Muddiest Point Week 13

When going over the readings for this last week I saw the topic was cloud storage. Do you think that cloud storage has more benefits than negatives? It just seems a little too insecure and was wondering if you thought of it as a good option for storage.

Week 12 Notes

One of the readings for this week focused on using Instagram instead of Facebook for a library. The article discusses what Instagram is and how an academic library could benefit from having an Instagram account versus a Facebook account.

The article focused on how Instagram is geared towards today's younger diverse crowd and how they are on college campuses. I found it interesting that the overlap of Facebook users and Instagram users was relatively small for the academic library in the article. From my personal experience it seems that Facebook is the dominant social media provider and most of the libraries and archives I know of try to use Facebook as a way to promote their collections.

Using photos to interact with graduate students makes the library and archives seem interesting, and it makes sense for a library or an archives to have an Instagram account. If you want to see what your library, or archives, has then just look at their Instagram and find what they've posted. Posting photos is a gateway for students, it allows them to see what is out there, and then they come in to see and could even find their own interests within the library or archives.

Another way for the libraries and archives to get attention through web interaction is Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a way for libraries to provide interaction with their collections, rather than just tell users what they have. Web 2.0 allows user to interact directly with collections, to converse. Advancements such as Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 provide a future for libraries in this digital age.

Muddiest Point Week 12

This week's muddiest point comes from the idea of using Instagram for a library. What other kinds of social media would libraries benefit from? Would a library benefit from having a Reddit page, or a Pinterest, or even a Tumblr? I think that there are so many social media sites that it doesn't really matter which one a library chooses to use, but to choose one, or does it matter?

Muddiest Point Week 11

This week's muddiest point comes from the article regarding the National Science Foundation. Because of the NSF's contribution to the digitization efforts do you think that if they didn't contribute, unlikely but what if, that the information fields would be set back in some ways? Or do you think that another field would have stepped up and taken the place of the NSF?

Week 11 Notes

The National Science Foundation's work on Digital Library Initiative gave way for the digital age that we know of today. Without the NSF's contribution, as well as Google's search engine, many fields would not have the types of digital presence that it has today. As a history undergraduate, I would not have had much success without the digitization, and publication, of works made available online.

The article that focused on university and institutional repositories caught my eye because of the responsibilities that an institution had to enable access to their documents. There are many people who depend on an institution's records that I failed to comprehend before this week's readings.

Muddiest Point Week 10

This week's muddiest point comes from the readings, if I know HTML and CSS what advantage is it to have XML? It seems like it would be unnecessary to know XML if it's not standardized like HTML is.

XML Notes

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, and is a subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

XML is a good language to use for structured documents that are shared over the internet. The role of elements in XML is Document Type Detail (DTD), which allows users to check that each component of document occurs in a valid place within the interchanged data stream. Users are able to check if they accidently put a third-level heading in a document before they entered a second-level heading, this is something that HTML can't do.

Some advantages of XML include:

• bring multiple files together to form compound documents
• identify where illustrations are to be incorporated into text files, and the format used to encode each illustration
• provide processing control information to supporting programs, such as document validators and browsers
• add editorial comments to a file.

There are some disadvantages to XML though, XML is not:

• a predefined set of tags, of the type defined for HTML, that can be used to markup documents
• a standardized template for producing particular types of documents.

One thing that I think is interesting about XML is that the language uses quotes within the code to determine the key figure of the code. An example of the quotes include:

<xs:sequence>
      <xs:element name="to" type="xs:string"/>
      <xs:element name="from" type="xs:string"/>
      <xs:element name="heading" type="xs:string"/>
      <xs:element name="body" type="xs:string"/>
    </xs:sequence>

The elements, "to, from, heading, and body"  are all in quotations to signal what the elements are in the document.

XML is an interesting markup language and seems like it would be a good language to learn for a job, but it seems like it would be unnecessary if a job requests me to write in HTML and use CSS.

