[14702] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Current Cites, February 2003
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CITES Moderator)
Mon Mar 3 08:39:41 2003
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:40:44 -0800
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Current Cites
Volume 14, no. 2, February 2003
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
The Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2003/cc03.14.2.html
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Margaret Gross, [5]Terry
Huwe, [6]Shirl Kennedy, [7]Leo Robert Klein, Jim Ronningen, [8]Roy
Tennant
"[9]Preserving Our Digital Heritage: Plan for the National Digital
Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program" (October 2002)
(http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndiipp/repor/repor_plan.html).
- At the end of 2000, Congress passed PL 106-554, which established
the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation
Program (NDIIPP). It charges the Library of Congress with
addressing a need which librarians have become acutely aware of:
planning for the long-term preservation of digital content. This
plan details the problems to be addressed, the identification and
involvement of stakeholders, social and technological solutions and
budgetary requirements. The scope is very broad, with all current
digital media and types of repositories considered. Past practices
of familiar acronyms (NARA, OCLC, JSTOR) are surveyed, but the
focus is on the future, foreseeable and un-, to create strategies
that learn from the past, bring together possible collaborators and
take action in a systematic way before more valuable digital
history is lost forever. - JR
"[10]Publishers: Get Ready for the New ISBN!" (2003)
(http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/ISBN.html). - The
International Standard Book Number (ISO 2108) has been in place for
over thirty years, and is used in over 160 countries. This article,
prepared by NISO (National Information Standards Organization)
presents an informative review of ISBN, what it is [11]ISBN FAQ
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/isbn.htm, as well as reasons for
revising ISBN. As of 2005, the present number will be replaced by a
13 digit barcode. The standard is being revised by a working group
of ISO, [12]ISO TC 46 SC 9 WG4 http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/.
Participating in this group is the United States, Canada, 8 other
countries and three international agencies. The big issues are ISBN
Capacity, Linking, Metadata, and Administration of the ISBN system.
There is a link to NISO's [13]Details About How Standards are
Developed http://www.niso.org/international/about_intl.html#howint.
For anyone interested in the subject, this short but comprehensive
overview, includes a timeline and list of contacts. - [14]MG
"[15]Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through
Cyberinfrastrucure: Report" (January 2003)
(http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/). - This report
is an exciting, big vision for organized networks in science and
engineering, with a request for the very big bucks needed to make
it possible. Funding of $1 billion per year is recommended to
achieve an internationally-coordinated Advanced Cyberinfrastructure
Program which could improve data archiving and accessibility,
application development and computer resource sharing. Chair Daniel
Atkins of the University of Michigan School of Information and his
panel state in the Executive Summary that "Testimony from research
communities indicates that many contemporary projects require
effective federation of both distributed resources (data and
facilities) and distributed, multidisciplinary expertise, and that
cyberinfrastructure is a key to making this possible." For many,
the phrase "knowledge economy" has been tainted by its association
with the hyperhype of the dot-com boom, but here it accurately
characterizes the activity which can flourish if underpinned by a
cyberinfrastructure, just as industrial economy grows after
physical infrastructure is built. The report gives many convincing,
concrete examples of recent developments in scientific and
technological research which could benefit from such planning. Of
course it's not a proposal to eliminate the chaos of the Internet
(enjoyable or aggravating as it may be), but it would go a long way
toward bringing together the efforts of people in those fields
where digital resource sharing is highly important. - JR
[16]Strategic Plan (February 2003)
(http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/DARPAStrategicPlan2003.pdf). -
People interested in the history of the Internet know that its
first functions were created through work sponsored by the U.S.
Dept. of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and
we may even associate DARPA with warm, fuzzy feelings about the
pre-commercial, pre-Spam, pre-AOL net. DARPA is always fun to keep
tabs on, of course, but particularly now as planning continues for
Total Information Awareness. Yes, there was public outcry, some
politicians got on soapboxes and John Poindexter's home phone
number was published, but don't be fooled - it hasn't gone away.
The Strategic Plan puts the TIA project in the context of DARPA's
other public activities, so it is an interesting view of how the
agency presents itself. Their [17]TIA web page is a separate public
information effort including a flow chart (ending in "Foreign
Terrorist Threat" with a circle & slash superimposed, naturally)
and FAQ. I was a tad disappointed that it didn't include future
plans for the inevitable commercial exploitation of the datamines,
so I don't know how soon I'll have the chance to pay somebody for
some good, clean, recreational privacy invasion. - JR
Arnold, Stephen E. "[18]Content Management's New Realities"
[19]Online27(1) p. 36-43 (Jan/Feb 2003)
(http://www.onlinemag.net/Jan03/arnold.htm). - Now that Knowledge
Management's gone sour, it's time to move on to Content Management
Systems. At least that's how it seems judging by the number of
articles appearing on the subject and the talk about it on various
listServs. This article actually does a good job of presenting the
issues involved in evaluating CM Systems. The author cautions us
that "organizations are indeed 'organic' and highly unique
creatures..." He goes on, "CM systems need to reflect this, which
can take more money and attention than first seems apparent". Good
point to keep in mind in the march to adapt CM Systems to specific
library needs. - [20]LRK
Crow, Raym. [21]SPARC Institutional Repository Checklist and
Resource GuideWashington, DC: The Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition, 2002.
