Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Current Cities Volume 12 Number 01
[1]Current Cites (Digital Library SunSITE)
Volume 12, no. 1, January 2001
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
The Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2001/cc01.12.1.html
Contributors: [3]Terry Huwe, [4]Michael Levy, [5]Leslie Myrick , Jim
Ronningen, [6]Roy Tennant
Austen, Ian. [7]"Rebooted Any Good Books Lately?" [8]The New York
Times (January 4, 2001): Section G; Page 1; Column 2
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/technology/04BOOK.html). - This
overview of e-books takes a look at dedicated book readers such as the
Franklin eBookman and the REB 1100 from RCA as well as software such
as Microsoft Reader that allows palm style devices to act as reading
devices. The issues to keep in mind when selecting an ebook include
battery life, ease of use and navigation, readability, size and,
something that is sometimes overlooked, the availability of books to
download. While each of the readers and software options have their
own strengths and weaknesses it is the difficulty of locating and
downloading titles that appears to be a major obstacle in the adoption
of this technology. For example, various titles available online may
only be read using Microsoft Reader and only on a desktop or laptop
computer, the process of downloading can be onerous and the cost of
e-books is barely less than their print counterparts. It seems that
this interesting area of new reading technology has a ways to go
before competing with the erstwhile paperback. - [9]ML
Calhoun, Karen, and John J. Reimer, guest eds. "CORC: New Tools and
Possibilities for Coopertaive Electronic Resource Description" [10]The
Journal of Internet Cataloging 4(1/2) (2001). - The entire issue is
devoted to discussing the [11]Cooperative Online Resource Cataloging
(CORC) project, an effort led by [12]OCLC to catalog Internet
resources. If this is all new to you, begin with the first article
"Collaboration in CORC" by Thomas B. Hickey of OCLC (p.5-16). Other
contributions cover specific areas of the CORC effort, or particular
experiences with using it. [By the way, is it just me, or shouldn't
the Journal of Internet Cataloging at least have Dublin Core metadata
in META tags on the journal home page?] - [13]RT
Cohen, Laura B. "Yahoo! and the Abdication of Judgment" [14]American
Libraries 32(1) (January 2001): 60-62. - In this piece Cohen rightly
criticizes the library profession for overlooking the many faults of
the Internet subject directory [15]Yahoo!. She cites several reasons
for this: a) a fear that users will see our opposition to typical user
behavior as irrelevant, b) our desire to give our customers what they
want (even if it isn't particularly good for them), c) abandonment our
mission to improve user searching behavior, and d) negligence of our
professional responsibilities. "In a world where the proliferation of
information is accelerating," Cohen asserts, "and paradigmatic changes
are sweeping our profession, we cannot toy with our standards or the
trust of our users." Her solution? "We should explain to our users the
deficiencies of Yahoo!, establish a repertoire of recommended
alternatives, and teach those alternatives with confidence." Cohen
reminds me that the reaction of the library profession (not everyone,
but in general) to the Internet passed through several stages:
indifferent ignorance, denial, opposition, tentative acceptance, and
slavish acceptance. It appears that Cohen is hopeful that we can move
out of the slavish acceptance stage by remembering and reapplying our
professional principles to the Internet age. - [16]RT
Cox, Richard J. [17]"The Great Newspaper Caper: Backlash in the
Digital Age" [18]First Monday 5(12) (December 4, 2000)
(http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_12/cox/). - Anyone who ever
felt peeved reading noted author Nicholson Baker's send-up of the San
Francisco Public Library's new building, and, more recently, his
article on the crisis in newspaper preservation, should read this
article. Cox presents a well-organized deconstruction of Baker's
central premises, and manages to be polite in doing so. He makes the
case that a "big lie" is being foisted on the American public, namely,
that research libraries are being irresponsible. This and other points
are made throughout the article, making this it a useful companion
piece to Baker's ruminations. - [19]TH
Gregory, Vicki L. [20]"UCITA: What Does it Mean for Libraries?"
