My site:
http://www.pitt.edu/~marcross/
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Reading
This will be very short this week.
The first reading wasn't coming up for me, and the youtube link was taken down due to copyright violations!
The second reading was interesting in a scary way. I read through a lot of it, and clicked through many of the links. If I'm reading it right, it pretty much says that you are never anonymous on the internet, and your activity can be tracked for no reason. I guess I knew that all along though. We were one of the first families that I knew of that had internet access, because my always loved computers and networking. Even in the early 90's though, he taught me that you really shouldn't say anything on the internet that you wouldn't say in real life, because even if you hide your name, you're never anonymous. The scary part is that the government can and does track your information.
*puts on tin foil hat*
The first reading wasn't coming up for me, and the youtube link was taken down due to copyright violations!
The second reading was interesting in a scary way. I read through a lot of it, and clicked through many of the links. If I'm reading it right, it pretty much says that you are never anonymous on the internet, and your activity can be tracked for no reason. I guess I knew that all along though. We were one of the first families that I knew of that had internet access, because my always loved computers and networking. Even in the early 90's though, he taught me that you really shouldn't say anything on the internet that you wouldn't say in real life, because even if you hide your name, you're never anonymous. The scary part is that the government can and does track your information.
*puts on tin foil hat*
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Comments
http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/11/week-11-reading-notes.html?showComment=1290116901895#c7215778184269620794
http://bds46.blogspot.com/2010/11/reading-notes-week-11-reposted.html?showComment=1290117056891#c2169880429915727658
http://bds46.blogspot.com/2010/11/reading-notes-week-11-reposted.html?showComment=1290117056891#c2169880429915727658
Readings
I had a bit of trouble finding the first reading of the week. I'm not sure why the link provided said Pitt didn't have full text access. Perhaps I'll report that to someone in the collections department....
Anyway, much like other readings we've done this semester, the Web Search Engine reading really shed light on how search engines actually work. We've all been talking about what is wrong with library searching, and how Google is able to do such a good job with searching and providing relevant results, but until this reading, we really haven't covered why Google is able to do such a good job, and fully realize the amount of work that goes into indexing websites. I can't say that I fully understand all that goes into making a search engine work, but this two part article made me realize that it really is a complex system.
The second article Current developments and future trends for the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting, went back to the earlier themes of the class: how the library can work together with computer scientists to create a better way of searching and indexing. The OAI community is trying to make things easier, but because of the way metadata works, is running into troubles. One of the biggest troubles is, again, the difficulty in creating a standard vocabulary for inputting that metadata. Another problem that they are facing is that the task is just too big for one group, a relatively scattered group at that. It seems like they want to be an almost "informal" group, but in doing so, they are really crushing their chance to even begin to make a dent in the problems they face.
The first thing I thought of while reading “The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value," was the idea that the more a journal article is cited, the more reputable it becomes. This article is almost saying the opposite, if I'm understanding it correctly. (I know they are talking about websites, rather than scholarly articles, but bear with my metaphor.) Web crawlers such as Google, find websites to index based on how many times that site is linked with another site. So, the more a site is linked and clicked on, the more likely it will get indexed by a search engine, and the higher it will be on a result list. The article seems to be saying that it is sometimes the more important sites that get skipped, and un-indexed. That is an interesting thought. It makes you think, that perhaps Google is doing more harm to the internet than good.
Anyway, much like other readings we've done this semester, the Web Search Engine reading really shed light on how search engines actually work. We've all been talking about what is wrong with library searching, and how Google is able to do such a good job with searching and providing relevant results, but until this reading, we really haven't covered why Google is able to do such a good job, and fully realize the amount of work that goes into indexing websites. I can't say that I fully understand all that goes into making a search engine work, but this two part article made me realize that it really is a complex system.
The second article Current developments and future trends for the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting, went back to the earlier themes of the class: how the library can work together with computer scientists to create a better way of searching and indexing. The OAI community is trying to make things easier, but because of the way metadata works, is running into troubles. One of the biggest troubles is, again, the difficulty in creating a standard vocabulary for inputting that metadata. Another problem that they are facing is that the task is just too big for one group, a relatively scattered group at that. It seems like they want to be an almost "informal" group, but in doing so, they are really crushing their chance to even begin to make a dent in the problems they face.
The first thing I thought of while reading “The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value," was the idea that the more a journal article is cited, the more reputable it becomes. This article is almost saying the opposite, if I'm understanding it correctly. (I know they are talking about websites, rather than scholarly articles, but bear with my metaphor.) Web crawlers such as Google, find websites to index based on how many times that site is linked with another site. So, the more a site is linked and clicked on, the more likely it will get indexed by a search engine, and the higher it will be on a result list. The article seems to be saying that it is sometimes the more important sites that get skipped, and un-indexed. That is an interesting thought. It makes you think, that perhaps Google is doing more harm to the internet than good.
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