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Current Cities Volume 13 Number 01
Current Cites
Volume 13, no. 1, January 2002
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
The Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2002/cc02.13.1.html
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Margaret Gross, [5]Shirl
Kennedy, [6]Leo Robert Klein, Jim Ronningen, [7]Roy Tennant
Anandarajan, Murugan, ed. "Internet Abuse in the Workplace" special
section [8]Communications of the ACM 45(1) (January 2002). -
Information wants to be free, but time is money. Almost all executives
believe that workplace Internet use should be monitored, but a much
smaller percentage have actually put such programs in place so far.
It's clear that this relatively new behavior is going to be more
carefully controlled than it has been, and the articles in this
special section can provide guidance in creating balanced use
policies. The value of constructive browsing and play with new
applications is examined, and statistics on employee learning curves,
productivity and happiness are presented. Whether you're an employee
wanting to act early to fend off a severe crackdown or a boss trying
to define reasonable limits, there's help right here. - JR
Boeri, Robert J. [9]XML Across the Publishing Lifecycle: Tools &
Strategies to Promote Success [10]EContent 24 (8) (October 2001)
(http://www.econtentmag.net/Magazine/Features/boeri10_01.html). - This
article is an excellent overview of what XML is, and reasons,
considerations, and requirements to be analyzed before choosing to
convert to XML. Released in early 1998, XML was touted as the standard
to replace HTML. The presentation-only limitations of HTML were to be
a thing of the past. Now, nearly four years later, why has the move to
XML not happened, or at best, been extremely slow? Simply stated:
because the authoring and content management tools have not been
available. Two modelling tools now available, are: Altova's [11]XML
Spy, designed for the Windows operating system, and Tibco's [12]Turbo
XML, supporting multiple platforms. The author cautions against using
hybrid tools such as Microsoft Word, or other word processing
software. While initially more familiar to the novice, the embedded
word processor styles may be very costly to convert when updating
files later on. Recommended are systems that provide "workflow
management, content assembly, and validity checking." The following
systems are mentioned: [13]Documentum, [14]Broadvision,
[15]XYenterprise. Of note are two checklists: [16]10 Considerations
Before Making the Move to XML and [17]10 Things To Ask XML Vendors. -
[18]MG
Coyle, Karen. "Stakeholders and Standards in the E-Book Ecology: Or,
It's the Economics, Stupid!" [19]Library Hi Tech 19(4) (2001):
314-324. - Early on, Coyle says: "To an outside observer, the nascent
e-book business today is quite chaotic." I suspect it looks that way
on the inside too, as publishers and vendors struggle to build viable
proprietary products in a very tough market. The development of e-book
standards might improve the situation. As Coyle says: "no one wants to
invest in the BetaMax of e-books." Coyle clearly and succinctly
explains emerging e-book standards: [20]DAISY (digital audio book
format), [21]EBX (digital rights management system), [22]ODRL (digital
rights management language), [23]ONIX (distribution and promotion),
[24]Open eBook (e-book format), and [25]XrML (digital rights
management language). I'd pay particular attention to EBX, ODRL, and
XrML. If e-books eventually take off, these digital rights standards
could have a significant impact on libraries and their users.- [26]CB
Crawford, Walt. [27]"Text-e: Monophone Comments on a Trilingual
Conference" [28]Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 2(3) (February
2002): 6-12 (http://home.att.net/~wcc.techx/civ2i3.pdf). - Library
commentator Crawford responds to the opinions expressed at [29]Text-e,
self-described as "the first entirely virtual symposium dedicated to
investigating the impact of the Web on reading, writing and the
diffusion of knowledge." If that sounds ambitious, it is. And to a
large degree the ensuing discussion lives up to those ambitions, at
least in terms of raising questions and fueling discussion of these
issues. If deep questions intrigue you, you could do worse than the
Text-e virtual symposium, whether you are interested in Crawford's
take on it or not. But Crawford's take is worth your time, since he
brings his usual sharp-as-a-tack, critical perspective to a set of
essays that can often use some criticism. Personally, I don't always
agree with Crawford, but I typically find his writing provocative,
entertaining, and worth my time. - [30]RT
Godin, Seth. [31]"Survival is Not Enough [32]Fast Company (January
2002): 90-94 (http://www.fastcompany.com/online/54/survival.html). -
Unless you've been living in a cave, you've seen a heck of a lot of
change in the last ten years. Get used to it. Or, as Godin says in
this piece on the topic of [33]his book of the same name, learn to
"zoom". Zooming, Godin asserts, is the process of "bypassing our fear
of change by constantly training people to make small changes." Unless
constant evolution is built into our daily work lives, Godin says,
your organization may turn out to be the next dinosaur. If you're
undergoing too much change to read the book, or this brief magazine
article, start with the [34]summary of the book as a series of bullet
points. If you're a true zoomer, that's likely all you'll need. -
[35]RT
Greenberg, Jane and Maria Cristina Pattuelli, Bijan Parsia and W.
