[15521] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Current Cites, August 2004
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CITES Moderator)
Wed Sep 1 20:10:46 2004
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 15:03:06 -0700
From: CITES Moderator <citeschk@LIBRARY.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Current Cites
Volume 15, no. 8, August 2004
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2004/cc04.15.8.html
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Shirl Kennedy, Jim
Ronningen, [5]Roy Tennant
[6]Understanding Metadata Washington, DC: National Information
Standards Organization, 2004.
(http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/UnderstandingMetadata.pdf)
. - Metadata (structured information about an object or collection
of objects) is increasingly important to libraries, archives, and
museums. And although librarians are familiar with a number of
issues that apply to creating and using metadata (e.g., authority
control, controlled vocabularies, etc.), the world of metadata is
nonetheless different than library cataloging, with its own set of
challenges. Therefore, whether you are new to these concepts or
quite experienced with classic cataloging, this short (20 pages)
introductory paper on metadata can be helpful. - [7]RT
Case, Mary M. "[8]A Snapshot in Time: ARL Libraries and Electronic
Journal Resources" [9]ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library
Issues and Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC (235) (August 2004):
1-10. (http://www.arl.org/newsltr/235/snapshot.html). - E-journals
are definitely a hit at ARL libraries: expenditures have
skyrocketed [10]712% between 1994/95 and 2001/02. In 2001/02,
e-serials required a whopping [11]26% of ARL libraries' serials
budgets (versus 5% in 1994/95). To get a more in-depth picture of
the issues related to e-serials, ARL conducted two surveys of its
members (one in 2002 and one in 2003). This interesting article
presents the results of these surveys, which dealt with a wide
variety of issues such as "big deals," nondisclosure clauses,
pricing models, print cancellations, subscription costs,
subscription terms, and usage terms (among others). Of particular
note were the findings about print cancellations: "In the fall 2002
survey, only a few libraries indicated that they had moved to
electronic-only versions of the titles offered by these 14
publishers. In the more general survey conducted in 2003, many more
libraries indicated they were making the switch." Of course, this
raises the difficult issue of the long-term preservation of
electronic-only journals. I'd also suggest that, as this trend
accelerates, it may erode access to scholarly journals by
non-affiliated users, who are typically dependent on the
availability of a limited number of "public" workstations, and
deepen what Peter Suber calls the "[12]permission crisis." - [13]CB
Devine, Jane, and Francine Egger-Sider. "Beyond Google: The
Invisible Web in the Academic Library" [14]Journal of Academic
Librarianship 30(4) (July 2004): 265-269. - For most librarians,
this article won't be their first encounter with the concept of web
resources which aren't found by search sites such as Google, but it
pulls together current resources and provides concise explanations
useful for spreading the word. The problem is the word itself, in
my opinion: whenever I talk to library users about an "invisible
web" I get the reaction that it's a kind of "librarian layer" that
normal people should ignore as long as there's a gatekeeper who can
let them in when they need it. Personally, I'd rather not be a
keeper of the mysteries, and whenever the opportunity arises I
explain the characteristics of the kind of resource that Google
couldn't mine: subscription database, unindexed file content, etc.
This article can give you the gear needed to take your users diving
down to the deeper levels and not leave them floating on the
surface. - JR
Entlich, Richard. "[15]Blog Today, Gone Tomorrow? Preservation of
Weblogs" [16]RLG DigiNews 8(4) (15 August 2004)
(http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=19481#article3). - Should
blogs be archived? If so, how can this best be accomplished? First,
we need to know what constitutes a blog. The writer provides a
working definition: "(P)ostings (at varying intervals), usually by
a single individual, in the form of text, images, and other data
forms, arranged in reverse chronological order and accessible with
a Web browser." Most sources estimate the number of active blogs at
somewhere around two million. The number of blogs created, of
course, is much higher, but so many are abandoned, often almost
immediately. The author refers to last October's [17]Perseus Blog
Survey, which reported that "about 2/3 of over 4 million blogs
found on eight popular blog hosting services may have been
abandoned, i.e., not updated within the past two months. Over a
million consisted of just an initial post. The average active blog
was updated about every two weeks." The simple fact is that most
bloggers have a day job and/or other responsibilities, and keeping
up a weblog is akin to feeding an always-hungry beast. It's not
uncommon for a blog to develop a following and foster a sense of
community. When the blogger decides, for whatever reason, to shut
the blog down, its readers are often quite distressed. And then
there's the question of what should happen to the content? Consider
that there's always a possibility that a free blog hosting service
may shut down suddenly, rendering all the users' content
inaccessible. As blogging has gotten more sophisticated and been
adopted by mainstream media and other entities, the blogosphere has
become an increasingly important part of the web, and shares the
same general archiving issues, identified by the author as
"copyright, robot exclusion, dynamic content, password protection,
exotic file formats, and miscoded material." But weblogs present
some unique archving challenges as well, because of features like
reader commentary, extensive linking to other sources, and
different/non-compatible technologies underlying various blogging
tools. Also, notes the writer, "Most librarians and archivists have
not yet identified blogs as online resources particularly meriting
collection and preservation." At this stage, it seems, the onus
falls mostly on individual bloggers to maintain copies of their own
content. - [18]SK
Iliff, John, and Judy Xao. "[19]Intellectual Honesty in the
Electronic Age" [20]Best Practices in E-Learning (Online
Conference) (August 2004)
(http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/~jiliff/iliff_xiao.htm). - "The
trend toward dishonesty seems to be increasing," according to the
authors of this paper, who have unearthed a variety of statistics
and anecdotal evidence from research studies, articles and websites
cited in the extensive bibliography. The Internet is certainly a
factor in this trend, Not only has it armed potential cheaters with
new tools, but it has spawned a mini-industry of online services
designed to assist teachers and professors in catching plagiarists.
