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Current Cities Volume 10 Number 12
_Current Cites_
Volume 10, no. 12 December 1999
The Library University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.12.html
Contributors: Terry Huwe, Michael Levy, Leslie Myrick,
Margaret Phillips, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Rowlison,
Roy Tennant, Lisa Yesson
Arms, William Y. "Preservation of Scientific Serials: Three Current
Examples" Journal of Electronic Publishing 5(2) (December 1999)
(http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/05-02/arms.html). - Arms, current
Editor-in-Chief of D-Lib Magazine, (http://www.dlib.org/) offers three
case studies that explore the capabilities and efforts of three
digital publications to meet the challenges of preserving digital
resources into the next millennium. The ACM Digital Library, the
Internet RFC series, and D-Lib Magazine were selected as
representative paradigms displaying significant variations in
organizational stability and technical specs for the storage and
delivery of data. Arms examines the feasibility of three commonly
cited levels of preservation: conservation (full look and feel of the
scientific article and journal as an artifact), preservation of access
(maintenance of the material and an effective system of access through
indexing, metadata, etc.), and preservation of content (warehoused
articles with minimal metadata). The ultimate question is, to whom
will the responsibility of preservation fall: publishers?
not-for-profit institutions, such as university libraries? charitable
foundations? national archives? Arms envisions a period of initial
active management by publishers, followed by preservation by another
body, perhaps the Library of Congress. The ideal solution will no
doubt arise from a partnership amongst the scientific community,
publishers, and libraries. - LM
Breeding, Marshall. "Does the Web Spell Doom for CD and DVD?"
Computers in Libraries 19(10) (November/ December 1999)
(http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/nov99/breeding.htm) - Breeding states
boldly that the trend is "an unmistakable migration away from
CD-ROM-based products toward web-based information resources accessed
via the Internet." When CD-ROMs first gained wide use in the library
world, the user was faced with having to use and learn different
search protocols for each product running on individual PCs. The
appearance of CD-ROM networks allowed for multiple access but users
still faced the problem of multiple search interfaces and the
difficulty of installation and maintenance. Now the web environment
uses a model of information whereby the database is stored on a
centralized server via the Internet or even on locally based servers.
This is much easier for libraries who can build a standard network
around TCP/IP - there is no need for proprietary software,
installation or updating of CDs. In addition the move to web-based
catalogs allows for greater integration of electronic resources,
indexes, abstracts and full-text databases. Finally, while search
interfaces do differ there is a certain homogeneity because of
web-based approach. Breeding makes a number of predictions. Libraries
will not be installing large scale CD-ROM networks but using a
miniserver approach; as "the web is the ubiquitous approach for
providing access to library resources to remote users" even non-web
based resources will be accessed via web-launching applications. CDs
and DVDs will only be used a distribution medium with DVD gradually
becoming the standard, and vendors will themselves move away from
these formats to FTP for updating. Breeding suggests diversifying
servers so that heavily used databases are on local intranet servers
in order to offer better performance. - ML
Carvajal, Doreen. "Racing to Convert Books to Bytes" New York Times
(December 9, 1999): C1; C27. - In this informative overview of the
trend within publishing to producing digital books, Carvajal
highlights the example of the University of Texas at Austin. The
University has a $1 million budget for digital books and a collection
of 600 titles with access to over 5000 titles via consortiums. There
are digital readers that allow users to download electronic titles and
in the near future users will be able to create their own customized
versions of books. Random House is attempting to digitize it's entire
backlist of 20,000 titles, while Simon & Schuster is formatting all
new books in digital form and starting on it's own backlist. Various
European publishers have announced that they will produce electronic
books that can be read in Microsoft's upcoming Microsoft Reader
software, and journal publishers are joining together to allow
electronic links between citations. As it is difficult for new
publishers in the burgeoning field to get hold of titles much
expansion has been with public domain titles. One publisher,
NetLibrary is outsourcing data entry to countries such as China and
India and then marketing to major libraries to buy electronic
collections. There are still some doubts about whether this will be a
successful venture on the part of publishers. At the moment most
ebooks are the same price as print counterparts and all companies are
grappling with the problem of whether readers will warm to these
formats with many banking on the younger digital generation leading
the charge. - ML
Conservation Implications of Digitization Projects National Digital
Library Program and the Conservation Division, Library of Congress.
Washington: Library of Congress, 1999
(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/techdocs/conserv83199a.pdf). - This
report largely describes the procedures followed by the Library of
Congress to ensure the proper handling of materials when digitizing.