Davenport Robertson. [36]"Author-generated Dublin Core Metadata for
Web Resources: A Baseline Study in an Organization" [37]JoDI: Journal
of Digital Information 2(2) (January 2002)
(http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i02/Greenberg/). - One of
several papers from the Dublin Core 2001 Conference. This one looks at
the possibility of content creators in an "organizational setting"
producing acceptable metadata of their own. Content creators used an
HTML form on the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
site. The results according to criteria also discussed in the article
were apparently as good as that of "metadata professionals". A larger
study is being planned. - [38]LRK
Harmon, Amy. [39]"'You've Got Mail,' More and More, and Mostly, It Is
Junk" [40]The New York Times (December 24, 2001)
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/24/technology/24SPAM.html) - No, it's
not your imagination that the flood of spam into your inbox is
increasing exponentially. This article reports that [41]Brightmail
(http://www.brightmail.com/), a company that provides spam-blocking
services to corporations and ISPs, found that unsolicited commercial
e-mail (UCE) comprised almost 13 percentage of the messages received
by its customers in the fourth quarter of 2001 -- "nearly double the
share of the previous quarter." You don't need a degree in economics
to understand why UCE is such an attractive strategy to certain types
of marketers. Sending out 10,000 spams is not substantially more
expensive than sending out one, since you don't have the incremental
costs of paper, postage, etc. Unfortunately, critics maintain, this
torrent of spam "threatens to undermine the utility of the Internet at
precisely the time when anthrax fears and cost-cutting efforts have
prompted more businesses to use it as a substitute for postal mail."
People are getting so inundated with junk e-mail that legitimate
e-mail marketing messages are getting lost in the shuffle and/or being
deleted unread. - [42]SK
Klein, Leo Robert. "Design Shirk: Disparities Between the Wealth of
Our Material and the Poverty of its Use" [43]VINE 124 (September
2001): 6-11. - Current Cites' own Leo Klein takes library and archive
web sites to task for often overlooking good user interface design in
our rush to move our rich content to the web. Although he points out
some specific sites as examples, many other digitization projects
should see themselves in some of the mistakes cited. Stating that
"anyone can design a web page but not everyone can design one well,"
Klein makes the case for putting web and graphic designers at the same
table as librarians and archivists when a digital library project is
launched. After all, he asserts, "results and value are what all our
users are looking for...We then have a responsibility to meet these
expectations -- at least half-way -- by developing sites that users
are going to find easy to use and interesting." Amen! - [44]RT
Mach, Michelle. [45]"The Service of Server-Side Includes"
[46]Information Technology and Libraries 20(4) (December 2001):213-219
(http://www.lita.org/ital/2004_mach.html, but not yet there at time of
publication). - I normally avoid articles that explain how to use a
particular technology, as being out of scope for a current awareness
newsletter. But given the fact that one of the neatest web
technologies around has been available in web servers for years and
continues to be completely under-utilized on library web sites, I'm
making an exception in this case. Server-side includes are simple,
easy to use, and can make updating your web site a snap. What else do
you need to know? If you have anything to do with managing web sites,
run, don't walk to this tutorial and learn what you should have known
[47]back in 1995. - [48]RT
Matthews, William. [49]"Electronic Records Baffle Agencies"
[50]Federal Computer Week (December 24, 2001)
(http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/1217/web-nara-12-24-01.asp) - A
survey by SRA for the [51]National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA - http://www.nara.gov/) found that most federal agencies are
still clueless about electronic records. Typically, agencies will
create documents in electronic format, but when it comes time to store
them, they print them out and stash the paper versions away. The
survey also revealed a great deal of confusion about which electronic
records are "official," leading to a situation in which a lot of stuff
is just nuked, particularly e-mails. [52]The Department of Energy
(http://www.energy.gov/), for example, receives more than a million
e-mails every day, which "makes it impossible for the agency to comply
with its own policy of printing and saving e-mails that qualify as
records." Some federal agencies blame NARA for the confusion, feeling
that they have been left to flounder without official guidance. But
the survey found that NARA was only part of the problem; the real
issue is the pattern of lackadaisical recordkeeping in most agencies,
due to underfunding and understaffing. "As one agency official told
the survey team, record keeping 'is No. 26 on our list of top 25
priorities.'" - [53]SK
Meserve, Jean. [54]"Report: GPS Could Be Terrorist Target" [55]CNN.com
(January 8, 2002) (http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/08/ret.gps.terror/) -
As if we needed anything else to keep us awake at night...
