I really enjoyed this article as a refresher on some concepts that I'm familiar with, but hadn't known all the specifics about.
*****
Internet- collection of networks. LAN & Wide-Area Networks. Based on protocol of ARPAnet (TCP/IP)
*IP: Internet Protocol. joins together network segments that constitute internet. Four numbers, each 0-255 stored as 4 bytes. Connected by routers. Info in packets.
*TCP: Transport Control Protocol. Divides msg into packets, labels each w/ destination IP & Sequence #, sends them out on network. Receiving comp acknowledges receipt & reassembles.
- guarantees error-free delivery, but not prompt.
TCP/IP Suite of Programs:
*Terminal Emulation: telnet
*File Transfer: FTP
*Email: SMTP (single message)
Scientific publishing on the internet:
*RFC's (request for comment)
*IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force
*Los Alamos E-print archives
HTML, HTTP, MIME, URLs
*MIME specifies data type.
Conventions:
*web sites
*home page
*buttons
*hierarchical organization
web is giant step to build DLs on...not just detour until real thing comes along
Monday, September 8, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Suleman & Fox: A Framework for Building Open Digital Libraries
-- "Open" DLs build directly on concepts/philosophies of Open Archives Initiative.
-- Most existing systems classified as DLs resulted from custom-built software dev projects - each involves intensive design, implementation & testing cycles. why repeat effort? some software toolkits: Dienst, Repository-in-a-box etc
-- Most programming enviro's adapt a component model.
-- OAI launched october 1999. Focuse on high-level comm among systems & simplicity of protocal.
-- OAI protocol for Metadate Harvesting (OAI-PMH): system of interconnected components. OAI protocal can be thought of as glue that binds together components of a larger DL (or collaborative system of DLs)
** DLs modeled as networks of extended OAs, with each OA being a source of data and/or provider of services. This approach closely resembles the way physical libraries work.
-- research & production DLs differ
-- ODLs guided by a set of design principals & operationalized with aid of OAI-PMH extensions. proven techniques from internet development: simplicity of protocols, openness of standards, loose coupling of systems, purposeful orthogonality, reuse whenever possible.
-- Formal Principals:
1. All DL services should be encapsulated within components that are extensions of OAs
2. All access to DL services should be through their extended OAI interfaces
3. Semantics of OAI protocol should be extended or overloaded as allowed by OAI protocol, but without contradicting essential meaning.
4. All DL services should get access to other data sources using extended OAI protocol
5. Dls should be constructed as networks of extended OAs.
-- OAI Harvester obtains data stream which creates indices for searching.
-- Components in prototype systems:
1. Union: combine metadata from mult sources
2. Filter: reformat metadata from non-OAI data sources
3. Search: search-engine functionality
4. Browse: category-driven browsing functionality
5. Recent: sample of recently added items
-- Tested on NDLTD system w/ good feedback.
-- Designing by principles & implementing for real-world scenario.
-- Most existing systems classified as DLs resulted from custom-built software dev projects - each involves intensive design, implementation & testing cycles. why repeat effort? some software toolkits: Dienst, Repository-in-a-box etc
-- Most programming enviro's adapt a component model.
-- OAI launched october 1999. Focuse on high-level comm among systems & simplicity of protocal.
-- OAI protocol for Metadate Harvesting (OAI-PMH): system of interconnected components. OAI protocal can be thought of as glue that binds together components of a larger DL (or collaborative system of DLs)
** DLs modeled as networks of extended OAs, with each OA being a source of data and/or provider of services. This approach closely resembles the way physical libraries work.
-- research & production DLs differ
-- ODLs guided by a set of design principals & operationalized with aid of OAI-PMH extensions. proven techniques from internet development: simplicity of protocols, openness of standards, loose coupling of systems, purposeful orthogonality, reuse whenever possible.
-- Formal Principals:
1. All DL services should be encapsulated within components that are extensions of OAs
2. All access to DL services should be through their extended OAI interfaces
3. Semantics of OAI protocol should be extended or overloaded as allowed by OAI protocol, but without contradicting essential meaning.