[21]Online (25)1 (Jan/Feb 2001) p. 30-34
(http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL2001/gregory1_01.html). - UCITA,
the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, is really a
proposal which attempts to standardize contract law for digital
resource licenses on a state-by-state basis. It must be adopted by
each state legislature -- contract law generally being a state matter
-- but its power to change how your library handles such resources is
just as potent as federal law. Opponents believe that UCITA can
severely restrict the fair use exemptions in copyright law which
librarians and others rely upon; adherents believe that copyright law
will take precedence. This clash and other areas of contention are
admirably explained in layman's terms by the author, as are the
diffences between general regulation (copyright) and arrangement
between private parties (contract). This article will be of particular
interest to collection development librarians and administrators
responsible for analyzing the terms of agreement for CDs, DVDs and
online access. - JR
Hafner, Katie. [22]"Web Sites Begin to Self Organize" [23]The New York
Times (January 18, 2001): Section G; Page 1; Column 1
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/technology/18SELF.html). -
Librarians are constantly stressing the importance of critically
evaluating the quality of websites before trusting the information
provided. In a spinoff from the user ratings seen at sites such as
Amazon or CNET, there is an emerging class of sites, [24]thevines.com,
[25]themestream.com, and [26]plastic.com being examples, whereby users
grade content. For example, a writer can contribute material to one of
these sites on ancient Rome. Users then rate the work according to a
grading system. When someone else is looking for work on ancient Rome
those writings which have received higher grades from users will
automatically come to the top of the search list. The websites thus
become self-organizing or self-adapting. Each of the sites have
developed ways to prevent what they call "click circles" whereby
groups of friends bombard the site with glowing reviews of a
particular item. Some sites such as [27]Slashdot do have a modicum of
editorial oversight but for the most part a user is relying on unknown
reviewers to filter and rate content. Eventually, one may trust the
opinions of particular reviewers but for the most part this still
leaves us with the problem of evaluating the evaluators. - [28]ML
Lagoze, Carl. [29]"Keeping Dublin Core Simple: Cross-Domain Discover
or Resource Description?" [30]D-Lib Magazine 7(1) (January 2001)
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january01/lagoze/01lagoze.html). - Readers
of Current Cites are [31]familiar with the [32]Dublin Core (DC) -- a
draft standard for recording basic information about "document-like
objects". Designed as a common meeting ground between more robust
descriptive systems such as MARC, there has been pressure from some
participants in the process to complicate the DC to allow more complex
and full-featured DC systems. In this readable and well-argued
article, Lagoze explains the rationale behind keeping DC simple. By
using simple but efffective examples, Lagoze makes a compelling
argument for his contention, and one that those actively using the DC
would do well to heed. Even users of DC do not always realize that it
is only meant to be a medium of exchange of metadata between more
complex metadata schemes, and not a complex metadata scheme itself. It
is, in the end, too simple to be of much use for anything except
simple resource discovery. Which, if you remember your history (back
lo, those many years ago in 1995), is all it set out to be in the
first place. - [33]RT
Morgan, Eric Lease, ed. [34]"Special Issue: User-Customizable Library
Portals" [35]Information Technology and Libraries 19(4) (December
2000) (http://www.lita.org/ital/ital1904.html) - We've had excellent
articles introducing the concept and others profiling individual
sites, but for those who want to delve deeper into the My Library
thing and see how it's playing out in several locations, this is for
you. Implementation is still new enough that nobody has really
conclusive usage stats, but patterns are emerging which show that,
while they can't replace a well-planned library Web presence and an
efficient search system, customizable features are catching on and are
highly valued by early adopters (including librarians who are using
them to create quick course-oriented library pages). Articles on the
experience at North Carolina State, University of Washington and
Virginia Commonwealth University focus on the technical details of
creation and assessment of usage, while others address change in
organizational culture and impact on the nature of librarianship. Some
libraries which already have prototypes in the works may be beyond
most of this, but I believe that group is still pretty small. The
library administrators who haven't considered this option because
they're short on computing staff may want to rethink after reading