(http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/IR_Guide_v1.pdf). - If you are
thinking about establishing an institutional repository, this SPARC
publication is an excellent place to start. After a short
introduction, the author immediately tackles the critical issue of
how to persuade university administrators and faculty to support
and participate in an institutional repository, and he briefly
examines the role of librarians in the repository. He next examines
management and policy issues related to different types of content
(such as published material, preprints, and electronic theses and
dissertations), user communities, and distribution licenses. Last,
he examines technical and system issues, such as costs, migration,
document formats, preservation, scalability, handles,
interoperability, OAI and searching, and rights management. In many
sections of the document, there are short lists of relevant
publications and resources. A bibliography and an institutional
repository list completes the document. Highly recommended. -
[22]CB
Dowling, Thomas. "Web Manager's Handbook" [23]Library Technology
Reports (January-February 2003) - The 3,200 subscribers to the
[24]Web4Lib electronic discussion know Thomas Dowling well. He is
the conscience of the list, in that he is the one who most
diligently and effectively advocates the very best in web
management practices -- most particularly the adherence to
standards. Therefore, as you might expect, this short (Iess than 70
pages of content) but incredibly pithy issue of Library Technology
Reports gives us some of the best he has to offer, and it is very
good indeed. This should become every web manager's bible. I use
the term "bible" advisedly, since should a web manager adhere to
the teachings herein, they're sure to achieve web heaven. And lest
those of you who have managed web servers for years think Dowling
has nothing new to tell you, think again. Sandwiched between
admonitions presumably aimed at "newbies" (when was the last time
you had the urge to use the "blink" tag?) are choice technical
tidbits that even experienced web managers will find new and
interesting. In a nutshell, if you manage a web server, or delude
yourself that you do, you must have this. - [25]RT
Gunn, Holly. "[26]Web-based surveys: Changing the Survey Process"
[27]First Monday7(12) (December 2002)
(http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/gunn/). - The author
explores the challenges and pitfalls of Web surveying, revealing
what we've suspected all along: it's different online. Survey
research is a very well studied science, but the Web adds several
new factors that govern how people respond. Gunn describes the
three types of surveys that can be conducted on the Web and
assesses their advantages (hint: it's cheaper than print). However,
there are some disadvantages. Security is very troubling, but the
real zinger is achieving true rand om sampling. How random can a
population of computer users, as opposed to the open population,
be? Certainly less so than entire communities that include
non-computer users, it would seem. Moreover, pages display
differently on different browsers, skewing user perceptions in
unexpected ways. "What is visible in print surveys can be made
invisible in Web surveys, and vice versa," Gunn says. That's a
powerful new capability, but it triggers a need for more awareness
of how the changes influence respondents. She offers six tests to
apply to Web surveys, which will help survey researchers take
greater advantage of the graphic flexibility while preserving
uniformity. - [28]TH
Morgan, Eric Lease. [29]Getting Started with XML: A Manual and
Workshop (22 February 2003)
(http://www.infomotions.com/musings/getting-started/). - Eric
Morgan is one of those few talented individuals who can make a
technical topic understandable to the rest of us. This 73-page
Adobe Acrobat file is no different, in that he simply and
effectively explains the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and
related standards. Along the way you learn Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS), and even a bit of XSLT. At the end, Morgan highlights some
XML tag sets of particular importance to libraries (XHTML, TEI,
EAD, DocBook, RDF, and OAI-PMH). Anyone has been convinced of the
importance of XML to libraries, but has yet to make the jump into
learning the nitty-gritty details, should give this a try. This
document was created in support of a workshop sponsored by the
[30]Infopeople Project of California. - [31]RT
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites - ISSN: 1060-2356
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Document maintained at
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[33]Roy Tennant.
Last update February 28, 2003. SunSITE Manager:
[34]manager@sunsite.berkeley.edu
References
Visible links
1. LYNXIMGMAP:http://sunsite/CurrentCites/2003/cc03.14.2.html#head
2. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
3. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
4. http://www.cam.org/~mgross/mgross.htm
5. http://iir.berkeley.edu/faculty/huwe/
6. http://web.tampabay.rr.com/hooboy/
7. http://leoklein.com/
8. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
9. http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndiipp/repor/repor_plan.html
10. http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/ISBN.html
11. http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/isbn.htm
12. http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/
13. http://www.niso.org/international/about_intl.html#howint
14. http://www.cam.org/~mgross/mgross.htm
15. http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/
16. http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/DARPAStrategicPlan2003.pdf
17. http://www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm
18. http://www.onlinemag.net/Jan03/arnold.htm
19. http://www.onlinemag.net/
20. http://leoklein.com/
21. http://www.arl.org/sparc/IR/IR_Guide_v1.pdf
22. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
23. http://www.techsource.ala.org/
24. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/
25. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
26. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/gunn/
27. http://www.firstmonday.dk/
28. http://iir.berkeley.edu/faculty/huwe/
29. http://www.infomotions.com/musings/getting-started/
30. http://www.infopeople.org/
31. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
32. mailto:listserv@library.berkeley.edu
33. http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/
34. mailto:manager@sunsite.berkeley.edu
