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Current Cities Volume 09 Number 06
_Current Cites_
Volume 9, no. 6
June 1998
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.6.html
Contributors:
Christof Galli, Kirk Hastings, Terry Huwe,
Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart, Roy Tennant
Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Guthrie, Kevin. "JSTOR and the University of Michigan: An Evolving
Collaboration" Library Hi Tech 16 (1) (1998): 9-14. -- This special
issue of Library Hi Tech features the dynamic cultural and
technological changes affecting the University of Michigan library
arena. With the recent attention on scholarly communication and
collaboration, it's timely to take a closer look at Michigan's
relationship with JSTOR (short for Journal STORage, at
http://www.jstor.org/), and their progress in making backfiles of
selected journals available in electronic form. Originally a grant
project of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with ten test journals and
six test libraries, JSTOR is now an independent, not-for-profit
organization with approximately 250 paying library participants and 70
journals committed to contributing content. Guthrie, JSTOR's
President, chronicles the history of this collaboration and notes that
it provided the flexibility necessary to meet the administrative
structures, organizational processes and physical plant requirements
of a fast-growing entrepreneurial enterprise. While Guthrie
acknowledges the challenges involved in a distributed organizational
model, he believes that the benefits outweigh the costs. He expresses
the organization's commitment to maintaining its close relationship
with the university community to ensure that JSTOR remains responsive
to user needs. Ideally their lessons can be applied not only to other
digital library initiatives, but also to other areas ripe for
self-sustaining enterprises. -- LY
Payette, Sandra D. and Oya Y. Rieger. "Supporting Scholarly Inquiry:
Incorporating Users in the Design of the Digital Library" The Journal
of Academic Librarianship 24(2) (March 1998):121-129. -- Through a
series of questionnaires and interviews with faculty and students, the
Mann Library at Cornell University conducted a study to find out how
users engage in research using its digital Gateway. The study sought
to assess the effectiveness of the existing design, and to develop
principles to be used in developing the next generation of the
Gateway. Users, it seems, do not engage in scholarly research that is
linear, highly structured and logical and therefore digital libraries
need to be designed in a way that minimizes hierarchical, linear
metaphors and that create features that can be customized to an
individual's personal style and technical capabilities. The Gateway
was designed with input from earlier focus groups but, interestingly,
the more recent user survey showed that users were not, in fact,
taking advantage of features developed in response to their expressed
requirements! In addition to describing the experiences at Cornell
University, the article provides an excellent review of the literature
of user studies in the digital library context. -- MP
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Balas, Janet. "Copyright in the Digital Era" Computers in Libraries
18(6) (June 1998) (http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jun/story2.htm) --
The title doesn't offer a clue that this is a great annotated
collection of sources for researching current issues in copyrighted
information. You may be burying your head in the sand while chanting
the "fair use" mantra (which is pretty hard to do with sand in your
mouth), but aren't you curious what the United States Copyright
Office, the American Library Association, the Digital Future
Coalition, the Creative Incentive Coalition and others have to say
about it? URLs are given for the relevant pages from each
organization, along with commentary about the role each one plays in
shaping copyright policy or depicting the current state of affairs
(which might be analogous to a strobe-lit snapshot of a nighttime mob
scene). Here's a shortcut to one document which is highly relevant for
many of us: "Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and
Librarians" (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ21) which is
U.S. Copyright Office Copyright Information Circular 21. Curl up with
your favorite TV lawyer (surely preoccupied with other things) and
have a good long read. -- JR
Kasdorf, Bill. "SGML and PDF: Why We Need Both" Journal of Electronic
Publishing 3(4) (June 1998)
(http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-04/kasdorf.html). -- Discussions
about appropriate digital file formats often degenerate to the level
of a debate, in which advocates of one format slug it out with
proponents of another. Thus this article is a refreshing perspective,
in which the benefits of two very different publication formats are
examined for their utility in different situations. The not
unsurprising conclusion is that one format does not prevent
publication in the other, and publishing in both is often beneficial.
-- RT
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
Digital Future Coalition (www.dfc.org) -- This is not an article per
se, but a web resource and organization. DFC is an umbrella lobbying
and information sharing organization concentrating on issues of
intellectual property and copyright legislation and policy worldwide.
