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Current Cities Volume 05 Number 11
_Current_Cites_
Volume 5, no. 11
November 1994
Information Systems Instruction & Support
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
Contributors:
Margaret Phillips, Dave Rez,
Richard Rinehart, Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
Electronic Publishing
Clement, Gail. "Evolution of a Species: Science Journals
Published on the Internet" Database 17(5) (October/November
1994):44-54. -- An excellent overview of the current state
of electronic science journals, including where they have
come from and where they may be headed. Although focused
entirely on science journals, many of the observations are
also appropriate for journals in other disciplines. Clement
includes a number of pointers to key electronic journal
resources. Sidebars include a list of current or planned
electronic science journals, and informative case studies of
specific titles. -- RT
Leslie, Jacques. "Goodbye, Gutenberg: Pixelating Peer Review is
Revolutionizing Scholarly Journals" Wired 2(10) (October 1994):
68-71. -- As time passes electronic scholarly journals are
becoming more accepted by the academic community. Over the past
few years approximately 450 new electronic journals have become
available, at least 70 of which are scholarly. One reason
publishing journals electronically has become so appealing
recently is the rising cost of journal subscriptions. Cost,
along with the increasing visual potential of electronically-
based documents has driven acceptance of electronic journals to
an all-time high. -- DR
Multimedia and Hypermedia
Stefanac, Suzanne. "Multimedia Meets the Internet" New Media 4(11)
(November 1994):56-63. -- Can "multimedia" and "Internet" yet be
mentioned in the same breath without the obligatory raised eyebrow?
Well...not quite, but this article is a good overview of various
projects and technologies that are already tackling the wideband/
narrowband schism. Many popular projects such as WWW browsers have
already began to break down the barriers between what is a "network"
application, and what a "multimedia" application. Other topics
covered are ATM protocol, MBone, cable modems, and CD-ROM-assisted
network services (where the service delivers a file code to the
computer, which then opens the band-hogging Quicktime movie or
image off the local CD-ROM). The article is very useful in that it
includes contact information in the forms or relevant URLs or phone
numbers. -- RR
Wilson, David. "Teaching a Computer to Find and Retrieve Stored
Images" Chronicle of Higher Education 40(7) (October 12, 1994):
A20-21. -- One of the as yet unrealized promises of multimedia
computing is to transform the image into something beyond a
'dumb' object into an integral part of the structure of the data
for both storage and retrieval purposes. Currently, images are
helpless objects, dependent on attached text to serve any purpose
other than mere illustration. Alex Pentland of the conceptual-
computing section of MIT's Media Laboratory has taken a first step
toward liberating the digital image from its slavery to textual
tags. Pentland has created a system whereby images can be searched
visually; one starts with an image to finds 'hits' of similar
images. His 'photobook' projects used faces as the experimental
pool of images. And amazingly, when starting with one man's face
and searching for similar ones, his system even found other photos
of the subject's face when he was pictured wearing a false beard
or with an altered expression. The implications for research in
medicine, art history, and any field dealing with images are
exciting to say the least. -- RR
Networks and Networking
Bell, Gladys Smiley. "First Peoples and the Internet" College &
Research Libraries News 55(10) (November 1994):633-635. -- This
article is a guide to Internet resources for and about Native
Americans and includes a selective list of electronic discussion
groups, ftp and gopher sites, UseNet newsgroups and other
significant electronic resources. -- MP
DeLoughry, Thomas J. "For the Community of Scholars 'Being
Connected' Takes On a Whole New Meaning" The Chronicle of
Higher Education 40(10) (November 2, 1994): A25-A26. -- The
emergence of online discussion groups and mailing lists as a
means of scholarly communication has raised questions about
the role of the Internet in academia. For example, having a
high profile on the Internet has become the newest way, in
some cases, to gain recognition for faculty seeking promotions.
While statistics are still not available indicating how many
college students and faculty subscribe to mailing lists, it is
clear that in many cases more people can be reached by way of
a mailing list than through an article in a journal. Following
this article are several reviews of some of the more popular
and more obscure mailing lists -- including a generous review
of PACS-L. -- MP
Lewis, Peter H. "Companies Rush to Set Up Shop in Cyberspace"
The New York Times (November 2, 1994): C1, C6. -- With its
color photographs, sound clips, interactive diagrams and easy
navigation, companies are starting to recognize the marketing
potential of the World-Wide Web and are setting up their own
"home pages" as a means of sharing information about themselves
and their products. The author describes the development of both
the Web and navigational software programs such as Mosaic in
addition to outlining what a business needs to become "web worthy:"
access to a server computer, fast telephone lines, and the ability
to "tag" documents in hypertext markup language. The article
includes references to the Elvis Presley home page, the White
House home page and the now famous "On the Internet, no one knows
your a dog" cartoon from the New Yorker. -- MP
Lewis, Peter H. "U.S. Begins Privatizing of Internet Operations"
The New York Times (October 24, 1994): C1, C9. -- The National
Science Foundation which administers a nationwide Internet
backbone commonly known as the NSF Net has begun turning over
many of its responsibilities to the private sector. Specifically,
many regional Internet service providers have been scheduled to
be disconnected from the NSF Net backbone and connected to new
commercial network hubs in San Francisco, Chicago, Penssauken,
N.J, and Washington. While some see the shift in administration
as a way to bring about marketplace efficiencies to the Internet,
others fear that a privatized Internet will not have the capacity
for the large volume of traffic on the network. No one knows yet
how the changes in the management of the Internet will effect the
heaviest users of the Internet -- universities and research
institutions -- who have benefitted most from government subsidies
of the Internet. -- MP
Marchionini, Gary, Diane Barlow, and Linda Hill. "Extending
Retrieval Strategies to Networked Environments: Old Ways, New Ways,
and a Critical Look at WAIS," Journal of the American Society for
Information Science 45(8) (September 1994):561-564. -- This
evaluative article compares searching results from a WAIS
system and a Boolean-based retrieval system. As a result, they
identified some problems with WAIS. Some of these include
an inadequate ranking algorithm, a relevance feedback mechanism
that does not allow the user to assign weights to terms, and
a "black box" effect for the user of sending a search in and not
having much of an idea about what determines what comes out.