Given the wide diversity of material types digitized by LC, as well as
the volume of materials handled and the length of time LC has been
doing this kind of activity, this information on how LC does it can be
extremely valuable to those with less experience. Appendix I is a
handout used for an in-house course, and is available separately at
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/techdocs/conserv83199b.pdf. Appendices II
and III are promised shortly, and will be listed at
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftpfiles.html when they are available. -
RT
Dutton, William H., Anita Elberse and Matthew Hale. "A Case Study of a
Netizen's Guide to Elections" Communications of the ACM 42(12)
(December, 1999) - The horserace metaphor for an election brings to
mind this homily: you can lead 'em to water, but you can't make 'em
drink. For the 1998 California gubernatorial primary, voters could dip
into the Democracy Network (http://www.dnet.org/), a much deeper well
of candidate info than what was available from traditional sources.
This case study describes the construction of the site, the methods of
gathering content, and the patterns of use. It was a wonderful
resource for people who cared enough to research the issues, but of
course its impact on voters' decision-making process was small
compared to the effect of broadcast media. As one campaign manager put
it, "It is going to come down to potentially who the voters like
better, character and personality... commercials, and quick sound bite
flashes, show what kind of people they are." However, in the usage
patterns the authors do see some encouraging signs: the increase in
focused searches during the week prior to the election could indicate
good use of the site for making informed choices. The study is
valuable for those of us who assist with research in politics and
government, but it's also of interest to anyone pondering the effects
of the Internet on information-seeking behavior. - JR
Graham, Margaret E. "The Description and Indexing of Images: Report of
a Survey of ARLIS Members, 1998/99" Newcastle: Institute for Image
Data Research, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, May 1999
(http://www.unn.ac.uk/iidr/ARLIS/). - This report comes out of an
effort led by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the
Higher Education Funding Councils in the UK to study the efficacy of
content-based image retrieval (CBIR, see the report cited in the
September 1999 issue of Current Cites and the web site at
http://www.unn.ac.uk/iidr/CBIR/cbir.html). To support that work, it
was decided to survey current practice for indexing images among
institutional members of the Art Libraries Society (UK). The findings
of that survey, conducted from November 1998 to January 1999, are
summarized here. Anyone interested in current practice in indexing
images will find this report useful, with one caveat. Despite the fact
that typically only about 25% of the respondents felt that CBIR might
be useful to any degree whatsoever, they nonetheless put an overly
positive light on that finding by basically ignoring the overwhelming
majority who answered "Don't Know" or "No Response" (accounting for
over 60% of the responses in most cases). - RT
Guernsey, Lisa. "The Web: New Ticket to a Pink Slip" New York Times
(December 16 1999): D1, D8, D9. - Guernsey highlights recent trends in
workplace surveillance. 40 employees of Xerox were recently fired for
surfing to "forbidden" web sites at work. They were caught because
Xerox, and numerous other large corporations, are using specialized
software such as Spector or Websense to monitor employees computer
use. Approximately 45% of employers use a variety of monitoring
techniques whether of phone calls, email or computer use. Their
argument is that this is necessary to clamp down on time wasted by
employees and also to stop employees from creating a potentially
hostile environment for their fellow workers. The monitoring of
workers has a long history in US labor relations but the Internet has
added a whole new area for management intrusion. While there are some
laws, mostly concerning wiretapping, that offer some protection to
workers, this is an unsettled area of the law. There are some cases of
employees arguing that their privacy rights have been invaded by
electronic monitoring but none thus far have reached a jury. Many
privacy groups are arguing that workers have greater expectation
privacy rights in the workplace than employers are willing to
recognize. In a sidebar "What Employers Can View at Work" Guernsey
outlines some parameters of worker privacy. As she starkly states
"most employees should not consider their office email to be private,
nor should they assume that their employers are not looking at logs of
web sites they have visited." - ML
Harnad, Stevan. Free at Last: The Future of Peer-Reviewed Journals"
D-Lib Magazine 5(12) (December 1999)
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december99/12harnad.html). - Harnad has long
been a vocal advocate of using networking technologies to free
scholarly communication from standard publishing models. In his most
recent argument for such a change, published by D-Lib Magazine as an
opinion piece (for which they also take pains to absolve themselves of
any implied support), he advocates methods by which authors of
scholarly works can "self-archive" their work. If such local archives
follow the emerging conventions of the Open Archives Initiative
(http://www.openarchives.org/), then the resulting interoperability
would enable users to easily locate a specific paper in whatever
archive it is stored. This, Harnad asserts, is inevitable -- all that
is required is that universities (and more specifically, the
librarians working there) rise to the challenge of implementing the
appropriate infrastructures and support mechanisms for authors.