4. All DL services should get access to other data sources using extended OAI protocol
5. Dls should be constructed as networks of extended OAs.
-- OAI Harvester obtains data stream which creates indices for searching.
-- Components in prototype systems:
1. Union: combine metadata from mult sources
2. Filter: reformat metadata from non-OAI data sources
3. Search: search-engine functionality
4. Browse: category-driven browsing functionality
5. Recent: sample of recently added items
-- Tested on NDLTD system w/ good feedback.
-- Designing by principles & implementing for real-world scenario.
ARMS ch. 2 - link broken?
I'm having trouble accessing the ARMS ch. 2 reading. The link brings up an error message on the site that the article cannot be found. Is anyone else having this problem?
(also posted to Bb discussion board)
(also posted to Bb discussion board)
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
SOPAC 2.0
found this article on a blog I read for my internship and thought it was interesting, relevant & exciting!
http://tametheweb.com/2008/09/02/on-sopac-change-and-mr-john-blyberg/
http://tametheweb.com/2008/09/02/on-sopac-change-and-mr-john-blyberg/
Monday, September 1, 2008
Paepcke et al: Dewey Meets Turing: Librarians, Computer Scientists, and the Digital Libraries Initiative
I appreciated that this reading was rather relaxed and approachable, especially after finishing the DELOS article which was quite technical. I have entered my written notes, hopefully this is not too informal.
-- 1994: NSF launches DLI
*3 interested parties: librarians, comp scientists, publishers
*spawned google & other developments
-- DLI has changed work & private activities for nearly everyone
-- For scientists: exciting new work informed by librarianship
*resolution of tension between novel research & valuable products
-- For librarians: increased funding opportunities, improved impact of services
*OPACs were all most lib's had. expertise was needed
-- Advent of web: changed plans & got in the way
*blurred distinction b/t consumers & producers
-- Problem for CS: bound by perproject agreements & compyright. Web removed restrictions.
* broadening of relevance
-- Web threatened pillar of lib'ship...left w/out connection to recognizable, traditional library fx's
* Both valued predicatbility & repeatability - web led to laissez faire attitude toward info retrieval (did not particularly upset public)
-- Librarians feel they haven't gotten adequate funding for coll. dev.
-- CS's couldn't understand vast amounts of time devoted to structures like metadata
-- Core fx of lib'ship remains despite new, technical infrastructure
*importance of collections re-emerging
-- Direct connection b/t lib's & scholarly authors
-- Broadened opportunities in lib sci as a result of DLI
-- 1994: NSF launches DLI
*3 interested parties: librarians, comp scientists, publishers
*spawned google & other developments
-- DLI has changed work & private activities for nearly everyone
-- For scientists: exciting new work informed by librarianship
*resolution of tension between novel research & valuable products
-- For librarians: increased funding opportunities, improved impact of services
*OPACs were all most lib's had. expertise was needed
-- Advent of web: changed plans & got in the way
*blurred distinction b/t consumers & producers
-- Problem for CS: bound by perproject agreements & compyright. Web removed restrictions.
* broadening of relevance
-- Web threatened pillar of lib'ship...left w/out connection to recognizable, traditional library fx's
* Both valued predicatbility & repeatability - web led to laissez faire attitude toward info retrieval (did not particularly upset public)
-- Librarians feel they haven't gotten adequate funding for coll. dev.
-- CS's couldn't understand vast amounts of time devoted to structures like metadata
-- Core fx of lib'ship remains despite new, technical infrastructure
*importance of collections re-emerging
-- Direct connection b/t lib's & scholarly authors
-- Broadened opportunities in lib sci as a result of DLI
Setting the Foundations of Digital Libraries: the DELOS Manifesto
This reading lacked the depth of explanation that the other readings have had, probably owing to its purpose as an overview to a larger work. Some of the terminology was a bit confusing to me, especially the distinction between a Digital Library System and a Digital Library Management System.