Muddiest Point Week 9

My muddiest point for this week has to deal with the values for CSS. How come there are word values for colors, like green, in some declarations, but there are codes for colors in others? I may have missed it in the readings, and would just want some clarification.

Week 9 Notes Cascading Style

This weeks readings are on the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) code language which was touched up on a little bit last week. The CSS language seems like it is easier to learn than HTML, the one thing I noticed is that some colors require codes while others require just the numbers.

Here's an example of CSS:
H1 { color: green }
Selector and declaration

The selector chooses what kind of action for the code to choose from and the declaration sets forth the effect that the action that is chosen.

Declarations have their own breakdown as well
{ color: green }
Property and value

the property tells you what type of an effect is being selected, whether it is the font, alignment, background, or color. The value of the property tells the document what it should look like, if the text should be green, or if the text should be left-aligned, or if the background should be purple. It really gives documents a nice way to customize and stand out.

The chapter from the ebook that really explains CSS makes it clear about what to do, and touches on gluing the CSS into the HTML, which was discussed in last weeks readings. An example of gluing looks like:

<HTML>
  <TITLE>Bach's home page</TITLE>
  <STYLE>
    H1, H2 { color: green }
  </STYLE>
  <BODY>
    <H1>Bach's home page</H1>
    <P>Johann Sebastian Bach was a prolific
        composer. Among his works are:
    <UL>
      <LI>the Goldberg Variations
      <LI>the Brandenburg Concertos
      <LI>the Christmas Oratorio
    </UL>
    <H2>Historical perspective</H2>
    <P>Bach composed in what has been referred to as
      the Baroque period.
  </BODY>
</HTML>

The other sites were another way to touch up on learning the CSS and even HTML code writing that I enjoyed last week. I think these sites are very beneficial for someone who has never attempted to write code before.

Muddiest Point Week 8

This week's lectures and readings seemed fairly straight forward, but I guess I would have to make a point regarding the assignments. For assignment 4, making HTML and a bookshelf on KOHA, would there be any use of this kind of work in an archives? Or is this mainly for libraries?

Reading Notes Week 8: HTML

This week's discussion is HTML and coding languages. I am new to writing codes so this reading/activity was something I really enjoyed to do.

Seeing how to write a heading or a body for a paragraph in HTML was really fun to do honestly, I tried out a bunch of different combinations on the site to test HTML. 

I think that learning these languages will really help myself obtain a job in the job market these days. A company could always use more tech savvy employees.

Out of the two languages it seems like CSS is easier, because it has the properties and the values within the text. But I have to say that HTML is fairly easy to use as well, and would seem to me that employers would want more. But if I could use CSS alongside with HTML it would make webpages look a lot nicer, and make myself more useful. 

Examples of HTML:

<body> </body>

<heading> </heading>

<p> </p>

<address> </address>

Examples of CSS:

H1 { color: green }

H2 { font-weight: bold }

H3 { 

        color: green; 

        text-align: center;

}

Class Notes Week 7 Internet

This week's readings regarding the Internet and how it works was rather enjoyable this week. The article "How Internet Infrastructure Works" sounds like a boring title and would be rather tedious to read, but I found that to be one of the better articles we've read for class. Seeing how the internet infrastructure is made up of a bunch of smaller networks into one seems like it was something I've known before, but seeing it discussed in the article made it even clearer to me. The graph that the article provides describing the Internet Hierarchy really help clear up any confusion on the way that the Internet is established for a personal computer using a large Internet Service Provider (ISP) or even a company that uses a Large Area Network (LAN) for their internet needs.

The second article for our readings discussed the use of the Internet and its effects on the Integrated Library Systems across the nation. It seems like it is an issue that has no easy solution because of how many libraries that use the integrated systems for a lot of their services, but it needs to be changed eventually. Because of the ever growth of the Internet and how it continues to expand into more fields and become more useful it makes sense that the libraries across the nation would get rid of their systems that are becoming outdated. On the other hand, it seems like it would cost a lot of money for a library to do something like that and would deter it from taking on a project like that. The one thing that I have to note is that the article is from 2004, and could be out of date due to the new technology that is in place today. Some new technology could have been invented between the article and now that makes the process of changing a system over slightly easier for a library.