[56]"Defending the American Homeland"
(http://www.heritage.org/homelanddefense/welcome.html), a report by
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank,
recommends, among other things, classifying GPS as "critical
infrastructure." The report says we need more GPS satellites, and that
they should be monitored more closely. GPS uses a very low signal that
makes it vulnerable to jamming; the report notes "Russia is actively
marketing GPS jamming equipment." If terrorist organizations began
jamming GPS signals, the report says, it would threaten public safety,
disrupt transportation and wreak all sorts of economic havoc. - [57]SK
Stanton, Jeffrey M. "Company Profile of the Frequent Internet User".
ACAM 45(1) (January 2002): 55-59. - Pathological Internet addicts
monopolizing the corporate LAN for antisocial and ultimately
self-destructive purposes. The image is familiar enough but is it
real? That's what the author sets out to test in a survey of four
hundred engineers. The author's findings: "frequent Internet users
contribute as much or more to their organizations as their colleagues
who use the Internet less frequently". This is a pleasant beginning to
several articles devoted to workplace internet abuse in January's
ACAM. The level of acceptance of employer monitoring implied in one or
two of the papers may be hard for many to take. Alternative analyses,
also present in the articles, see monitoring as potentially
detrimental to workplace creativity and job satisfaction. - [58]LRK
Stewart, Thomas A. [59]"The Case Against Knowledge Management"
[60]Business 2.0 (February 2002)
(http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,36747,FF.html) - Just
about every organization recognizes the need for some iteration of
knowledge management, and there are multiple vendors cashing in on
"solutions." In this excerpt from his latest book, Stewart says
companies "waste billions on knowledge management because they fail to
figure out what knowledge they need, or how to manage it," and
attempts to tell you how to answer both of those questions. One big
truth: the fanciest knowledge management package in the world is
worthless if your employees won't use it. Imposing a "solution" on
people before you make an effort to understand what they want and need
is a classic recipe for failure. This excerpt, which includes brief
case studies, points out that knowledge management resources go unused
because they aren't useful. "Either the work isn't connected to the
knowledge or the knowledge isn't connected to the work." Before
choosing a knowledge management system, Stewart walks you through
three questions you need to answer: What is your work group? What do
they need to know? Are you a standardizer or a customizer (in terms of
reusing knowledge)? - [61]SK
Tomaiuolo, Nicholas G. [62]"When Image Is Everything" [63]Searcher
10(1) (January 2002)
(http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jan02/tomaiuolo.htm) - One of the
joys of the World Wide Web is its rich collection of sounds and
images, many of which can be used for commercial as well as personal
purposes. The "old" way of locating images, via the large generalized
search engines, was to combine a keyword with an image file type --
e.g., "woodpecker and .jpg" might take you to a site where there are
photographs of woodpeckers. Blessedly, it's gotten a whole lot easier
to track down what you need because you now have an impressive arsenal
of specialized image search engines at your beck and call. The author
describes a number of these, pointing out some strengths and
weaknesses, and offering usage tips. Covered here are: [64]AltaVista
Image Search (http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/simage), [65]Ditto
(http://www.ditto.com/), [66]Excite (http://www.excite.com/search/),
[67]FAST Multimedia Search (http://multimedia.alltheweb.com/),
[68]Google Image Search
(http://images.google.com/advanced_image_search), [69]HotBot
(http://hotbot.lycos.com/), [70]Ithaki Image and Photo Metasearch
(http://www.todalanet.com/images/), [71]IXQUICK
(http://www.ixquick.com/), [72]Lycos Multimedia Search
(http://multimedia.lycos.com/), [73]Picsearch
(http://www.picsearch.com/), [74]Scour (http://www.scour.com/),
[75]Yahoo! Picture Gallery (http://gallery.yahoo.com/), and [76]Big
Search Engine Index to Images
(http://www.search-engine-index.co.uk/Images_Search). Of course, as
the author points out, "Copyright is the biggest bugaboo in using
images from the Web." Whether it should be or not is a matter of
debate; nonetheless, it's always a good idea to ask for permission if
you want to use someone else's images or sounds. The article includes
a rundown of the major image file formats, links to sites that are
rich in images, and instructions for saving an online image to your
hard drive. - [77]SK
United States Government Printing Office. [78]"Biennial Report to
Congress on the Status of GPO Access" (December 31, 2001)
(http://www.gpo.gov/biennialreport/). - One of the most cherished Web
ideals has been the free and open access to public information, and a
periodic check on GPO Access is a great way to monitor the progress of
one of the largest, most heavily used examples of that ideal. Much
space is given to blowing Access' horn, understandable since the
report is directed at those holding the purse strings, and GPO clearly
does have a lot to be proud of. Knowing from personal experience just
how useful this site can be at a reference desk, I was happy to see
firm evidence that this resource should continue to thrive. As well as
the list of accomplishments, there are descriptions of effectiveness
assessments, user feedback, costs and benefits and future projects. -
JR
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 13(1) (January 2002) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California All
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