Meanwhile, the cell phone and the PDA have added a whole new
dimension to in-class cheating. "No gum wrapper or note tucked into
a sleeve can compare to the storage and intelligence of these
devices," the authors observe, wryly. They identify a whole laundry
list of reasons why students cheat -- from the obvious ("to get a
better grade") to the unintentional (ignorance of how to cite
sources properly). And they discuss ways in which cheating can be
deterred -- i.e., enforcing a strong academic honor code, defining
clearly what constitutes plagiarism, structuring academic
assignments so as to either make cheating difficult or make it easy
to spot when it occurs. Since technology has "made student cheating
faster and easier," it is incumbent upon educators to teach proper
research techniques and increase awareness of "what is right and
fair." This paper is from a [21]presentation given as part of an
online conference hosted by the University of Calgary August 23-27.
The authors are librarians at the [22]College of Staten Island, The
City University of New York. - [23]SK
Jackson, Joab. "[24]Advanced search engines link many data
sources" [25]Government Computer News 23(24) (23 August 2004)
(http://gcn.com/23_24/tech-report/26999-1.html). - In a nutshell,
federated search is coming to the federal government. Rather than
have researchers waste time jumping from one search engine to
another to access different government databases, various agencies
are building single uniform interfaces that allow one-stop
searching of multiple repositories. The FDA's [26]Center for Drug
Evaluation and Research uses Convera Corporation's
[27]RetrievalWare to facilitate searching across 15 different
document databases. And the [28]Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
has instituted single-interface searching across multiple document
repositories, in different locations, concerning the DOE's
"application to house a radioactive waste repository at Yucca
Mountain." The NRC is using a software suite from Autonomy,
[29]Intelligent Data Operating Layer Server. - [30]SK
Morgan, Eric Lease. "[31]An Introduction to the Search/Retrieve
URL Service (SRU)" [32]Ariadne (40) (July 2004)
(http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue40/morgan/). - Eric Morgan is a
master at explaining complex topics simply, and this article is yet
another example. Although the true neophyte may be a bit adrift,
any moderately technically capable person will find this article a
useful introduction to this emerging replacement for Z39.50 based
on Web Services. And even those who know about SRU/SRW may find the
included example of usage to be instructive. Although Perl
familiarity would be useful, given the Perl-based examples, it is
not necessary to understand the basic drift of the piece. This
article is well worth the time of anyone interested in Z39.50
and/or Web Services. Or, for that matter, any technically capable
librarian who wants to keep up with where the profession is going.
- [33]RT
Suber, Peter. "[34]NIH Open-Access Plan: Frequently Asked
Questions" (2004)
(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm). - Peter Suber has
written a helpful FAQ about the U.S. House Appropriations
Committee's [35]recommendation regarding open access to journal
articles that result from NIH grant-funded research. To recap the
main points of the recommendation, such articles would be deposited
in PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. If NIH funds
were used to support any publication costs, the articles would be
made immediately available. Otherwise, they would be made available
six months after publication. NIH would develop a plan by 12/1/04
to implement the recommendation in FY 2005. The FAQ clarifies the
fine points of the recommendation (e.g., it's up to the researcher,
not the publisher, to deposit the article), addresses the main
issues that it raises (e.g., would journals lose subscribers as a
result of the plan?), compares it to the Public Access to Science
Act, discusses the future of the recommendation, and provides
action steps for supporters (e.g., use the Public Knowledge [36]Web
form to send a fax to your Congressional delegation endorsing the
recommendation). He also mentions the [37]Alliance for Taxpayer
Access , which the American Association of Law Libraries, the
American Library Association, the Association of Academic Health
Sciences Libraries, the Association of College & Research
Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and many other
organizations have recently formed to support the recommendation. -
[38]CB
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Current Cites - ISSN: 1060-2356
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References
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25. http://gcn.com/
26. http://www.fda.gov/cder/
27. http://www.convera.com/Products/products_rw.asp
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34. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/nihfaq.htm
35. http://www.arl.org/ata/congress.html
36. http://www.publicknowledge.org/take-action/open-access-action/
37. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=35102
38. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
39. mailto:listserv@library.berkeley.edu
