Week15 Reading Note

About the "Cloud Computing", the video clip is easier to understand the concept of clouding computing than Galen Gruman's various introduction to many definition of it. At the beginning of the digital era, an individual computer was independent  to utilize and store information, but this trend had changed due to the Internet. "Cluding Computing" is a technology which is more affordable and efficient for a general user. A user just needs a computer having an Internet connection to utilize an application to utilize certain without installing and storing software in an individual computer. Users are  connected to the service server through their  Internet,do their work with their work, and save their work at an application service provider's server. This technology could be realized thanks to the development of Web 2.0.

Thomas Frey's article about The Future of Libraries is very interesting to me. I deeply agree with him that libraries should be changed to survive in the digital technology but I do not agree with some of his suggestions. However, I post his 10 trends about the future library and add  my opinion at the end of a trend.

Trend #1 – Communication systems are continually changing the way people access information.

Books are a technology, and writing is also a technology, and every technology has a limited lifespan.

I agree with it but we should remember that system is a mere tool, not a goal.

Trend #2 – All technology ends. All technologies commonly used today will be replaced by something new.

That something else will be faster, smarter, cheaper, more capable, and more durable, work better, and look cooler than anything we have today. This is clear but we should seriously deliberate what kind of technology should be adopted into the library system.  

Trend #3 – We haven’t yet reached the ultimate small particle for storage. But soon.

The most critical component of stabilizing information storage will surround the issues of findability.

This is important fact because many libraries are spending tremendous fund for resource digitizing projects.

Trend #4 – Search Technology will become increasingly more complicated

As we achieve the ability to conduct more and more complicated searches, the role of the librarian to assist in finding this kind of information also becomes more and more important. People will not have the time and skills necessary to keep up on each new innovation in the search world, and they will need a competent professional to turn to.

Librarian should change their role from information keeper to information finder or seeker.

Trend #5 – Time compression is changing the lifestyle of library patrons

The spectrum of human need is continually expanding. The paradigm of “need” is changing, evolving, and most importantly, speeding up.

Trend #6 – Over time we will be transitioning to a verbal society

He also predicts that by 2050 literacy will be dead

I do not agree. I think that literacy continues with many reasons.

Trend #7 – The demand for global information is growing exponentially

Many secrets in tomorrow’s business world lie in the writings of people who did not speak English or any of the other prominent global languages.

Trend #8 – The Stage is being set for a new era of Global Systems

Trend #9 – We are transitioning from a product-based economy to an experience based economy

Books themselves will transition from a product to an experience. As books change in form from simple “words on a page” to various digital manifestations of the information, future books will be reviewed and evaluated by the experience they create

Because information is very accessible so patrons judge a library with their experience from its services, not quality of collection that it offers.

Trend #10 – Libraries will transition from a center of information to a center of culture

Week14 Reading Note

The issue of patrons' privacy has been buzzed for a long time. Collecting data about patrons' information seeking process is a controversial issue. From the view of data-mining, it is essential and vital to develop an effective and efficient method for the future information retrieval system. Yet, being watched, monitored, and collected by third party is not a pleasant experience for patrons. As Hammer sates, "respect for patron privacy is a fundamental value long recognized in the library code of ethics, and in federal and local legislation and case law". Moreover, after the September 11 attacks, the paradigm about an individual's privacy has been infringed without any second thought for the national security. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, released "Total Information Awareness" to track terrorists by monitoring individual's information access. Personally, I think that this is very dangerous attempts. If all information is aggregated into one system, it is very vulnerable to be invaded by hackers who have a bad intention.

Lab13

My WIKI page

http://liswiki.org/wiki/User:Miy26_lis2600

Week13 Reading Note

What makes social media tick: seven secrets of social media?

Blossom tries to explain about what is social media and its characteristics. It is easy to follow because his writing is easy and the content is already familiar to me. The most interesting point by his writing is that Digital technology is just a tool, not a center of social media, and it has been exist with different format such as publishing, broadcasting, and telephone.

