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Current Cities Volume 09 Number 10
_Current Cites_
Volume 9, no. 10
October 1998
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.10.html
Contributors:
Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart,
Roy Tennant, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
Digital Libraries
Kranch, Douglas A. "Beyond Migration: Preserving Electronic Documents
with Digital Tablets." Information Technology & Libraries 17(3)
(September 1998): 138-148. - Preserving digital information is one of
the great challenges facing librarians and archivists. There are
numerous issues that must be addressed, from technical details to
organizational structures. In this piece, however, Kranch focuses
mainly on the technical details, by putting forward the idea of
encapsulating digital content in a "tablet" that contains all the
hardware and software required to use it. Such tablets would,
presumably, prevent the need to migrate the information forward into
new systems that replace the ones used to create the information in
the first place. Although the idea has some merit, one could just as
easily consider the information to be "entombed" as well as preserved,
since presumably it would not be accessible to any future systems that
add capabilities to the manipulation of digital information.
Nonetheless, we're too early in the digital preservation game to throw
out any ideas too hastily. At this point every idea should receive
serious and thoughtful consideration. - RT
Sherwood, Lyn Elliot. "Discovering Buffalo Story Robes: A Case for
Cross-Domain Information Strategies" Computers and the Humanities
32(1)(1998): 57-64. - Buffalo Story Robes
(http://www.glenbow.org/srobe/srobe.htm), a small digital exhibit from
Canada's Glenbow Museum, is the inspiration for this author's insights
into how to realize the potential of the digital library. Sherwood,
the head of the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) found
that this exhibit on the stories of the tribes of the Canadian plains
had many related resources in government repositories, archives and
libraries. The exhibit represents one small example of a current
challenge in the digital environment: how to enable users to find
related across domains. Sherwood acknowledges that "each of these
communities is bound by its own traditions and classification schema."
He asserts that effective access is dependent on increased
collaboration among the many disciplines, and recommends looking
closely at the role of authorities, thesauri and a process for mapping
taxonomies across domains. Perhaps common sense, but essential if we
are ever to realize the vision of the digital library as "an
organized, selected or managed body of information." - LY
Still, Julie and Vibiana Kassabian. "Searching for Bill and Jane:
Electronic Full-Text Literature" Database 21 (5) (October/November
1998): 15-24. - This month's cover story takes a closer look at
electronic text resources available in English language prose with a
specific focus on Shakespeare, Austen and nature writing. This survey
is helpful not only for the references to major electronic guides and
archives on literary resources (both free and fee-based), but also for
detailed evaluations of individual resources. The authors recognize
that "people do not usually use electronic texts to read works, but,
rather to study them." Based on their review, there is ample material
on Shakespeare for all types of users, some on Austen but very little
on the genre of nature writing. Their conclusions? Available resources
still focus on the most widely known or studied authors. And the value
of these resources for scholars depends on whether they are based on
authoritative editions and include value-added materials or search
features. - LY
Electronic Publishing
Baca, Murtha, ed. Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital
Information Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1998, ISBN
0-89236-533-1. - This concise booklet follows the publication of the
Getty's earlier Introduction to Imaging with the same small-sized
format, introductory but not simplistic information, also priced at
around $8. Just as the earlier publication was an introduction to
digital imaging from many angles, this booklet introduces the reader
to the world of standards, with an emphasis on semantic standards such
as LCSH and AAT. It also provides an overview of different kinds of
metadata such as record structures (MARC, EAD) and interchange formats
and tools (SGML, Z39.50). - RR
Day, Colin. "Digital Alternatives: Solving the Problem or Shifting the
Costs?" Journal of Electronic Publishing 4 (September 1998).