Interestingly enough, some universities are rising to the challenge.
One such example is the Electronic Scholarship initiative of the
California Digital Library of the University of California. - RT
Heckart, Ronald J. "Imagining the Digital Library in a Commercialized
Internet" The Journal of Academic Librarianship 25:4 (July
1999):274-280. - In this thought provoking article, Heckart considers
the ripe technologies of artificially intelligent navigational tools,
interactive (personalized) technologies, and user data collection and
analysis in the context of digital libraries. Of particular interest
is Heckart's consideration of the user's expectations for such
technologies and tools in the library setting based on their
commercial Internet experiences. His thoughts on the meaning of a
balance between user privacy and service brings to light a major
digital library issue. The article is an excellent example of
"informed speculation" and bears a thorough read for anyone doing
digital library planning or brainstorming. - LR
Kelly, Henry. "Information Technology and the Environment: Choices and
Opportunities" iMP Magazine (Information Impacts Magazine) (October
1999) (http://www.cisp.org/imp/october_99/10_99kelly.htm) - Serving as
the Assistant Director for Technology in the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy, Kelly discusses environmental impact of
information technology and presents areas for possible resource
savings when developing, manufacturing, and choosing information
technologies. Kelly's article presents the relationship between
economic growth and reduced natural resource consumption in terms of
three fundamental features: intelligent production processes,
intelligent design of products, and intelligent operation of products.
While libraries may not often concern their technology use with the
fate of natural resources, there is room for us to play a responsible
role in the planning, creation and implementation of resource
efficient information technologies. - LR
Lieb, Thom. "Looking Good" The Journal of Electronic Publishing 5(2)
(December 1999) (http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/05-02/lieb0502.html) -
This article examines in a nutshell the sad plight of electronic
publishers caught up in the struggle to produce uniform pages in spite
of browsers' variations in supporting Java and Javascript, frames,
style sheets, dynamic HTML (DHTML) and tables, to name the most
obvious landmines in "the Browser Wars." He also covers a number of
publishing-specific problems issuing for the most part from
differences in platform: offset, text size, tracking and leading.
Monitors also join the fray, as the source of problems relating to
canvas size. But, he cautions, even when all external adversaries in
the Browser and Platform Wars have been vanquished, bad output may
simply come down to bad coding, concerning which some browsers are
more lenient than others. In the end, the best advice is the most
obvious: Lieb advocates using a code validator, adhering to the lowest
common denominator in terms of presentation, and giving more weight to
content. - LM
Miller, Rush G. and Peter X. Zhou. "Global Resource Sharing: A Gateway
Model" The Journal of Academic Librarianship 25(4) (July
1999):281-287. - Miller and Zhou share the success of the University
of Pittsburgh's Gateway Service Center of Chinese Academic Journal
Publications. The project implements the gateway model for global
resource sharing, by bringing together several academic libraries from
China, Taiwan and Hong Kong to establish a protocol of document
delivery of Chinese journal publications for U.S. researchers.
Challenged by distance, language, political climate and copyright
issues, the project has been quite successful and has demonstrated
that the necessary protocols, agreements and other complex
negotiations required for global resource sharing are not impossible
to establish. The Gateway Service Center of Chinese Academic Journal
Publications may be accessed at http://www.library.pitt.edu/gateway/.
- LR
Mühlberger, Günter. "Digitisation of Newspaper Clippings: The LAURIN
Project" RLG DigiNews 3(6) (December 15, 1999)
(http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews3-6.html#feature). - Much
of the most practical digital library developments are coming from
Europe, and a case in point is the project described in this report.
The LAURIN project (http://laurin.uibk.ac.at/) of the European
Commission (launched in 1998) brings together seventeen partners from
seven European countries to develop an infrastructure to support the
digitization and management of newspaper clippings. One of the
outcomes of the project has been the development of libClip, a
software application that semi-automates the process of digizitizing a
particular clipping, analyzing the article layout, recognizing the
characters on the page (OCR), and metadata capture. The development of
this software dramatically increases the efficiency of this type of
procedure. They promise that a full trial version of the software will
be available at their web site by the time this issue of Current Cites
is published. - RT
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 10(12) (December 1999) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (c) 2000 by the Library, University of California,
Berkeley. All rights reserved.
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