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Current Cities Volume 09 Number 08
_Current Cites_
Volume 9, no. 8
August 1998
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.8.html
Contributors:
Kirk Hastings, Terry Huwe,
Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart, Roy Tennant
Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Noerr, Dr. Peter. The Digital Library Tool Kit. Mountain View, CA: Sun
Microsystems, 1998
(http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/libraries/digitaltoolkit.
html). -- Although it is difficult for any single document to describe
the emerging field of digital libraries in a comprehensive fashion,
this nearly 100-page, seven chapter document does a fairly decent job
of it. In Chapter 1 Dr. Noerr takes a look at a series of questions
that can help librarians focus on a number of considerations
concerning the creation and maintenance of a digital library. Chapters
2-5 discusses planning and implementation issues. It ends with a
couple chapters covering current research and existing systems, with
resources for more information and a look toward the future. Sun
Microsystems sponsored the creation of this document as part of their
support for education and digital libraries. -- RT
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Allen, David Yehling. "Creating and Distributing High Resolution
Cartographic Images" RLG DigiNews 2(4) (August 15, 1998)
(http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews2-4.html#feature). --
Creating digital map images presents particular problems. This brief
piece serves as a useful introduction to some of those problems and
the emerging methods by which they may be solved. Links to a number of
example projects and resources are included for those wishing to view
examples and find out more about the technologies discussed. One thing
this article makes apparent, however, is that we are still in a period
of experimentation with various technologies, and it is not yet clear
which one (or none) will win out in the end. That makes it rather
difficult for those of us who would prefer to do this only once. -- RT
Ford, Charlotte E. and Stephen P. Harter. "The Downside of Scholarly
Electronic Publishing: Problems in Accessing Electronic Journals
through Online Directories and Catalogs" College & Research Libraries
59(4) (July 1998): 335-346. -- Using Harter's previous study (along
with Hak Joon Kim) (see Current Cites for July, August and October
1996) as a springboard, this article examines the usefulness of four
online e-journal directories and two online union catalogs in
accessing electronic journals by comparing the coverage, accuracy,
currency and overlap among the six sources. The fact that most
e-journals have multiple homepages and sometimes multiple formats
(http, gopher, ftp) makes the maintenance of an authoritative list
extremely tricky. The authors suggest that e-journal producers can
help the situation by removing dated files, by bouncing users from old
sites to new ones, by informing the major directories of changes in
their addresses, and by clearly listing mirror sites and alternate
URLs on their homepages. At the same time, those who maintain the
directories of e -journals should use software that periodically
checks the accuracy of URLs listed. -- MP
Resh, Vincent H. "Science and Communications: An Author/Editor/User's
Perspective on the Transition from Paper to Electronic Publishing"
Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship 19 (Summer 1998).
(http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/98-summer/article3.html) -- The
publication of academic research, especially in the sciences, is
driven by forces that are not necessarily in sync: on the one hand,
technology is advancing and scientific output is increasing but
library funding is decreasing. How does electronic publishing fit into
this picture? Vincent Resh, a professor in the Department of
Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, takes a
look at this issue from the perspective of one who is an author,
editor and user of electronic resources; he outlines and summarizes
what he views as the popular perceptions held by his colleagues about
the transition from print to online publishing. Among these
perceptions: 1) Subscriptions costs will be reduced with a shift from
paper to electronic media; 2) Lagtime between submission and
publication will be reduced; 3) Information from e-journals is not as
acceptable because they are not peer-reviewed; 4) E-journals offer
value-added features like links video simulations and hyperlinks to
other citations. In his analysis of e-publishing, Resh concludes that
scientific journals are used most by young researchers yet editorial
decisions are being made my older editors who may be entrenched in
outdated paradigms. -- MP
MULTIMEDIA & HYPERMEDIA
Wang, Gene. "The Future of Digital Cameras" Web Techniques 3(9)
(September 1998): 45-48. -- Consumer digital cameras are currently
expensive play things that offer less picture quality than the
cheapest film camera. But that, says Wang, will change by sometime
next year when much higher image resolutions (over 2 million pixels)
are achieved. These new cameras will also likely use better
compression algorithms (to provide smaller images with less loss of
data), run in-camera applications (perhaps on top of the Windows CE
operating system), and even cost less. Although the technical tangent
on how wavelet compression works was probably unnecessary, the bulk of
the piece is very informative and worthwhile to anyone considering the
purchase of a digital camera in the $500 - $3,000 range. Interestingly
enough, this chairman and CEO of a company that builds hardware and
software components for digital cameras is basically telling potential
consumers to wait until the next generation of products hits the
streets. I'd say that's good advice. -- RT
NETWORKS & NETWORKING
Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption
Research, Wiretap Politics, & Chip Design. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly &
Associates, 1998. -- Some of you may be old enough to remember when