(http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/day.html) - While some of us may
be pinning all of our hopes on electronic publishing as the solution
to the ills that currently plague academic publishing, Colin Day --
writing about the academic mongraph -- has made it his responsibility
to debunk those dreams. Publishers, he observes, are driven by the
wishes of authors on the one hand and readers on the other. As far as
he can tell, there is no pressure from either group for any type of
product "other than the traditional codex, carefully edited, nicely
produced, and energetically marketed." Digital publication of a
monograph simply shifts the cost of production from the publisher to
the scholar. - MP
Sosteric, Mike. "At the Speed of Thought: Pursuing Non-Commercial
Alternatives to Scholarly Communication" ARL Newsletter 200 (October
1998). (http://www.arl.org/newsltr/200/sosteric.html) - By now, to
talk of the crisis in scholarly communication and to express outrage
over the escalating costs of journal literature is to sound like a
broken record. And despite our greatest hopes that new technologies
will be the solution to this crisis, it looks as if electronic
publishing has only served as yet another opporutunity for commercial
publishers to increase their profits; some commercial publishers (the
few that are left in the increasingly monopolized world of academic
publishing) have been know to force libraries to purchase both paper
and electronic versions of their journals at rates that are even
higher than the standard print costs. Libraries are virtually
powerless to offset the practices of commercial publishers. At the
same time, independent scholars are reluctant to take up the call to
independent publication because too much work is involved, editorial
duties are not highly regarded when it comes to tenure and advancement
and there is no organizational support systematically advocating for a
revolution in scholarly communication. This is where Mike Sosteric
comes in. He is the director of the International Consortium of
Alternative Academic Publication (ICAAP) (http://www.icaap.org/),
whose mission is to "reduce the barriers to independent scholarly
publication by bringing together scholars and institutions from all
countries and all disciplines who are interested in bringing economic
health back to the scholarly communication system." In order to
fulfill its mission, the group will provide editorial assistance
(HTML, copy editing, etc.), develop an apprenticeship program for
young scholars to train them in the art and science of scholarly
communication, and work to develop technical standards for electronic
publishing. - MP
Varian, Hal R. "The Future of Electronic Jounals" Journal of
Electronic Publishing 4 (September 1998)
(http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/varian.html) - In this article,
a reprint of a talk he delivered at the Scholarly Communication and
Technology Conference (http://arl.cni.org/scomm/scat/) in April 1997,
Varian looks at the economics of journal production in order to make
some observations about the future of electronic journals. Electronic
submission and distribution of manuscripts among editorial staff and
reviewers can reduce the cost of journal production by almost
one-half. Electronic distribution can bring further savings and has
the value-added benefit of allowing precise monitoring of the number
of hits per article, full-text search capabilities, and hyperlinkage
to other relevant articles. Varian provides a provocative model for
how electronic journals can solve what he calls the "filtering" issue.
In the current scenario, more and more articles are being published.
In other words, if you really want to publish something, chances are
you can find someone to publish it; this indicates that the filtering
function of peer review -- designed to ensure that only the work
that's worthy gets published -- may not be working. While electronic
publishing will only add to the information glut, Varian's model
proposes that reviewers' anonymous evaluations be linked (and
searchable) to the actual article. - MP
Networks & Networking
Fleming, Jennifer. Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience
Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, 1998. - Probably the second
most common Web problem (the first being the "World Wide Wait"), is
getting lost in webspace. This is the experience of becoming
disoriented and not knowing which link to click to get to where you
want to go. Many Web sites seem to almost delight in making us puzzle
over what we can find at the site, or how to get around, or even the
meaning of certain buttons or labels. Chin up, help has arrived.
Fleming's book is chock-full of good information, advice, examples,
diagrams, screen shots (both in full-color and black-and-white), and
links. With this book, and the recently released Information
Architecture for the World Wide Web (cited in the March 1998 issue of
Current Cites), Web managers can no longer use ignorance as an excuse
for creating unorganized piles of documents instead of useful Web
sites. - RT
General
Proceedings of Reference Services in a Digital Age Washington: Library
of Congress, 1998 (http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/digiref/). - Don't come to
the proceedings of the Library of Congress-sponsored institute
"Reference Services in a Digital Age" to have your questions answered.
It won't happen. Rather, what this site may help you to do is to raise
some new questions. What _should_ reference services be like when
increasingly the information our users need is in digital form, and it
can be accessed without ever stepping foot in a library? How can we
interject human (and humane) assistance into these new environments?
What new roles are there for reference librarians? What new kinds of
education and training are required to become proficient at providing
service? These are important questions, and questions that institutes
such as this can help us frame and deal with as a profession. - RT
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 9(10) (October 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright
1998 by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. _All rights
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