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Current Cities Volume 08 Number 01
_Current Cites_
Volume 8, no. 1
January 1997
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1997/cc97.8.1.html
Contributors:
Campbell Crabtree, Terry Huwe,
Margaret Phillips, David Rez, Richard Rinehart,
Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Brown, Elizabeth W. and Andrea L. Duda. "Electronic Publishing
Programs in Science and Technology, Part 1: The Journals" Issues
in Science and Technology Librarianship 13 (Fall 1996-Winter
1997). (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/96-fall/brown-duda.html)
-- This survey article summarizes information on the electronic
publishing programs of fourteen commercial and professional
association publishers in science and technology fields. The
tabular format makes it easy to quickly survey the offerings. Read
it online and you can "click through" to the publisher's Web sites.
Part two of the article to be published in the next issue will
focus on abstracting and indexing services. -- RT
Litman, Jessica. "Copyright Law and Electronic Access to
Information" First Monday 4 (http://www.firstmonday.dk)
-- Litman's article is adapted from a speech she gave to LITA at
the 1996 meeting of the American Library Association. It's a
skillful summation of the tension between "fair use" values and
market values. Readers will also appreciate the easy-to-follow
guide to the first draft of the "Lehman Report" which set the stage
for the late 1996 international debate about copyright. This is a
useful refresher on the issues. -- TH
"Metadata, Dublin Core and USMARC: A Review of Current Efforts"
MARBI Discussion Paper no. 99, Library of Congress, January 21,
1997. (gopher://marvel.loc.gov/00/.listarch/usmarc/dp99.doc)
-- If you have no need to describe images for Internet access, and
the word "metadata" has no meaning to you, then skip this cite. The
rest of you should pull up a scanner and have a seat. Describing
the essential elements of a text document or image for the purposes
of providing access to it is the process of collecting metadata, or
information about information. Librarians have been doing this for
centuries, with some very powerful and yet quite complicated tools
(MARC, AACR2, etc.). With the advent of the Internet and
digitization technologies, we are suddenly faced with the prospect
of trying to provide structured access to millions of individual
images, text documents, manuscripts, sound files, movies, or
whatever else can be stored on a computer. A simple and yet
extensible standard for describing digital objects would allow just
about anyone to describe their files in a way that could be
interpreted by almost anyone else, and thus provide easy access to
a huge amount of digital content. Right now the draft standard that
appears to be making the greatest headway is called the Dublin
Core, named for the town in Ohio where the first meeting was held
to begin the process (the home of OCLC). This serves as a useful
overview of the Dublin Core effort to date, as well as how the
Dublin Core elements can be mapped to the USMARC format. -- RT
Samuelson, Pamela. "On Authors' Rights in Cyberspace: Questioning
the Need for New International Rules on Author's Rights in
Cyberspace" First Monday 4 (http://www.firstmonday.dk) -- Pam
Samuelson is the best person to read in order to sort out
intellectual property and electronic media. As a professor of law
(as well as information management) at UC Berkeley, she has
followed the perils facing "fair use" for years. In this typically
excellent review of the issues, she offers a realistic look at the
legal precedents, and argues that we need to continue to balance
competing rights and privileges or else run the risk of stifling
technological creativity. She says, "No sooner did governments
around the world "discover" cyberspace than they became intent on
regulating it." And also: "New regulations may indeed only restrict
access to information and impede the application of new technologies
by authors and their audiences." -- TH
Weibel, Stuart and Eric Miller. "Image Description on the
Internet: A Summary of the CNI/OCLC Image Metadata Workshop" D-Lib
Magazine (January 1997).
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january97/oclc/01weibel.html)
-- This article describes the third meeting of the Dublin Core
effort (see the article "Metadata, Dublin Core and USMARC: A
Review of Current Efforts" in this issue of Current Cites for an
overview). This meeting focused on the particular issues regarding
image description. The meeting led to a revision of the core
elements to better generalize them to apply to either images or
document-like objects. The links listed at the end of the article
are essential references to the latest developments regarding
this important standard. -- RT
NETWORKS AND NETWORKING
Kessler, Jack _Internet Digital Libraries: The International
Dimension_. Boston: Artech House, 1997. -- Kessler has written a
thoughtful and thought-provoking book on international aspects of
digital libraries. Using a writing style that is both scholarly
and easily readable (no minor achievement), he ponders a number of
issues that have not yet been well considered by digital library
developers. Although the reader may assume that the reports on
digital library developments in specific countries serve as the
main thrust of the work, it is actually the thematic essays that
sandwich them that are the real heart. Notable among them are an
interesting dissection of the term "digital library," and
discussions of the barriers/opportunities of language, politics,
and the standards process. The biggest mistake one can make about
this book is thinking that it is only appropriate for those
specifically interested in the international dimensions of digital
libraries. These days, digital libraries are by *default*
international in scope, whether we like it or not, and those of us
involved with building them should be at least aware of some of the
issues Kessler raises. -- RT
Valauskas, Edward J. "Lex Networkia: Understanding the Internet
Community." First Monday 4 (http://www.firstmonday.dk).
-- First Monday editor Valauskas explores the self-regulating
nature of Internet communities, and the absence of any awareness
among would-be regulators as to how these communities work. He
provides a list of definitions, parameters, codes of conduct and
social protocols as evidence of a lively electronic space, and
argues that an upward initiative to codify this culture into a
"lex networkia" might be the best strategy for preserving it in
the face of the current challenge of formal government regulation.
-- TH
GENERAL
Murphy, Kate. "Moving from the Card Catalogue to the Internet:
To Control the Information Glut, Librarians Become More
Technologically Oriented." New York Times (January 6, 1997):C15.
-- Technologically-minded librarians who have been at it for a
good long time may allow themselves a snicker at being "discovered"
by the New York Times. Librarians have been involved not only in
using new technology but exploring solutions to the problems users
face, and Murphy finds a growing realization that this is a rather
important--even marketable--set of skills. She also spins a good
tale of technological innovation in libraries, particularly in the
law and corporate sectors. And, recent MLIS graduates, take heart:
according to the Times, corporate recruiters are beginning to show
up at library schools, on the lookout for a few good information
managers! -- TH
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Current Cites 8(1) (January 1997) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1997 by the Library, University of
California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
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