-and-true "real world" function: the
social and technical infrastructure of commerce, and then explores
the impact of cyberspace on the status quo. Reagle poses the
question of what is to be done in cyberspace, where none of the
stanchions of secure financial transactions have been fully worked
out; clearly, it's not an area that can be safely left in the hands
of either cryptographer or economists, when we all have a stake in
the outcome. It's a fascinating article, for two reasons. First,
Reagle lays out the things we take for granted, such as
check-writing, security and deposits, and so on, reducing this
universally accepted system to its most basic definition: it's just
information. Second, Reagle writes speculatively about how to
transfer (or perhaps better said, invent) a similar system in
cyberspace. You may not agree with some of the ideas (how about
buying this nice "Digital Bearer Bond?"), but the analysis is
cross-disciplinary, and grounded in an understanding of both
society and human nature, and technology. -- TH
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Current Cites 7(8) (August 1996) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1996 by the Library, University of
California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
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