I don't have as many thoughts/reflections on this article, as it was fairly practical and informative without raising questions or topics that are up for debate. I have left below the notes that I cut/pasted from the reading, as well as a few of my own notes (designated with a "--"). I hope this is sufficient...
*****
"Generally accepted conceptions have shifted from a content-centric system that merely supports the organization and provision of access to particular collections of data and information, to a person-centric system that delivers innovative, evolving, and personalized services to users."
"expectations of the capabilities of Digital Libraries have evolved from handling mostly centrally located text to synthesizing distributed multimedia document collections, sensor data, mobile information, and pervasive computing services"
-- point out that definition and expectations of DL's change even as we try to define them.
"three types of relevant "systems" in this area: Digital Library, Digital Library System, and Digital Library Management System."
I don't have as many thoughts/reflections on this article, as it was fairly practical and informative without raising questions or topics that are up for debate. I have left below the notes that I cut/pasted from the reading, as well as a few of my own notes (designated with a "--"). I hope this is sufficient...
*****
"Generally accepted conceptions have shifted from a content-centric system that merely supports the organization and provision of access to particular collections of data and information, to a person-centric system that delivers innovative, evolving, and personalized services to users."
"expectations of the capabilities of Digital Libraries have evolved from handling mostly centrally located text to synthesizing distributed multimedia document collections, sensor data, mobile information, and pervasive computing services"
-- point out that definition and expectations of DL's change even as we try to define them.
"three types of relevant "systems" in this area: Digital Library, Digital Library System, and Digital Library Management System."
"Digital Library (DL)
A possibly virtual organization that comprehensively collects, manages, and preserves for the long term rich digital content, and offers to its user communities specialized functionality on that content, of measurable quality and according to codified policies.
"Digital Library System (DLS)
A software system that is based on a defined (possibly distributed) architecture and provides all functionality required by a particular Digital Library. Users interact with a Digital Library through the corresponding Digital Library System.
"Digital Library Management System (DLMS) A generic software system that provides the appropriate software infrastructure both (i) to produce and administer a Digital Library System incorporating the suite of functionality considered foundational for Digital Libraries and (ii) to integrate additional software offering more refined, specialized, or advanced functionality."
"Six core concepts provide a foundation for Digital Libraries. Five of them appear in the definition of Digital Library: Content, User, Functionality, Quality, and Policy; the sixth one emerges in the definition of Digital Library System: Architecture."
"We envisage actors interacting with Digital Library Systems playing four different and complementary roles: DL End-Users, DL Designers, DL System Administrators, and DL Application Developers. "
"Digital libraries need to obtain a corresponding Reference Model in order to consolidate the diversity of existing approaches into a cohesive and consistent whole, to offer a mechanism for enabling the comparison of different DLs, to provide a common basis for communication within the DL community, and to help focus further advancement"
"Reference Architecture is an architectural design pattern indicating an abstract solution to implementing the concepts and relationships identified in the Reference Model."
"Concrete Architecture - At this level, the Reference Architecture is actualised by replacing the mechanisms envisaged in the Reference Architecture with concrete standards and specifications."
LESK, ch. 1
Right from the start, I found this reading a bit more practical and informative than Borgman.
I found the extended definition on pp. 2-3 quite helpful, with the following four main points:
1. DL must have content
2. Content needs to be stored and retrieved.
3. Content must be made accessible.
4. Content must be delivered to user.
Followed by the introduction of the new costs and legal issues surrounding digital collections.
Section 1.2 seemed quite straightforward to me with some good points, especially that "For more than a decade, nearly every word printed and typed has been prepared on a computer. Paradoxically, until very recently most reading has been from paper." The focus on the interplay between technology, economics, and user-driven information usage felt like a good overview of the challenges facing digital libraries, and digital information sources generally.
I particularly enjoyed the in-depth (albeit lengthy) discussion in section 1.4 of changing prices and capacities for different info storage and retrieval technologies. The level of detail really drove home the challenges of storing and maintaining such vast quantities of information, even as our resources improve.
