[15579] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Current Cites, October 2004
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (CITES Moderator)
Fri Oct 29 20:12:45 2004
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 09:48:14 -0700
From: CITES Moderator <citeschk@LIBRARY.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Current Cites
Volume 15, no. 10, October 2004
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2004/cc04.15.10.html
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Terry Huwe, [5]Shirl
Kennedy, Jim Ronningen, [6]Roy Tennant
[7]2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers
Dublin, OH: OCLC, October 2004.
(http://www.oclc.org/info/2004trends/). - OCLC demonstrates once
again that it is capable of spotting trends and discussing their
implications for libraries. As OCLC did in the 2003 Environmental
Scan: Pattern Recognition report, this longish paper pulls from
sources as diverse as the Pew Internet Trust and Billboard in the
quest to understand societal information trends. The top trends
identified here are the: "legitimacy of open source publishing
(e.g., blogs), rapidly expanding economics of microcontent,
repurposing of "old" content for new media, and multimedia content
as a service for an array of devices." You may not agree with
everything you read, or even the issues that OCLC surfaces in this
report, but if you're interested in the information environment of
which libraries are a part, you should not miss this. - [8]RT
"[9]Wiki Wars" [10]Red Herring (14 October 2004)
(http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=10909). - The
[11]Wikipedia is one of those venerable Internet resources that's
always just sort of been there. A noble undertaking to create a
free online encyclopedia, it is somewhat of a mixed bag, as any
information professional will tell you. Some of the entries are
eloquently written and contain high quality information. Other
stuff...well...as this article points out, the Wikipedia has become
"the latest battleground in the presidential election as
users...squabble over entries related to President George W. Bush
and Democratic challenger John Kerry, the junior senator from
Massachusetts." Since anyone is free to edit a Wiki article, you
can see the potential for problems galore. And it's not just
election-related material that is under a cloud. "Some users have
even deliberately inserted errors into Wikipedia entries to test
how quickly users can detect and remove them." Ugh! The article
points out that "Wikipedia has become a popular online reference
for students, academics, and even journalists." A friend passed
along a [12]legal document just this past week in which a real live
sitting judge actually cited the Wikipedia. (See page 16.) Long
story short, editors may be coming to the Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales,
president of the [13]Wikimedia Foundation, "said that next year he
will begin using editors to review the web site's content for
accuracy and allow users to rate contributions to the encyclopedia
for their quality." - [14]SK
Cole, Timothy W., and Sarah L. Shreeves. "[15]The IMLS NLG
Program: Fostering Collaboration" [16]Library Hi Tech 22(3)
(2004): 246-248.
(http://lysander.emeraldinsight.com/vl=885645/cl=77/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-b
in/linker?ini=emerald&reqidx=/cw/mcb/07378831/v22n3/s1/p246). - If
you are interested in the important work of the Institute of Museum
and Library Services (IMLS), check out a new [17]special issue of
Library Hi Tech that provides descriptions of seven projects funded
by IMLS' National Leadership Grant program. Issue guest editors
Timothy W. Cole and Sarah Shreeves overview the contents of the
special issue in this article. They have selected articles that
represent three categories of grant activity: (1) "state-wide and
regional collaborations between multiple types of organizations" (3
articles), (2) "communities of interest that have coalesced to
spawn successful and wide-ranging collaborations between
information specialists (librarians, curators, and information
technologists) and subject specialist end-users (students,
teachers, and scholars)" (2 articles), and (3) "ongoing research
into and demonstrations of key infrastructure components that take
advantage of the opportunities afforded by new technologies to
facilitate and enable collaboration in digital library building at
a high level between experts with diverse skills and backgrounds
and widely dispersed geographically" (2 articles). The issue also
includes an article by Joyce Ray, the IMLS Associate Deputy
Director for Library Services, that overviews IMLS activities.
Access to this issue is currently free. - [18]CB
Kohno, Tadayoshi, et. al. "Analysis of an Electronic Voting
System" [19]IEEE Computer Society: Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE
Symposium on Security and Privacy (May 2004) - Not one of our
usual topics, but this critique of an information technology is of
obvious importance. If you're the type of person who gets asked the
tech questions, "Why don't people trust e-voting?" has a more than
adequate response in this paper. The authors thoroughly pick apart
the Diebold AccuVote-TS DRE (direct recording electronic) system,
which has a substantial share of the e-voting market. From the
hackability of the voter card which the voter inserts into the
reader, to the ease of access to administrator functions, to
tampering with system configuration, to the ability to tell the
machine to stop accepting votes, it's clear that current security
in this and other e-voting systems is probably more wide open than
your library's circulation files. Most of the analysis centers on
elements of the source code, but each cause and effect is described
in plain English which non-coders find accessible. This is a
stellar example of the public service performed by exposing
security flaws and the subject is treated with the serious tone
which it deserves, without a trace of the mayhem glee common to the
work of the 2600 crowd. The scariest thing about this long list of
attacks, whether you find them likely or unlikely to ever be used,
is that it only takes one to call into question the reliability of
a machine or even of an entire polling place. And after the breach
is discovered, the chance of getting back to an accurate count of
one person - one vote is slim to none. - JR
Loban, Bryn. "[20]Between Rhizomes and Trees: P2P Information
Systems" [21]First Monday 9(10) (4 October 2004)
(http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/loban/). - Loban
offers a comprehensive overview of information retrieval that
relies on "Peer-to-Peer"(P2P)information systems -- more famously
known for music file sharing. He evaluates five desktop P2P
information systems: Napster with its clones (OpenNap and eDonkey),
and Gnutella and FastTrack (more famously known as Kazaa). What's
good about this article is that it gives the reader a very detailed
explanation of what P2P is all about: its "self-organizing"
characteristics, the emergence of hierarchies of users, etc. We
cite it here because recent regulatory events in California draw
new attention to P2P file sharing, which also forms the basis for
many digital preservation strategies (such as LOCKSS, or Lots of
Copies Keeps Stuff Safe). While the author's goal is to compare
these various systems and offer suggestions for further study, he
simultaneously maps online life in the P2P environment, which comes
at a good moment in time for digital librarians who are concerned
with "persistent" resource building. He concludes with an
evaluation of "ethics" in the P2P community, which, of course,
draws upon the very public battles of music file sharing. This
article is a good overview piece for anyone who wants to check in
on - [22]TH
OCLC/RLG PREMIS Working Group, . [23]Implementing Preservation
Repositories for Digital Materials: Current Practice and Emerging
Trends in the Cultural Heritage Community Dublin, OH: OCLC, 2004.
