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Current Cities Volume 10 Number 05
_Current Cites_
Volume 10, no. 5
May 1999
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.5.html
Contributors:
Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips, Rick Rinehart,
Jim Ronningen, Roy Tennant, Lisa Yesson
Bosak, Jon and Tim Bray. "XML and the Second-Generation Web"
Scientific American (May 1999)
(http://www.sciam.com/1999/0599issue/0599bosak.html). - Two of the
foremost authorities on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) have
teamed up to provide a high-level overview of what it is and why it
represents the next generation of the Web. You won't be able to create
many XML documents based on what you learn here, but you will be able
to use it to help explain XML and why it is so important to those who
haven't run into it before. My one minor objection is the glibness
with which they predict an "astonishing Internet growth rate" for the
Resource Description Framework (RDF), which I think is being almost
irresponsibly over-optimistic for a standard that appears to be about
as fun as pulling teeth with pliers to implement. But chalk that up to
a difference of opinion and you have an effective and authoritative
introduction to this technology. I wouldn't drop it on my mother, but
many of my colleagues should read it. - RT
Coffman, Steve. "Reference as Others Do It" American Libraries 30(5)
(May 1999): 54-56. - If I were you, I'd keep my eyes on this guy
(Steve Coffman). Last month I reviewed an article of his that used an
existing commercial system (Amazon.com) as an example of what
libraries could collectively achieve (see Building Earth's Largest
Library: Driving Into the Future"). Now he's at it again. Only this
time he investigates customer call centers for what we may be able to
learn about providing library reference service. Customer call centers
typically have centralized staff, interactive voice response systems,
automated call distribution, question analysis techniques,
sophisticated software support, and training and monitoring. There are
obviously differences between the mission and goals of customer call
centers and library reference services, but there are nonetheless
lessons that can be learned from this comparison. Coffman draws out
some of those lessons and challenges us to rethink how we provide
reference service in our libraries. - RT
Everett-Church, Ray. "Why Spam is a Problem" OnTheInternet 5(3)
(May/June 1999): 16-21. - At first I thought I didn't need this
article to tell me why spam (unsolicited commercial email) is a
problem -- I already know it is from personal experience (as do you,
no doubt). But a quick glance at the piece showed me to be wrong.
Everett-Church outlines six specific reasons why spam is a serious
problem. And annoyance isn't one of them (I guess my list would have
seven). His reasons are: cost shifting (making others pay your
advertising costs, such as Internet service provider storage and
delivery costs), fraud (in order to bypass spam filters, spammers will
often take on other identities), theft (in as much as you may be
paying the delivery or storage costs on their behalf), harm to the
marketplace (a flood of messages places a load on the entire system),
consumer perception (the annoyance and frustration caused by spam have
caused consumers to view any request of their email address, even by
legitimate businesses, with suspicion), and global implications (and
here is where he gets fairly far afield, but the idea here is that the
excesses of unscrupulous marketers will damage the growth of free
speech and democracy around the world). Like I said, I'm already
convinced that spam is a problem, but gosh, I guess I never knew just
how much. An accompanying sidebar on spam law provides some basic
information on recent legal developments and some useful links. - RT
Garman, Nancy, ed. "Special Search Engine Section" Online 23(3) (May,
1999) Miller, Kathy, managing ed. "Electronic Searching Tools and
Methods in Flux" Computers in Libraries 19(5) (May, 1999)
(http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may/cilmag.htm) - Like the little
flowers that bloom in the spring, bits of good search advice seem to
be popping up all over. A bunch of research and ideas is bundled into
these two themed issues, each with a slightly different focus: in
Online, the emphasis is on understanding the workings of search
engines for the benefit of both Web searchers and Webmasters, and in
CIL we have search strategies for librarians working in our usual "yes
there's the Web but that's not all there is" environment. For example,
go to Online to delve into topics like results ranking and natural
language processing, and CIL for more Webology plus articles about
online catalogs and mental models for searching. By the way, after
enjoying these big bouquets of info on the subject, go check out
Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) if you haven't
before. The periodical literature may blossom and die away again, but
this spot is consistent and current. - JR
McKay, Sharon Cline. "Accessing Electronic Journals" Database 22 (2)
(April/May 1999): 17-23.