Overall I rather enjoyed these articles that we had for readings this week. If there are more articles like this ahead I would appreciate it.

Muddiest Point 4

This week's muddiest point comes from metadata scheme; when a community defines a scheme for the metadata, would it be beneficial for it to be changed when a better type of scheme is introduced indirectly? For example, if an archives uses a scheme for many years and their metadata is all that type, would it be beneficial for that archives to change all of their metadata to a new format that is better for the archives storage and retrieval? Or would it be something that just wastes time and energy for the archives?

Week 6, Networks and Mendeley

This week's reading regarding Local Area Networking (LAN) was one that really interested me, because I use it everyday. When I heard LAN my first reaction was ethernet cables and connecting to the internet via cables and plugs, not Wi-Fi. I had no idea that the routers and different types of Wi-Fi connectors used LAN, it makes so much sense now that I read about it, but beforehand I thought that Wi-Fi was its own separate type of networking. The reading on networks themselves was also enlightening. The development of networks overtime really makes you think how lucky we are to live in an era where beams of light carrying information are transmitted through a cable is possible. It was nice to read about the networks that we use everyday, how they can be structured. Structures include: ring, star, bus, mesh, tree, fully connected, and line. Each of these configurations has their own benefits and issues.

The blog post regarding Mendeley was a unique way to interpret how useful the software is. I knew there were other sites like Zotero and EndNote, I never used them. I had a public history course that discussed Zotero and how to use it, but rarely actually did. The author of the blog was very adamant regarding how useful Mendeley was, or lack of usefulness, to him. He even addresses it how Mendeley could be useful, but says that his field uses Zotero and it would be hard to switch the entire field over to Mendeley. Using Mendeley myself I have found it very useful and like the fact that there are more types of programs and software like it. It creates a vast market that allows the communities of different fields to decide what is important and useful to them.

Reading Notes Week 5

This week's readings focused on the concept of metadata or "data about data." The reading regarding the Dublin Core Data Model was one that was interesting to me. It noted that it was not a complete study, but a work in progress because of the subject matter. Metadata, is something that is very complex and hard to make a standard for internationally, but that is exactly what the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is trying to do, create a standard for metadata. 

The outline that DCMI used to attempt to make this possible is:

Internationalization: make it descriptive enough for other languages to understand without much issues.

Modularization/Extensibility: make it adaptable for future uses and systems.

Element Identity: to ensure that there are no name-collisions.

Semantic Refinement: to order elements into more specific meaningful ways for researchers/users.

Identification of coding schemes: this allows to be known what each part of the code does what, ridding the database of ambiguity.

Specification of controlled vocabularies: this is for the many disciplines that have complex and diverse vocabularies.

Identification of structured compound values: important for metadata and those that have the authority of the databases.

Something else to note in this article is anything can be a resource and can be uniquely identified, properties are specific types of resources, classes of objects are specific types of resources, and literals are text resources. The last one was the one that interested me the most: "literals are text resources," simply a line of text nothing more to it. It might not be the most important, but it struck me as interesting.

Mendeley Article

I have downloaded Mendeley before this class for this program as instructed by Dr. Tomer and Dr. Mahoney. I didn't know exactly how it works and to think that Mendeley uses "scrobbling" technology to use my preferences to create a "playlist" for me. That is one of the coolest things 

in my opinion. This allows the database to find articles and other documents that I would find interesting and useful for a research paper. The fact that I can also share my findings is an added bonus to the system. Another thing that makes Mendeley helpful is the fact that the system can link to other programs like Zotero, which can be helpful for users new and uncomfortable or even users who can't find what they're looking for.