(http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/pmwg/surveyreport.pdf). -
This report by the joint OCLC/RLG Working Group Preservation
Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) is based on a survey
about existing practices in digital preservation of forty-eight
organizations conducted in late 2003 and early 2004. There were a
number of specific survey findings that informed the following
trends and conclusions: "store metadata redundantly in an XML or
relational database and with the content data objects. Use the METS
format for structural metadata and as a container for descriptive
and administrative metadata; use Z39.87/MIX for technical metadata
for still images. Use the OAIS model as a framework and starting
point for designing the preservation repository, but retain the
flexibility to add functions and services that go beyond the model.
Maintain multiple versions (originals and at least some normalized
or migrated versions) in the repository, and store complete
metadata for all versions. Choose multiple strategies for digital
preservation." Highly recommended for anyone interested in digital
preservation. - [24]RT
Poynder, Richard. "[25]Ten Years After" [26]Information Today
21(9) (2004) (http://www.infotoday.com/it/oct04/poynder.shtml). -
No, this article is not about the famous rock band that shook
Woodstock with "I'm Going Home." Rather, it's about how Stevan
Harnad shook-up the scholarly publishing world in the ten years
after his famous "[27]subversive proposal." Poynder says that ". .
. while Harnad cannot claim to have invented the OA movement, his
phenomenal energy and determination, coupled with a highly focused
view of what is needed, undoubtedly earns him the title of chief
architect of open access." But this article is a not just a paean
to Harnad's many notable accomplishments, it is also an
interesting, very concise history of the open access movement that
touches on its struggles as well as its triumphs. - [28]CB
Pressman-Levy, Nancy. "[29]Searching RedLightGreen at Princeton
University Library" [30]RLG Focus (69) (August 2004)
(http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=17921#article4). - If you
haven't yet used the [31]RedLightGreen system from the Research
Libraries Group, then stop reading this screed and go try it out.
RLG took their Eureka system, a rather huge library catalog, and
actually made it usable by normal human beings. There is, in other
words, hope for the rest of us that our library catalogs do not
need to be as obtuse and painful to use as they are now. This piece
by the coordinator of RedLightGreen testing at Princeton discusses
how the system has been used by Princeton students to great
success, and in so doing she covers all the innovations that
RedLightGreen has introduced. As Pressman-Levy puts it, "The staff
and the students exploring RedLightGreen at Princeton gave high
marks to all of these special features." Whether or not we point
our users to this system, there is much to learn here that we can
nonetheless apply to our own (sadly inadequate) systems. - [32]RT
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites - ISSN: 1060-2356
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References
Visible links
1. LYNXIMGMAP:http://sunsite/CurrentCites/2004/cc04.15.10.html#head
2. http://roytennant.com/
3. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
4. http://iir.berkeley.edu/faculty/huwe/
5. http://www.uncagedlibrarian.com/
6. http://roytennant.com/
7. http://www.oclc.org/info/2004trends/
8. http://roytennant.com/
9. http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=10909
10. http://www.redherring.com/
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
12. http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200216886.pdf
13. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
14. http://www.uncagedlibrarian.com/
15.
http://lysander.emeraldinsight.com/vl=885645/cl=77/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/linker?ini=emerald&reqidx=/cw/mcb/07378831/v22n3/s1/p246
16.
http://lysander.emeraldinsight.com/vl=885645/cl=77/nw=1/rpsv/cw/www/mcb/07378831/contp1.htm
17.
http://lysander.emeraldinsight.com/vl=885645/cl=77/nw=1/rpsv/cw/www/mcb/07378831/v22n3/contp1-1.htm
18. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
19. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/
20. http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/loban/
21. http://www.firstmonday.org/
22. http://iir.berkeley.edu/faculty/huwe/
23. http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/pmwg/surveyreport.pdf
24. http://roytennant.com/
25. http://www.infotoday.com/it/oct04/poynder.shtml
26. http://www.infotoday.com/
27. http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html
28. http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/bailey.htm
29. http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=17921#article4
30. http://www.rlg.org/en/page.php?Page_ID=17921
31. http://redlightgreen.com/
32. http://roytennant.com/
33. mailto:listserv@library.berkeley.edu