It feels like I have been hearing about Vannevar Bush in every single class I've had this week, so section 1.3 of the chapter was interesting more in the contrast depicted between Bush and Warren Weaver. Reading about the different emphases of their research reminded me of events in the history of Psychology, specifically the emphasis throughout much of the early twentieth century on behaviorist theories until the so-called "cognitive revolution" in the 60s. And in fact, the chapter later alluded to that same revolution on p.24 (section 1.5), with references to scientists such as Chomsky and Oettinger.
I have a BA in Lingustics (full disclosure, ha), so section 1.5 was highly interesting to me. However, I did feel that it understated the real challenges and shortcomings of attempts to capture the intricacies of natural human language with computers and other machines, perhaps for necessary reasons of length.
The background info on the history of the internet and the programs/interfaces that are commonly used today was quite informative and clear, in particular the discussion of Google's groundbreaking method of ranking search results to provide better information, and not just a lot of it. On a side note, I was talking to my mother on the phone last night and she told me that for the first time ever she successfully used google to find information that she was looking for (a substitution for self-rising flour in a recipe). That this is the first time she has managed to do so only now, after nearly six years of regular computer usage (yes, she was a late adopter) really drove this point home to me, of the very really challenges involved in making digital information an effective tool for retreiving high-quality information.
As stated in section 1.7, I felt that the two most important questions lingering over the development of DL's are:
1. What do people want to do with available technologies?
2. What content should be provided? And specifically, which content can be provided entirely digitally, and which types will never be as effective/adequate in a digital form?
I found the extended definition on pp. 2-3 quite helpful, with the following four main points:
1. DL must have content
2. Content needs to be stored and retrieved.
3. Content must be made accessible.
4. Content must be delivered to user.
Followed by the introduction of the new costs and legal issues surrounding digital collections.
Section 1.2 seemed quite straightforward to me with some good points, especially that "For more than a decade, nearly every word printed and typed has been prepared on a computer. Paradoxically, until very recently most reading has been from paper." The focus on the interplay between technology, economics, and user-driven information usage felt like a good overview of the challenges facing digital libraries, and digital information sources generally.
I particularly enjoyed the in-depth (albeit lengthy) discussion in section 1.4 of changing prices and capacities for different info storage and retrieval technologies. The level of detail really drove home the challenges of storing and maintaining such vast quantities of information, even as our resources improve.
It feels like I have been hearing about Vannevar Bush in every single class I've had this week, so section 1.3 of the chapter was interesting more in the contrast depicted between Bush and Warren Weaver. Reading about the different emphases of their research reminded me of events in the history of Psychology, specifically the emphasis throughout much of the early twentieth century on behaviorist theories until the so-called "cognitive revolution" in the 60s. And in fact, the chapter later alluded to that same revolution on p.24 (section 1.5), with references to scientists such as Chomsky and Oettinger.
I have a BA in Lingustics (full disclosure, ha), so section 1.5 was highly interesting to me. However, I did feel that it understated the real challenges and shortcomings of attempts to capture the intricacies of natural human language with computers and other machines, perhaps for necessary reasons of length.
The background info on the history of the internet and the programs/interfaces that are commonly used today was quite informative and clear, in particular the discussion of Google's groundbreaking method of ranking search results to provide better information, and not just a lot of it. On a side note, I was talking to my mother on the phone last night and she told me that for the first time ever she successfully used google to find information that she was looking for (a substitution for self-rising flour in a recipe). That this is the first time she has managed to do so only now, after nearly six years of regular computer usage (yes, she was a late adopter) really drove this point home to me, of the very really challenges involved in making digital information an effective tool for retreiving high-quality information.
As stated in section 1.7, I felt that the two most important questions lingering over the development of DL's are:
1. What do people want to do with available technologies?
2. What content should be provided? And specifically, which content can be provided entirely digitally, and which types will never be as effective/adequate in a digital form?
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