Members include the American Library Association and the Society of
American Archivists, etc. Their explicit aim is to lobby for balanced
legislation that protects access to information as well as the ability
to regulate and produce profit from information. Whether one agrees
with their approach or not, the site is a useful place to get the full
text of major new legislation and critical responses to everthing from
the Conference on Fair Use to (U.S.) National Information
Infrastructure (NII) bills to the international WIPO agreement. -- RR
Dyson, Esther. "Privacy Protection: Time to Think and Act Locally and
Globally" First Monday 3 (6) (1998)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_6/dyson/) -- Noted social and
technology critic Esther Dyson surveys the current state of privacy on
the Internet, examining the interplay of cyberspace and local
jurisdictions. While various, "non-central" groups advocate new types
of encryption protocols to help us gain a semblance of privacy,
different cultures around the globe--and the laws they
promulgate--have little common ground. Therefore privacy on the Net is
not only a technology issue, but a key issue for global society. -- TH
Williams, Leonard. "Teaching Cyberian Politics" First Monday 3 (6)
(1998) (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_6/williams/) --
Williams describes his experience in teaching a college course on the
"politics of cyberspace"--using Web-based syllabi and other dynamic
tools. The close match between the course subject matter and the
learning process students employed in using the Web was a powerful
combination. Williams argues that the approach he took, with its
emphasis on direct experience, boosted students' critical thinking
skills about technology and society. -- TH
MULTIMEDIA & HYPERMEDIA
National Council on Disability. Access to Multimedia Technology by
People with Sensory Disabilities. Washington: The Council, 1998. 86
p. (http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS764) -- This report focuses on
barriers to the use of computerized multimedia technology by people
who have visual or hearing impairments. It's a good source for an
overview of what types of problems are encountered and what remedies
are in place or coming up. As with most government reports by
committee, there's a bit of a lag regarding new technology, but it
wasn't intended to be a list of what's cutting edge; rather, it's an
attempt to enlighten about the uses of broader categories of
technology, like under what circumstances audio description elements
can be most appropriate. For policy-watchers, the relevant sections of
the Rehabilitation Act and Telecommunications Act are discussed, with
recommendations for specific areas needing stronger enforcement. -- JR
NETWORKS & NETWORKING
Boutin, Paul. "Browser Beware" Wired 6.06 (June 1998): 185.
(http://www.wired.com/wired/6.06/) -- If you're trying to make the
best of a 16-bit Windows computer or are fed up with the memory
demands of your current browser, a 7-person engineering team from
Norway may offer hope with Opera (in Wired's words, "a 1.2-Mbyte
marvel"). Opera puts Microsoft and Netscape in their place when it
comes to speed and HTML standards compliance. It is also adept at
juggling multiple windows, and only requires a 386 with 6 megs of RAM.
So have they built a better mousetrap? Well, there are no non-Windows
versions currently available and Opera is weaker on support for
Unicode 16-bit international character sets, but it does meet the need
for speed. Opera 4.0 (with Java and CSS2 style sheet support) is due
out this summer and for $35 (less for education customers) can be
found at http://www.operasoftware.com/. -- LY
Clark, Kathleen A., Priscilla C. Geahigan, Thomas R. Mirkovich, and
Anita D. Haynes. "Internet Resources: Cruising for Travel Information"
College & Research Libraries News
(http://www.ala.org/acrl/resjun98.html) 59(6) (June 1998): 427-431. --
Just in time for summer, this month's list of Internet resources looks
at travel. Included in the list are addresses for sites that can give
you information (mostly oriented to travel in the United States) about
accommodations, restaurant guides and other mega travel sites (like
Yahoo!'s travel page: http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Travel/). Also
handy are sites for traveling abroad like the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) Travel Information (http://www.cdc.gov/) and the
Intellicast World Weather guide
(http://www.intellicast.com/weather/intl/). -- MP
Khare, Rohit, and Rifkin, Adam. "Trust Management on the World Wide
Web" First Monday 3 (6) (1998)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_6/khare/) -- The authors
describe a new concept for managing sensitive information on the
Internet, which encourages open, decentralized systems that span
multiple domains. The system, called "trust management," aims to
disperse decision-making and analysis about how to protect sensitive
data throughout organizations, asking "why" instead of "how." The
basic elements of the system are "principles, principals, and
policies." Document authoring and distribution is used as a concrete
example of how the system would work. -- TH
Mace, Scott. "DSL's Devilish Details" BYTE 23(7) (July 1998): 72-80.
