[15276] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Current Cites, March 2004
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CITES Moderator)
Fri Apr 2 08:45:37 2004
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 12:31:58 -0800
From: CITES Moderator <citeschk@LIBRARY.BERKELEY.EDU>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
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Current Cites
Volume 15, no. 3, March 2004
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
The Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2004/cc04.15.3.html
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Terry Huwe, [5]Shirl
Kennedy, [6]Leo Robert Klein, [7]Roy Tennant
[8]Nature Web Focus: Access to the Literature: The Debate Continues
(2004) - Nature is offering a new series of freely available
commissioned papers by noted authors on open access and other
innovative publishing business models. Current contributions
include "[9]Open Access and Learned Societies"; "[10]Open Access
and Not-for-Profit Publishers"; "[11]Open Access: Yes, No, Maybe";
"[12]Universities' Own Electronic Repositories Yet to Impact on
Open Access"; "[13]Why Electronic Publishing Means People Will Pay
Different Prices"; and other papers. There are also useful links to
related articles and resources. Like prior Nature debates on
electronic publishing issues, this one is lively and very
interesting. - [14]CB
[15]Computers in Libraries 2004 Medford, NJ: Information Today,
2004. (http://www.infotoday.com/cil2004/presentations/). - Many of
the presentations from this conference, held March 10-12, 2004 in
Washington DC are available in either PowerPoint or Adobe Acrobat
format, or both. Handouts are also often available, as well as the
occasional Perl script. The topics range widely from strategies for
keeping up to blogs to dead and emerging technologies. There is, in
other words, something here for just about anyone. - [16]RT
[17]Museums and the Web 2004 Toronto, ON: Archives and Museums
Informatics, 2004. (http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/sessions/). - A
number of the presentations at this conference are online in HTML
as contributed papers. Although many of the topics are perhaps of
interest mostly to museums or archives, there are other topics
(e.g., building accessible web sites) that cross those boundaries.
- [18]RT
[19]Thinking Beyond Digital Libraries - Designing the Information
Strategy for the Next Decade: Proceedings of the 7th International
Bielefeld Conference Bielefeld, Germany: Bielefeld University
Library, February 2004.
(http://conference.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/proceedings/). - The
presentations from this conference are available in PowerPoint
format. A few also have the speakers remarks available in Adobe
Acrobat (PDF) format. Speakers include university professors,
academic library directors, and high-level managers of
library-related non-profits and commercial companies (e.g., Jay
Jordan, President and CEO of OCLC). - [20]RT
[21]METS Opening Day Washington, DC: Library of Congress, October
2003. (http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/od1_ppts.html). - A number
of the PowerPoint presentations from the first "METS Opening Day"
for the emerging standard Metadata Encoding and Transmission
Standard (METS) are available. Topics include an introduction to
METS, building METS by hand, METS profiles, METS repositories, and
METS case studies. A second METS Opening Day will be occuring on
April 8 and 9 at Stanford University, with those presentations
likely to be available shortly thereafter at the [22]METS web site.
- [23]RT
Christiansen, Donald. "[24]Ephemera for Engineers and Scientists"
[25]Today's Engineer (IEEE) (February 2004)
(http://www.todaysengineer.org/feb04/backscatter.asp). - It's not
news to those of us in the information profession -- the fact that
when it comes to Web-based resources, it's too often a case of here
today, gone tomorrow. How many times have you spotted an
interesting article while out surfing and, when you wanted to go
back to it later on, you could no longer find it? Even if you saved
the link, the link no longer works. While this is an annoyance when
it comes to our everyday web browsing, it can be a disaster for
resarch and scholarship. "Many technical articles now include
references to Internet addresses, as opposed to hard-copy
resources," the author correctly points out. But when authors or
readers attempt to access these URLs at a later time, they have
effectively vanished into cyberspace. The author cites a [26]study
done at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in which
researchers checked articles that appeared in Science, the Journal
of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of
Medicine. They found "that 3.8 percent of Internet references were
inactive three months after journal publication, 10 percent after
15 months and 13 percent after 27 months." While there are ways of
tracking these things down after the fact -- the author gives some
suggestions, most would agree that this is a tremendous waste of
time and energy. A solution, he says, may come in the form of
"Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), the Uniform Resource Name (URN)
syntax or the Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL)." - [27]SK
Dilevko, Juris, and Lisa Gottlieb. "Selection and Cataloging of
Adult Pornography Web Sites for Academic Libraries" [28]Journal of
Academic Librarianship 30(1) (January 2004): 36-50. - The
authors argue that as interest in adult porn studies proliferates
on campus, librarians are challenged to provide support material.
The authors delineate various criteria for selecting
subject-specific Web sites, reminding us that while the sites
themselves may not be scholarly, they may still "represent a type
of cultural artifact worthy of (and currently the subject of)
scholarly inquiry." Catalogers will appreciate the extensive
discussion on subject access in this area. The inclusion of
material like this in the academic library's catalog would, we are
told, "facilitate scholarly research in this area and fill a
prominent gap in the library's collection." (Available through
ScienceDirect.) - [29]LRK
Ebare, Sean. "[30]Digital Music and Subculture: Sharing Files,
Sharing Styles" [31]First Monday 9(2) (2 February 2004)
(http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_2/ebare/index.html). -
The author takes a fresh look at online music sharing communities,
applying theories from popular music studies and cyberethnography.
He explores how identity and difference, subculture and genre
lifespans, and the political economy of technology and music
production combine to influence the use of music on the Internet.