Muddiest Point 3

This week's lecture and lab seemed to be rather straightforward, but if I had to choose something to ask about for me detail; it is how does a database make the distinction between a primary key and foreign key? I know that there is a difference between what each does, but how does the computer know that the primary key is the one to go to, and not the foreign key for a task/job/whatever?

Muddiest Point 2

One thing that I would like cleared up is the slide that had "a 1024x768 image requires 2.4 MB" I'm just a little confused still how to get to 2.4 MB. I know multiplication is involved, but I'm just not sure how and what numbers got you there.

Database Notes

I thought it was really interesting how the link for the Database Normalization claimed to be too hard to use just words to describe the normalization process but the images and figures for the article did not load onto it. I went through the article hoping that they would be at the end, but they weren't.

The wikipedia article on the entity-relationship model was something that seemed familiar to me. The description of it is that every component of a business model has a relationship with each other component. When it mentioned data tables, used in just about all fields really, and explained how that is a entity-relationship model it clicked in my head. Another thing about that article is the use of the relationships and how they're represented in the database, it seems like a very intuitive way to have the model.

Another problem occurred when trying to access the database wikipedia article, a page from Blackboard appeared and stated that I did not have permission to access it. I went on to wikipedia myself and found it. It was a very technical article that was difficult to digest, but definitely showcased how important databases are to many different aspects of different careers. The best part of this article was that the terminology was defined at the beginning of it, made it a little bit easier to understand.

Data Compression and YouTube

              The Wikipedia article describing data compression, though tedious, was very informative regarding the ways data is compressed for our convenience. I had no idea that there audio file compression was so complicated regarding the necessity of speech encoding. When I read that speech encoding is important to enable the audio recorded to even be processed by the human ear, it made sense to me, but I had no idea how it was done or anything really.
               Lossy versus Lossless compression seemed very straightforward as well. One throws out data while the other doesn't. It seems to me that lossy compression is easier to use because it gets rid of the unnecessary data.

               The Webb article regarding YouTube is a nice read and has some good ideas that libraries and museums could do to expand their clientele.To put the collection out there and easy to use for the public is something that is essential for libraries, access. YouTube provides that easy access for libraries and even museums. The one thing that concerns me is that YouTube has since updated its policy settings and membership sign up since this article was published. It is a minor thing, but policy changes have caused many people to view YouTube as a hinderance in some cases that were not there when this article was published.

               The concept of digitization keeps coming up in our readings all over the different courses I am taking. I never really thought that YouTube would be a viable option. When I think of digitization, scanning books and photos come to mind, making videos is something that I just did not think of. It would be a great to use YouTube to digitize some things that a library has. If a library has a special collections and they put it on YouTube, just a quick "hey we have this" it would be a great way to get people into the library to see the special collection and even the collection as a whole. I hope that even with the policy changes made by Google and YouTube that projects like this are continued, either by YouTube or some other company.

Muddiest Post

Muddiest Point

One thing that seemed to interest me that wasn't very clear in our discussion was the amount of data storage available in this day and age. The slide displayed the different classes of contact units, but what wasn't clear was if there were any real uses of all that storage. Are there any places, companies, etc. that have used a Exabyte, Zettabyte, or a Yottabyte? What would they need that kind of storage for? A follow up to that is would an archives or museum be interested in having that kind of data storage for their digitization needs? Or would that be considered a waste of time and money?

Lied Library, Future Technology, and the Future of Digitizing

The Lied Library article was an interesting one that took many concerns and issues that libraries and archives face and explained how one library, Lied Library for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, was able to cope with the ever expanding technologies.

More technologies and updates to the computers were among the most productive things that the library was able to do to help their library expand. Granted, this article is very dated, from 2005, the concept of expanding on existing and continuing technology is a concept that both archives and libraries struggle with today. This article was a glance at how one university library was able to not only keep up, but to strive in the conditions of an ever-advancing technological world.