(http://www.onlineinc.com/database/DB1999/mckay4.html) - If you have
been charged with the daunting task of leading your organization
through the maze of the electronic journal (e-journal) world fear is
not an unfounded response. While this article may not completely ease
your anxiety or answer all your questions, it should help anticipate a
few unexpected issues in your decision making. The initiated may not
find too many insights here, but McKay does make some good points on
reporting considerations and provides a brief profile of services from
major subscription agencies. She also predicts that e-journals will
eventually be ordered through a single subscription agent, like print
journals today. Hopefully this will be good news to information
professionals, as well as to subscription agencies such as the
author's. - LY
Members of the Clever Project. "Hypersearching the Web" Scientific
American (June 1999)
(http://www.sciam.com/1999/0699issue/0699raghavan.html). - This is a
fascinating article on how research scientists are trying to do a
better job of providing search tools for the Web. An IBM research team
called the Clever Project is using mathematical analysis of links to
identify Web sites that are "authorites" (the best sources of
information) and "hubs" (collections of links to those locations) for
any particular query. Also described briefly is similar work
undertaken at Stanford University, which has resulted in the Google
Web search engine. - RT
Nardi, Bonnie A., and O'Day, Vickie. "Information Ecologies: Using
Technology with Heart." Special Issue. First Monday 4 (5) (May 3,
1999) (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_5/nardi_contents.html).
- First Monday offers substantial excerpts from Nardi and O'Day new
book, published by MIT Press in January 1999 under the same name. The
authors argue persuasively that "the common rhetoric about technology
falls into two extreme categories: uncritical acceptance or blanket
rejection." Such extreme positions leave poor choices for action and
critical thinking about what we really want from technology. They
sustain the myth that whatever technological changes come along must
be accepted out of hand. Nardi and O'Day go on to stake out a "middle
ground" where managers, technologists and plain old folks might build
a better awareness of the complex, "organic" nature of both technology
and information resources. The chapters excerpted here do not cover
librarians, but in the book, an entire chapter is devoted to
librarians and the library as an "information ecology." This article
(and the full book) should be required reading for any information
specialist who is concerned about the impact of technology. - TH
Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. and B. Tommie Usdin, editors. Markup Languages
MIT Press, ISSN 1099-6621
(http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=10996621). - The first
and second issues (Winter 1999, Spring 1999) of this new journal
demonstrate a very useful resource for anyone managing information
which uses SGML, XML, or may be deployed on the Webwhich means many
professionals in information science today. This journal has articles
from international authors, and aims at an intermediate to advanced
reader. The journal contains several articles per issue, along with
book and article reviews. Articles range from the theoretical ("SGML
for electronic publishing at a technical society: Expectation meets
reality" by Sally Fahrenholz-Mann in issue 2) to the practical ("A new
generation of tools for SGML" by R.W. Matzen in issue 1). High quality
printing and helpful (essential?) illustrations round out the utility
of this publication. - RR
Tyckoson, David A. "What's Right with Reference" American Libraries
30(5) (May 1999): 57-63. - In this piece, Tyckoson revisits the
seminal article on modern library reference service by Bill Miller,
"What's Wrong with Reference: Coping with Success and Failure at the
Reference Desk" (American Libraries, May 1984, p. 303-306; 321-322).
Tyckoson notes that the problems remain, and in fact may be even more
true now than they were then. But he also casts a critical eye at the
various attempts to solve these problems over the intervening years,
which he asserts have largely failed. After running through each
attempted reform and why it has failed, his conclusion is that
reference service as we know it isn't broken just under-supported.
Give us more support, he says, and get out of the way. - RT
Young, Jeffrey. "A Yale Professor's Software Aims to Bring Order to
Your Hard Drive." Chronicle of Higher Education (May 21, 1999). - Yale
University computer science professor's new operating system, called
Lifestreams, has been reported on by Cites in the past (see
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/bibondemand.cgi?query=lifestr
eams). Now, Gelertner is ready to go to market with a commercial
product. Lifestreams offers users a visually-oriented display of files
on their hard drives, eliminating the requirement of knowing directory
paths. The visual appearance is strikingly similar to what Gopher on
Macintosh looked like seven years ago, but this program is far more
powerful and flexible. Lifestreams "rests on top" of MS Windows and
lets users organize files and information in very personal and
idiosyncratic ways, yet promises quick retrieval by weaving disparate
items together by idea, theme, data bit or other indicators. "I don't
ever want to see a directory again," explains Gelertner. The crucible
of the marketplace will help determine if average users share
Gelertner's wish. - TH
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 10(5) (May 1999) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (c) 1999 by the Library, University of California,
Berkeley. _All rights reserved._
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.5.html
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Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library.berkeley.edu, (510)
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