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Current Cities Volume 07 Number 02
_Current Cites_
Volume 7, no. 2
February 1996
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1996/cc96.7.2.html
Contributors:
Campbell Crabtree, John Ober, Margaret Phillips,
David Rez, Richard Rinehart, Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
Electronic Publishing
Browning, John. "Information Marketeers Focus on Content
Rather than Access" Scientific American 274(2) (February
1996): 30-32. -- The author briefly explores the shift in
ways of conveying information, from the old method of
controlling the access points (one-to-many broadcast) to
new methods made possible with the Internet (many-to-many
multicast) which changes the focus from the quality of the
service to the quality of content needed to capture
audience. The shift is evidenced in Microsoft Network's
decision to change from a proprietary access-controlled
outernet, to a more open Internet publishing site. -- RR
Taubes, Gary. "Science Journals Go Wired" and "Electronic
Preprints Point the Way to 'Author Empowerment" Science 271
(February 9, 1996): 764-768. [http://science-mag.aaas.org/
science/scripts/display/full/271/5250/764.html] -- This
pair of complementary articles, although focused on
scientific literature in the main, are excellent overviews
of the current state of electronic periodical literature.
In the first one, Taubes outlines some of the major
advantages that electronic journals have over their
paper-based relatives, such as video and audio, search
functions, discussion forums, links to related articles,
and automatic notification and alerting services. Some of
the challenges facing publishers include technical problems
that prevent a fast transition from submission to
publication (a trait that should be a major advantage of
electronic journals), the lack of tried and true cost
recovery methods, and archival issues. A sidebar outlines
the plans of the major scientific journal publishers for
mounting their journals on the network. The accompanying
article on electronic preprints (pre-publication articles
of vital importance to the scientific community) serves as
an interesting counterpoint, in that it describes a
movement to bypass the traditional publishing system
entirely. I highly recommend this pair of short articles
to anyone wishing an overview of the current state of
electronic periodicals. If you visit the online version
(address above) you get the added benefit of gaining
first-hand experience with some of the added benefits
that electronic publication has over print. -- RT
Multimedia and Hypermedia
Donovan, Kevin. "The Anatomy of an Imaging Project: A
Primer for Museums, Libraries, Archives and other Visual
Collections" Spectra: Journal of the Museum Computer
Network 23(2) (Winter 1995/6): 19-22. -- A terrificly
useful article for anyone directing an imaging project.
This article outlines specific points for consideration
in launching an imaging project, from the initial audit
and proposal to tips for maintaining quality and
consistency, storage and archiving, and eventual
delivery via networks or CD-ROM. -- RR
Feder, Judy. "Image Recognition and Content-Based Retrieval
for the World Wide Web" Advanced Imaging 11(1) (January
1996): 26-28. -- While this article is written by the
director of marketing for the main product under discussion,
it is still a useful introduction to the current progress
toward making multimedia intelligent. Currently multimedia,
whether networked or standalone, is made of "dumb"
multimedia files, manageable and searchable only by textual
meta-data. Content-based retrieval proposes to let you use
an image, for instance, as a starting point to search for
similar images and so forth. Experiments are ongoing in this
field, with huge implications for research resources in art
history, archaeology, not to mention law enforcement or any
other visual field. This article discusses some real-world
applications under development. -- RR
Karpinski, Richard. "Netscape to Get Real-Time Audio,
Video" Communications Week no. 595 (February 5, 1996):
1, 64. -- A short introduction to Netscape's plans for
enabling delivery of multimedia over the Internet in
Real-Time. Of note is mention of an emerging new protocol,
RTP or Realtime Transport Protocol, for streaming
multimedia over networks (RealAudio is another example
of streaming technology). -- RR
Karpinski, Richard. "The Web in 3-D" Communications Week
no. 595 (February 5, 1996): IA1-IA3. -- You have probably
heard about VRML or Virtual Reality Markup Language, which
is a meta-language, like the HTML that it works with, but
for creating and delivering 3-D graphics over the WWW.
This article introduces a few new tools that make it easy
to actually use this new language. Some applications of
VRML might be virtual tours of architectural sites or
re-constructed ruins, or new interfaces to other forms of
information. -- RR
Ozer, Jan. "Software Video Codecs: The Search for Quality"
New Media 6(2) (January 29, 1996): 46-52. -- A thorough
comparison of current video codecs for compression and
rendering of digital video, including Cinepak (used by
QuickTime), Indeo (from Intel), IVI (fom Intel as well)
and other more proprietary formats. Criteria for
comparison include: required level of hardware,
compression ratio, and visual quality. Anyone authoring
digital video should know what codec they are using as
it largely determines quality and file sizes. -- RR
Pohler, Ulrike. "Legal Aspects of Multimedia: A European
Perspective" Spectra: Journal of the Museum Computer
Network 23(2) (Winter 1995/6): 27-29. -- This article
reports on the European Commission Green Paper, which
explored the issues of copyright, including digital
media, as they applied to the newly united European
Union. The paper may form a model for copyright
agreements that span national boundaries, currently a
major restriction to multimedia content development.