Identity is more fluid, and anonymity more prevalent, making the
music sharing community somewhat unique. He argues that the
subculture of music sharing user-driven and that the ability to
forecast how this community behaves will be invaluable for both
music publishers and social scientists. He offers his own forecast
on the future marketplace for music sharing, arguing that it will
depend upon an understanding of the diversity of the members, their
need for self-determination, and the mandate to allow these
communities to exercise a substantial degree of independence within
their online experience. - [32]TH
Feldman, Susan. "[33]The High Cost of Not Finding Information"
[34]KMWorld Magazine 13(3) (March 2004)
(http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=read
article&Article_ID=1725&Publication_ID=108). - "There are all kinds
of information disasters. Some are caused by wrong information.
Some are caused by outdated information.... Missing or incomplete
information plagues many projects..... Finally, there is the
increasing problem of too much in formation." Some interesting
statistics here: -- "(R)oughly 50% of most Web searches are
abandoned." -- "Knowledge workers spend from 15% to 35% of their
time searching for information." -- "Searchers are successful in
finding what they seek 50% of the time or less...." -- "40% of
corporate users reported that they can not find the information
they need to do their jobs on their intranets." -- "Not locating
and retrieving information has an opportunity cost of more than $15
million annually." -- "Some studies suggest that 90% of the time
that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports or other
products is spent in recreating information that already exists." -
[35]SK
Fiehn, Barbara. "[36]Federated Searching: A Viable Alternative to
Web Surfing" [37]TechNewsWorld (21 March 2004)
(http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33160.html). - You'll be
hearing lots more about federated search. Simple definition --
searching a variety of resources (databases, OPACs, the Web) from a
single interface. This article (which originally appeared in the
April 2004 issue of [38]MultiMedia & Internet@Schools but is not
online there) focuses on school library media centers and the
products available for that market. But it is worth reading by all
information professionals since it presents a good overview of the
topic and explains some of the pros and cons. The biggest advantage
is the most obvious -- no need for the end user to hop from
resource to resource in order to access all that an institution has
available online. Some vendors' products will group results by
source which, in essence, can show the user which resources are
likely to be most useful for his/her particular information need.
And the user only has to learn one search interface. But
single-interface searching also has some downsides. Federated
search technology is not quite "there" yet as far as relevance and
de-duping are concerned. Also, the single interface may not permit
the end user to take advantage of whatever sophisticated search
features are offered by the individual resources. And this
relatively new technology may prove challenging for librarians and
IT people alike. If you don't have adequate in-house resources,
hosting solutions may be available. - [39]SK
Kurlantzick, Joshua. "[40]Dictatorship.com: The Web Won't Topple
Tyranny" [41]The New Republic (25 March 2004)
(http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=oGG%2BvQEIjJRNjHGlOJiX4X%3D%3D). -
As a tool to disseminate popular culture, the Internet has had
spectacular success, even in "authoritarian nations" such as Laos,
China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. But, the author points out, its
political impact has been negligible and, in some cases, "the
Internet actually may be helping dictatorships remain in power."
This in spite of the fact that pundits have been touting the
political potential of the Net since it became more or less a mass
medium in the mid-90s. Although "Internet usage has surged in many
authoritarian nations," it has had little impact on "the political
climate." Why? Because, the author says, it is not particularly
useful "for expressing and organizing dissent," and --
technologically -- "it has proved surprisingly easy for
authoritarian regimes to stifle, control, and co-opt." The author
points out that the Internet is mainly used for individual rather
than group activities. As one Laotian researcher quoted here
observes, the Internet "is about people sitting in front of a
terminal, barely interacting." Also, using the Net requires a
relatively high level of literacy. The author provides examples of
how different nations have attempted to control access to and
content on the Internet, particularly China -- "Despite President
Clinton's prediction, Beijing has proved that it can, in fact, nail
Jell-O to the wall." And Western companies have proven only too
eager "to sell the latest censorship technology" to any oppressive
regime willing to ante up. Some dissidents claim the Internet
actually facilitates monitoring of individuals by the government.
Fascinating read; a don't-miss. - [42]SK
Seebach, Peter. "[43]The Cranky User: Businesses Behaving Badly :
Put Customers First Or Risk Losing Them" [44]developerWorks (4
March 2004)
(http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cranky38.html
). - The "Cranky User" is an occasional column on IBM's extremely
helpful developerWorks site (the [45]Ease of Use section is
wonderful). In this missive, the Cranky User complains about poor
customer service. Poor customer service is a kind of action on the
part of a company that produces a reaction in the customer, namely,
a negative reaction. While I don't particularly agree with his
example near the end of the column where he complains about contact
email addresses being replaced by web forms, the notion that bad
institutional practices have negative consequences is important to
keep in mind. - [46]LRK
Wells, Catherine A. "Location, Location, Location: The Importance
of Placement of the Chat Request Button. " Reference & User
Services Quarterly 43(2) (Winter 2003): 133-137. - Concerned that
Chat Reference wasn't being used as much as expected, librarians at
Case Western Reserve began experimenting with the size, shape,
location and frequency of placement of the Chat Reference button on
their site. They eventually found, perhaps to no one's surprise,
that usage went up if the button appeared on the most heavily
trafficked pages (home page, catalog page, database page). High on
their wish list now is getting the button on vendor (i.e.
subscription database) pages as well. - [47]LRK
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites - ISSN: 1060-2356
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References
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