Nonetheless, the authors point out some strengths of WAIS over
Boolean-based search systems, such as no query language to
learn, a higher likelihood of something being returned from a
search, and ease of use when using the workstation-based clients.
-- RT
Wilson, David L. "Navigating the Web" The Chronicle of Higher
Education 40(9) (October 26, 1994): A24, A28-A29. -- This report
on a recent meeting to discuss ways to improve Mosaic, provides
a good overview of some of the strengths and weaknesses of this
hot new network browsing tool that has become so popular. While
Mosaic is credited with the exponential growth that the World-Wide
Web has seen in the last year, the program can be annoyingly slow
to use and it provides no support for any kind of indexing which
makes searching for resources on the Web almost impossible. It is
best to think of Mosaic, say conference speakers, as a primitive
tool compared to what will be available in a few years. -- MP
Optical Disc Technology
Adkins, Susan L. "CD-ROM: A Review of the 1993 Literature"
Computers in Libraries 14(8) (September 1994):43-55. -- Adkins
once again provides a well-written survey of the year in CD-ROM.
The survey is organized into two sections. The first section
concentrates on the developments in the industry, including the
status of the CD market in various parts of the world and
the development of CD-Recordable, multimedia, Kodak Photo CD,
CD-I, and others. The second section is devoted to CD-ROM in
the library market with a discussion on instruction, selection,
pricing, networks, and other matters. The review concentrates
on the professional journals most commonly used by librarians
in their efforts to maintain current awareness. If you have but
one article to read on CD-ROM this year, Adkins does not
disappoint. [Note: The corresponding bibliography is cited
below.] -- TR
Adkins, Susan L. "CD-ROM 1993: A Guide to the Literature"
OCLC Systems and Services 10(2 & 3) (Summer/Fall 1994):68-85.
-- Due to space constraints, Computers in Libraries was unable
to run Adkins' "CD-ROM: Review of 1993 Literature" [see above]
in tandem with the bibliography or Guide to the Literature, as
was the practice in the past. As the popularity of CD-ROM
increases, the annual review correspondingly increases in size
and scope. This 400-item bibliography is cross-referenced with
a subject index to facilitate use. -- TR
Beiser, Karl. "Moving on Up: CD-ROM Upgrade Paths and Problems"
Online 18(5) (September/October 1994):116-118. -- This article
seeks to provide very practical answers to questions such as
"When should the old be replaced by the new? How does one assess
the real-world benefits of acquiring newer hardware or software?
How can older and newer products be made to work together?"
Although most hardware, software, and/or database upgrades offer
substantial benefits, many also include at least minor disadvan-
tages. According to Beiser, the key challenge is to "clearly
assess the strengths and weaknesses in the status quo, the value
of the enhancements offered and the impact of any negatives
associated with them." -- TR
Nadeau, Michael. "When Worlds Collide" CD-ROM World 9(10)
(November 1994):48-52. -- Nadeau explores the two worlds of
CD-ROM and online services and the news ways in which they
complement each other. In the early years of CD-ROM, these
two worlds were often viewed as mutually exclusive. Today,
CD-ROM is offered as a gateway to online services by a number
of companies. CD-ROM can enhance text-based online services
by providing rich multimedia content that would be expensive
and intolerably slow to deliver over a modem. Touted as a
perfect example of a CD-ROM/online product is Microsoft
Complete Baseball. The CD-ROM almanac includes team and
individual statistics while Microsoft provides daily online
updates, strike-permitting. -- TR
General
"Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library: A Prototype for
Today's Electronic Library" Library Hi Tech 12(3) (1994):31-88.
-- This special section of Library Hi Tech contains six articles
that cover many of the aspects encountered in the metamorphosis
from a traditional print-based "paradigm of the research library"
to the emerging electronic library. As the first recipient of the
ALA/Meckler "Library of the Future Award," the staff of Cornell's
Mann Library is worthy of our attention. Specifically, this
series includes articles on the full range of library operations,
including public services, technical services, systems operations,
preservation and collection development and their respective roles
in the modern electronic library. -- DR
News Bits
For those who enjoy Wired magazine, rev up your WWW browsers
and tune in to HotWired [http://www.hotwired.com/]. HotWired
makes it clear however, that it is not just an online version
of Wired magazine (that's found at [http://www.wired.com/]) and
it justifies that statement by not duplicating content, and by
taking full advantage of the WWW medium. Like Wired magazine,
HotWired funds itself using the broadcast model, where it sells
advertising, which is posted at the top of its pages. So although
there is no fee, but you must register to become a member. Hot-
Wired is something of a cross between an online service and an
online publishing forum. It includes a real-time chat area called
The Piazza, and other content that follows the colorful,
progressive tone set by Wired. By including some academic, as
well as journalistic and commercial content, and free/subsidized
access, HW poses an interesting working model for commercial
ventures on the Internet. Since HotWired utilizes the latest
technology, such as forms for registering and searching the content
areas, you will need a WWW browser that supports forms at least
(Mosaic for Mac 2.0.0 Alpha17 worked fine, available at
[http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/MacMosaic/Alpha.html] -- RR
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Current Cites 5(11) (November 1994) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright (C) 1994
by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
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