In addition, I found a very interesting blog post. Here it is;

http://coolinsights.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-makes-social-media-producers-tick.html

Jimmy Wales: “How a ragtag band created Wikipedia”

• Neutral point of view policy: It is important because culturally very diverse communities work together to build up knowledge in Wikipedia
• Anonymous (18% of total users) remaining users are very closed communities.
• Open-ended

Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program: Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons

Wiki at the academic library can be used for sharing of knowledge and cooperating in creating resources for a library instruction class. Also it is every efficient because staffs can divide workloads without any difficulties. Also, by using Wikis, librarians learn more about the instruction of genral classes' needs, neglected "directions of the assignment, preferences of the professor that were not necessarily communicated previous to class time, and housekeeping issues, such as any broken Web links listed in a subject resource guide". It can be a "a centralized resource collaboration tool" between library staffs, faculties, and students.

Creating the academic library folksonomy: Put social tagging to work at your institution by Xan Arch

Social tagging : folksonomy(a taxonomy created by ordinary folks)

Social tagging is a relatively new phenomenon that allows an individual to create bookmarks (or “tags”) for Web sites and save them online.

1. You could store these bookmarks somewhere online.

2. You could access them anywhere.

3. You could see what other people are reading on your topic.

4. You could find new and unexpected directions for your research.

The benefits of social tagging

1. The library could provide an index to quality Internet resources, created by the librarians at the institution

2. The library could provide an index to quality Internet resources, created by the librarians at the institution. (Much valuable online information created by experts and scholars cannot be found easily.)

How to create

1. Choose the software

2. Find a niche in your library’s Web site

3. For creating content, start with subject specialist who can identify the best Web resrouces in their subject area

4. Tag them.

Problems

1. Spam tagging (spagging)

2. Appropriate keywords (controlled vocabulary)

Week12 Reading Note

This week’s reading is about how to indexing and aggregating information in the web. As you imagine, the data in the web is increasing exponentially and it is challenging for an information specialist to indexing and archiving those for future uses. Those articles show real attempts of this process and explain the algorithm behind these. In the Web Search Engines, David Hawking tries to explain how to index information through “the whole of the Web”. At the first part of the article, he reveals that the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN establish data centers as crawlers and collect data by them. And then, he describes issues which occur during the crawling process. They are related to the speed of crawling machine, crawler’s politeness while archiving information in a certain web site, and how to exclude and duplicate content. At the second part of the article, Hawking explains that indexing and query processing algorithm. Although the content of the article is strange and hard to understand but I can finally understand it thanks to the author’s clarification about terms in the process. OAI (open Archives Initiative) has developed standards for effective distribution of contents which is interoperable among diverse digital environment. Also, OAI offers the open access and its projects are extending to various fields.

Week11 Lab

Google Scholar

"Digital Library" AND ~Virtual Reference as topics

2008~2012 as a time span

Web of Knowledge

"Digital Library" AND ~Virtual Reference as topics

2008~2012 as a time span

Week11

This week’s reading materials are about digital library, especially with academic purpose.

I think that Mischo clearly express what is the problem and what is the goal of the digital library in his article published in 2005. He summarizes that “ information providers have designed enhanced gateway and navigation services on the interface side and also introduced federation mechanisms to assist users through the distributed, heterogeneous information environment” (Mischo,2005). Also, he introduces the history of DLI, the federal movement for developing effective tools for retrieval.

Next, I strongly agree with the opinion of the authors of Dewey Meets Turing. Since starting to study the Library Science, I have heard many complaints about roles of librarians in the digital era. Some say that there are invasion from other disciplines and machines, but we already have answers about the problems. According to Dewey Meets Turing, librarians should persist their unique and traditional roles such as resource organization, collation, and presentation, and the importance of a curating service is increasing dramatically.