Sunday, November 14, 2010

Muddiest point

As I said in an earlier post, I was worried about XML.  I actually think the lectures and reading really helped to alleviate that fear! No muddy point after all!

Comments

http://marclis2600.blogspot.com/2010/11/readings_10.html?showComment=1289768668550#c6478091807552569764

http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/11/week-10-reading-assignments.html?showComment=1289768907783#c4451493092676032128

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Readings

This week's readings were interesting, because they went against some of the stereotypical thoughts about librarians. They showed that librarians acknowledge the need for change, and that they were and are willing to adapt to the new online informational world.


The first two articles describe how librarians came to understand the future of online information.  These were two really great articles about the history of libraries moving into the digital age.  I had no idea that there was a great national push by librarians and computer scientists alike to move information into digital formats. I always assumed, that like many of the ideas and reforms that libraries come up with, they were just following the trends of the times, and working hard to keep up.  The second article, "Dewey Meets Turing:  Librarians, Computer Scientists, and the Digital Libraries Initiative" did have a really great quote though, about the conflicting nature of computer science people and librarians:  

 Some librarians had expected DLI money to flow into collection building. Instead, they perceive, computer 
scientists have hijacked the money and created an environment whose connection to librarianship is unclear. Some felt that their fast moving computing enthusiast partners too thoughtlessly dismissed important functions, like collection development, as quaint.
The impatient among computer scientists in turn could not understand why librarians are so annoyingly deliberate about metadata, spending years arguing about structures that the computer scientists felt would be replaceable by just another clever search algorithm improvement. Most of all, some computer scientists couldn't understand why librarians couldn't be, well, normal computer scientists.

This quote shows why much work is still needed to be done before libraries and technology can truly live together peacefully.  Librarians want money for collection development, computer scientists want librarians to understand the importance of digital collections.

The third article was promising in the sense that it was written for the Association of Research Libraries, and acknowledged the need for digitized information.  The author stresses the need for both librarian and computer scientist input into library resources.  The author also mentions that Universities as a whole must support these kinds of programs, otherwise they will be a waste of time, money, and information.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Koha Assignment

My BookShelf

http://upitt01-staff.kwc.kohalibrary.com/cgi-bin/koha/virtualshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=99

Username:  MARCROSS
List Name:  Star Wars

Readings

This will be another quick post, not because of the ease of understanding, but the opposite.  For some reason, I can't seem to grasp what makes XML so great, and more importantly, easy.  The articles mention that XML was created to make things easier, but I just don't see it.  The third reading for this week, "Extending your Markup: a XML tutorial by Andre Bergholz" tried its best to explain XML, and it was probably the best written article I've read about XML, but it still seems like it adds steps to your work, rather than streamlining it.  And, just as last weeks reading, the W3School's website was very informative, except this time I didn't really come away with more understanding.  


I have a feeling that I'll have to watch next weeks lecture a few times to really get the hang of things....

Muddiest points

No muddy points this week.  Will probably change next week with our discussion on XML.  Not looking forward to that!

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Comments

Comments from this week, maybe a bit late:

http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-7-muddiest-points.html?showComment=1288548418904#c1670622886336089087

http://iandtupitt.blogspot.com/2010/10/reading-notes-for-111.html?showComment=1288548668466#c2415067922999300795