-- As any Internet user knows, you can never have too much speed. This
is certainly true of home connections. Even with a 56K modem, Web
pages never seem to come up fast enough. But now that Asymmetric
Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), or xDSL, or now simply DSL, is on the
horizon, at least some relief may be at hand. But as this article
points out, what exactly is "at hand" is still very much an open
question. Perhaps the most telling evidence of uncertainty in the
marketplace is depicted in the chart " ADSL Trials and Service
Deployments," which identifies no fewer than 19 companies worldwide
offering or soon to be offering ADSL service to a particular region of
the world. Virtually all of them are offering a different mix of
upstream and downstream speeds, from 9.6 Kbps upstream (this is
progress?) to 5.5 Mbps (Singapore) and 7Mbps (Nova Scotia) downstream.
Hmmm...all of a sudden cable modems are looking real good to me. -- RT
Sowards, Steven W. "A Typology for Ready Reference Web Sites in
Libraries" First Monday 3 (5) (1998)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_5/sowards/) -- "Librarians
and non-librarians alike may overlook important lessons about
information management if they misinterpret the lessons of
librarianship as being confined to the realm of paper," the author
argues. He embarks on a tour and analysis of how librarians are
organizing their Web-based reference guides, so be prepared to add
lots of URLs to your bookmark file when you review this article. He
makes several conclusions that will surely influence your own thoughts
about what works -- and what doesn't -- on the Web. Moreover, it's
refreshing to see someone use blunt language to advocate for the
common sense approaches that librarians employ to help people. Here's
an example: "After the difficulties we meet in navigating relatively
large Web sites remind us why libraries -- which deal with truly large
numbers of elements, running into the millions -- rely on redundancy
and alternative methods to manage content." -- TH
GENERAL
Bales, Susan Nall. "Technology and Tradition: The Future's in the
Balance" American Libraries 29(6) (June/July 1998): 82-86. --
Following up on their report Buildings, Books, and Bytes: Libraries
and Communities in the Digital Age (see the December 1996 issue of
Current Cites), the Benton Foundation has conducted and analyzed six
focus groups aimed at the issues identified in that report. Their
findings will be released in a publication scheduled for release in
July 1998 (watch Current Cites for news of its availability).
Meanwhile, Bales shares some of their findings in this article. Among
them are: "1) Libraries must be portrayed as high touch and high tech,
and in that order, 2) Root all discussions of technology in books and
reading, 3) Teach the public that the librarian is an information
navigator, 4) Emphasize that the library you trust can help you make
the transition to technology, and 5) Recognize the powerful
connections Americans make between libraries and effective parenting."
Libraries are at a critical juncture between the past and the future.
How well librarians meld the traditional with the technical and
present themselves to the public will dictate the role of libraries
in modern society for decades to come. My advice is to get the
original Benton report, this article, the new report when it comes
out, read them, and pay close attention. -- RT
DeJesus, Edmund X. "Year 2000 Survival Guide" BYTE 23(7) (July 1998):
52-62. -- In the thorough and authoritative manner in which BYTE
readers have come to expect, DeJesus outlines the good, the bad, and
the downright ugly aspects of the Year 2000 (Y2K) problem. The bad
news is that even if you start right now, your large legacy systems
will probably not be ready for the millennium in time. The good news
is that you if apply triage strategies and contingency plans well
enough, you may just make it. Out of all the press out there on this
problem, this article cuts through the rhetoric with a hot knife and
summarizes key information in tables, diagrams, and timelines. And
it's the timeline that helps provide comic relief amidst the disaster.
Just think, on January 1, 29602 the Microsoft Windows NT file system
will fail. Better start planning now, Bill. - RT
Smith, K. Wayne, ed. OCLC 1967-1997: Thirty Years of Furthering Access
to the World's Information New York: Haworth Press, 1998. -- When
library historians review the major milestones of the profession over
the last thirty years or so, there will be three developments that
will stand head-and-shoulders above the rest: the creation of the
Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) format, the codification of the
Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2), and the rise of
the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC, since changed to the Online
Computer Library Center). OCLC has evolved to become the hub of
library cataloging records, interlibrary loan transactions, and many
other essential services for thousands of libraries across the United
States and beyond. Although anyone not curious about OCLC would
probably not be interested in this volume (simultaneously published as
the Journal of Library Administration, 25 (2/3 - 4) (1998), it serves
as a useful chronicle of a good idea that helped to transform
libraries and library services. -- RT
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 9(6) (June 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright 1998 by the Library, University of California,
Berkeley. All rights reserved.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.6.html
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Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library.berkeley.edu,
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