this issue. The paths have been cleared by the pioneers using open
source software, so putting it in place doesn't require a large
investment in systems staff time. - JR
Raveendra, V.V.S. [36]"E-Business Application Development: The
Paradigm Shift from In-House Application Development" [37]First Monday
6(1) (January 8, 2001)
(http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_1/raveendra/). - This
article analyzes e-business applications in plain English but with
considerable depth. Systems librarians and others who need to be
thinking about e-business applications of their own, like digital
reference on a "24/7" basis, will appreciate the author's
straightforward remarks. For example, he says that Web pages "'need
not be beautiful' but they do need to keep customers happy." He also
displays good awareness of what different settings require. - [38]TH
[39]"Top Technology Trends" Top Technology Trends Committee, Library
and Information Technology Association
(http://www.lita.org/committe/toptech/mainpage.htm). - This is not
technically a cite, but rather a heads-up notice about the Web
publication which will summarize this discussion which occurred at the
ALA Midwinter 2001 meeting in January. Topics included e-books, user
customization and censorship of online resources crossing national
boundaries. The site is worth visiting now to see the records of
discussions at previous meetings, and to become familiar with the
group. Of course, by the time you read this, the Midwinter 2001
summary may be already there, but isn't that the net way ... - JR
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 12(1) (January 2001) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright © 2001 by the Regents of the University of California All
rights reserved.
Copying is permitted for noncommercial use. Libraries are authorized
to add the publication to their collections at no cost. This message
must appear on copied material. All commercial use requires permission
from the editor. All product or service names are trademarks,
registered trade marks, or service marks of their respective holders.
Mention of a product or service in this publication does not
necessarily imply endorsement. To subscribe to the Current Cites
distribution list, send the message "sub cites [your name]" to
[40]listserv@library.berkeley.edu, replacing "[your name]" with your
name. To unsubscribe, send the message "unsub cites" to the same
address.
[41]Copyright © 2001 The Regents of the University of California. All
rights reserved.
Document maintained at
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2000/cc01.12.1.html by
[42]Roy Tennant.
Last update January 29, 2001. SunSITE Manager:
[43]manager@sunsite.berkeley.edu
References
1. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/imagemap/cc
2. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
3. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/autobiography/thuwe/
4. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/staff/levy/
5. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~scanmgr/LESLIE/citescv.html
6. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
7. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/technology/04BOOK.html
8. http://www.nytimes.com/
9. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/staff/levy/
10. http://www.haworthpressinc.com:8081/jic/
11. http://purl.org/corc/
12. http://www.oclc.org/
13. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
14. http://www.ala.org/alonline/
15. http://www.yahoo.com/
16. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
17. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_12/cox/
18. http://www.firstmonday.org/
19. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/autobiography/thuwe/
20. http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL2001/gregory1_01.html
21. http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/
22. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/technology/18SELF.html
23. http://www.nytimes.com/
24. http://thevines.com/
25. http://themestream.com/
26. http://plastic.com/
27. http://www.slashdot.org/
28. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/library/staff/levy/
29. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january01/lagoze/01lagoze.html
30. http://www.dlib.org/
31. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/bibondemand.cgi?query=Dublin+Core&title=Dublin+Core+Citations
32. http://purl.org/dc/
33. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
34. http://www.lita.org/ital/ital1904.html
35. http://www.lita.org/ital/index.htm
36. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_1/raveendra/
37. http://www.firstmonday.org/
38. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/autobiography/thuwe/
39. http://www.lita.org/committe/toptech/mainpage.htm
40. mailto:listserv@library.berkeley.edu
41. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Admin/copyright.html
42. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
43. mailto:manager@sunsite.berkeley.edu