The Progressive printed an article that described how to build an
atomic device in enough detail to be useful for anyone wishing to do
it (November 1979). The publication of the piece had been blocked six
months earlier by a U.S. Federal Court, in what was the first case of
"prior restraint" of the freedom of the press. What followed was a
firestorm of outrage, support for freedom of the press, and further
litigation. This book is similar in that it is also a highly political
"cookbook." Its entire purpose is to once and for all blow the
government's Data Encryption Standard (DES) out of the water. DES uses
a 56-bit key to encrypt data. The FBI and the National Security Agency
as recently as 1997 testified before Congress that DES was extremely
difficult to crack. A team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) cracked it in 56 hours. This book tells how, in great detail,
and also provides some historical background and supporting research
papers. Current U.S. law prevents EFF from publishing on this
information on the Web, so they have taken the extraordinary measures
of printing their information (which is legal) in such a way as to be
easily scanned, specifying which free software is required to perform
turn the scan into text, and providing step-by-step instructions on
how to do it. They have done all this in the hope that others living
in countries without laws restricting its publication on the Web will
do so. EFF can then legally point to any and all such sites around the
world. Their goal, as that of their spiritual colleagues before them,
is to demonstrate that "official secrecy in this area serves no useful
public purpose" (The Progressive (November 1979, p.15), and is, in
fact, detrimental, by providing a false sense of security where none
should exist. -- RT
Maxwell, Bruce. How to Find Health Information on the Internet.
Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1998. -- Log onto any
search engine and lookup the medical issue of your choice; you'll
probably retrieve tens of thousands of hits. This guide provides a
highly selective, manageable, annotated list of health sites and
includes sections on specific diseases, preventative medicine, and
health care issues. Particularly valuable in the guide is the
introduction which provides guidelines on how to judge the quality of
health information on the Internet. Maxwell is quick to note that the
Internet is but one source in an information landscape which includes
print journals, books and commercial databases as well, that can help
you become a better informed health consumer. - MP
GENERAL
Flower, Eric. "Price, Performance and System Selection in the
Intel-Based PC Market" Computers in Libraries 18(7) (July/Aug 1998):
8-18. (http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jul/story1.htm). -- There's no
lack of articles which focus on various aspects of the PC market, but
this one really pulls it all together. Of course the year's biggest
desktop computer news is the arrival of sub-$1,000 machines, but
Flower explores many levels of "Wintel" systems and their suitability
for different needs. (Although this article appears in Computers in
Libraries, he doesn't try to match PC functions to library tasks, and
wisely avoids placing a rigid frame around a changeable landscape.) An
appropriately large amount of space is devoted to the recent history
of Intel chip development and expectations for its future. Typical of
the thoroughness here, processors from oft-ignored competitors AMD and
Cyrix are included. After the CPUs are described, whole system
configurations are compared. Armed with this kind of information,
individual shoppers or institutional buyers will have a much easier
time of it. Read the Web version to take advantage of the links to
related analysis and relevant manufacturer Web sites. - JR
Healy, Leigh Watson. Library Systems: Current Developments and Future
Directions Washington: Council on Library and Information Resources,
1998. -- The preface cautions the reader against using this report as
"a comparative study of integrated library systems," but it is
difficult to resist the temptation. Following four case studies of two
academic libraries, a public library and a special library (all large
institutions), the bulk of the report consists of vendor profiles.
These profiles can be handy references to basic information on twelve
of the most important library automation vendors. While anyone seeking
to purchase a new automation system will need to do more research (as
is pointed out in the preface) this is nonetheless an excellent place
to start to get an idea of the present products and future directions
of the major players. -- RT
Wiley, Deborah Lynne. Beyond Information Retrieval: Ways to Provide
Content in Context" Database 21(4)(August/September 1998): 18-22.
(http://www.onlineinc.com/database/DB1998/wiley8.html) -- This article
should be a wake-up call for information providers who are slow to use
the latest information retrieval technologies to provide better
solutions for their customers. Wiley chronicles the history of
information retrieval in the pre-Web world and provides a helpful
overview of recent Web-based, search-enhancing technology features.
These technologies include collaborative filtering (software that
offers recommendations to users based on what other users have done),
data extraction, data visualization, agent technologies, pattern
recognition, classification/clustering and virtual communities. Wiley
argues that basic search and retrieval functions alone are not enough
any more, and provides specific examples of companies that are using
these advanced technology features to add value. In trendy circles
this may be known as knowledge management. Wiley hails it as "content
in context" or, more simply, moving from finding information to
providing answers. -- LY
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 9(8) (August 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright
1998 by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. _All rights
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