The entire time of reading the article I kept thinking to myself, "what about how technology has advanced from the time this article was published?" While this article doesn't answer that question regarding current technology, but it does provide insight that the Lied Library would continue to advance with the technology for their patrons.



The two digitizing articles, specifically the one regarding the Google Books Project, is something that greatly interests me. As someone who watched Google and the World Brain, the idea of having Google digitize all the books is one that has both pros and cons. While digitizing books for academic use is indeed useful for studies, it was essential for my history undergraduate work, the idea of having books protected by copyright on the web for free "fair use" is something that is unsettling. The article makes a good point that if something isn't "accessible from the keyboard, it might as well not exist," a book, and an author is something that needs to exist. The content of books will still exist, regardless of technologies, but the creators need to be credited for their work, and with Google's project the authors were not getting compensated.

As someone who is entering the information technologies and sciences field, digitization is something that will be a cornerstone in the near future. How it will affect it is still to be determined. Whether it is authors and publishers fighting and winning against Google, or Google and other companies incorporating the technology so much that it is futile to resist, is yet to be seen (at least in my mind).

OCLC Notes

This article is a follow up of the previous report made by the OCLC in 2003

• Format agnostic - current consumer content mentality of not caring what type of medium information comes from
• Nowadays there are articles that have small bits of it available on a website or a PDF, but to view the whole article in its entirety, one has to purchase it "premium content"

• Growth of e-books and web pages was not always vastly expanding, it was once slowing
• Now traditional print publishing is slowing because of e-books being adopted more widely
• Technology is not the only challenge, social challenges are prevalent and change how content is created, collected, used, shared, and preserved
• Smartphones are one of the technologies 
• "The medium is the message" with the "change of scale" view is something that doesn't make sense in my mind. I view that statement as that the choice of medium states a message of its own.

• With the new technologies, email and other applications, they come equipped with distribution options: delivery, filtering, personalization, and convenience. This makes the idea of new technologies as "disruptive"
• Emails have grown exponentially over the years, roughly 22 billion emails (minus spam) sent daily in this age
• Young people are the ones who use this new technology a lot, as a direct form of entertainment
• New technologies are cheaper and easier for other countries to maintain than computers

Microtransactions seem to be a new thing in these technologies for information sciences. This is something that I hope isn't fully incorporated into the information technologies/libraries. They are a nuisance for the gaming community and I would hate to see the situation of "25 cents for this sentence? Why not."

Social publishing seems like it could be a good idea, but one that could easily be abused. When institutions are not involved in the process the author has their thoughts at the forefront and may not edit them in any shape or form. This could lead to some embarrassing moments on the internet that could offend people.

       I know that blogs and wikis have existed before, but there are a lot of bloggers and people who publish their own works on the internet that have made fools of themselves or offended a large group of people. I guess this is a "few versus the many" argument.

The survey that was posted in the article regarding blogs and their readership: what kind of blogs were they? Were they blogs about sports, technology, movies, etc.?

Some of the terms used by the article were familiar, but some were definitely new and interesting. An example: moblog, mobile blog, I had no idea what that was before this article. Interesting contraction to say the least.

"Print won't disappear anytime soon," a good concept, especially since archive students are learning that there are more paper documents in existence than ever before in Dr. Cox's class/book.

A survey found that teens who saw teens reading print newspapers were considered "nerdy" and the newspaper wants to consider other options? Is being "nerdy" still a negative stereotype in this day and age that newspapers are attempting to rid themselves of a stigma found in teenagers? Interesting.

Scholar/university publishing is threatened by online publishing as well, something that I did not think that would be that big of a problem. I guess smaller universities would be threatened, but not to the point where they would shut down.

The idea of universities using up so much time, energy, and money on platforms for electronic documents both inspires and fills me with skepticism. Inspiration because they are adopting the new wave of technology for their future students and patrons, but skepticism because these new technologies are going to be a cost on the university when they need to update them again, and again as technology upgrades constantly.