-- RR
Networks and Networking
Bustos, Rod and Roxann Bustos. "Internet Resources for
Liberalism" College & Research Libraries News 57(2)
(February 1996): 86-87. -- As a companion piece to an
earlier C&RL News feature on Internet resources for
conservatism (July/August 1995), this article focuses
on resources for liberalism. Of the hundreds of liberal
sites that must exist on the Internet, this article
provides only a selective list of electronic journals,
World Wide Web resources, electronic discussion groups,
usenet groups and gophers. While a listing for MojoWire,
the online edition of Mother Jones, and Turn Left (the
Home of Liberalism on the Web) with its links to a
variety of other liberal sites, seem like obvious choices
for inclusion in this list, references to the Democratic
National Committee Home Page and the Anti-Defamation
League Home Page, leave this Current Citer wondering
about the authors' exact definition of liberal. -- MP
DeJesus, Edmund X. "Toss Your TV: How the Internet Will
Replace Broadcasting" BYTE 21(2) (February 1996): 50-64.
[http://www.byte.com/art/9602/sec8/sec8.htm]. -- One of the
best articles I've seen on the challenges of delivering
multimedia over the Internet and the mix of technologies
that may make it possible. From server infrastructure to
network bandwidth to client software, DeJesus takes us on a
magical mystery tour of Internet multimedia developments.
Promising? Yes. Time to toss your TV? Not yet. But as
DeJesus says, "keep your browsers tuned." -- RT
Herbst, Kris. "Webfest IV: A Report of the Happenings at
the Fourth World-Wide Web Conference" Internet World 7(3)
(March 1996): 22-26. -- For Web-heads who missed the show
in Boston, this article hits the high points of this
conference (as well as briefly recapping the show-stealers
of the previous shows). With all the Web and Internet
conferences that have sprouted up in the last two years,
it is hard to keep them straight. But this one is the
real McCoy, sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C). Highlights include Java, VRML, Video Mosaic
(Vosaic), payment systems, and the future of HTML. -- RT
Nash, Stanley D., Miles Yoshimura, William Vicenti.
"American History Resources on the Internet" College &
Research Libraries News 57(2) (February 1996): 82-84,
90. -- The increasing availability of full-text documents
such as treaties, acts, diaries and maps as well as the
availability of images and sound on the Web could
potentially revolutionize the nature of scholarly
historical research as we know it. This article provides
a selective list of some of the important full-text
sources available on the Internet listing resources
such as the Anti-Imperialism in the U.S.A. Web page, the
American Prohibition Project, and the American Civil War
Home Page which provides links to diaries, letters and
military rosters from that era. There is a listing of
indexes and guides to historical texts available on the
Internet and the article also lists important listservs
and the homepages or gophers for historical organizations.
-- MP
Maxwell, Bruce. _How to Access the Government's Electronic
Bulletin Boards_ Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly,
Inc. 1996. -- A second edition to last year's book of the
same title, this book provides detailed descriptions of more
than 200 free, public-access electronic bulletin board systems
(BBSs) operated by federal agencies and departments.
Electronic bulletin boards operated by the federal government
provide access to a wide range of information sources such as
lists of federal job opportunities, staff directories for
particular agencies, and documents like the full text of
Supreme Court opinions, grant information from the National
Institutes of Health (NIH Grant Line), or statistical
information issued by the Bureau of the Census. A layperson's
guide, this book describes how to reach these BBSs, what
they offer, and how to navigate through them. Particularly
helpful is the introduction which provides background
information in simple, practical terms about what one needs
to connect to electronic bulletin boards in terms of hardware
and software, in addition to a basic introduction to menu
commands and solutions to common problems. The 1996 edition
includes helpful information about how certain government
information sites have changed or been improved (NASA
Spacelink, for instance, which used to be almost unnavigable,
has been completely transformed by a new easy-to-use
interface); also included in the 1996 edition is an appendix
which lists which BBSs have been added since last year, which
ones have been deleted and which ones have undergone name
changes.-- MP
Optical Disc Technology
Adkins, Susan L. "CD-ROM: A Review of the 1994-1995
Literature" Computers in Libraries 16(1) (January 1996):
66-74. -- In what has now become an annual tradition in
the pages of Computers in Libraries, Adkins attempts to
summarize the major trends in the CD-ROM industry as a
whole and how these play out in libraries. This literature
review, with accompanying bibliographic cites, is broken
down into the follow categories: hardware, networking,
multimedia, CD-Recordable, other optical disc formats,
CD-ROM v. online, developing countries, selection/
evaluation, reference issues and bibliographic
instruction. A rather startling statistic presented in
the conclusion is that on average, professionals spend
only 5 to 15 percent of their time reading--but up to
50 percent of their time looking for information. In
light of this startling statistic, Adkins argues,
electronic publishing via CD-ROM is not merely an
alternative, but a solution, since it offers search
and navigation capabilities that paper can never have.
However, 95 percent of corporate information is still
stored in paper documents. -- TR
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Current Cites 7(2) (February 1996) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1996 by the Library, University of
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