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_Current Cites_
Volume 8, no. 6
June 1997
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
Acting Editor: Roy Tennant
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1997/cc97.8.6.html
Contributors:
Campbell Crabtree, Christof Galli, Kirk Hastings, Terry Huwe,
Margaret Phillips, David Rez, Richard Rinehart,
Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Frauenfelder, Mark. "Content-Based Image Retrieval" Wired (June
1997):82. -- This article spotlights recent developments in developing
programs that can search image files the same way search-engines now
search text files (Web pages). Previously, work in this area has
concentrated on locally-based image databases that would use
content-based retrieval to search for images with a certain color
pattern, texture, or composition. This new project works in much the
same way, looking for commonalites in percentages of areas covered by
certain colors, textures, etc. but is framed in terms of enabling
Web-wide search engines that would be the image equivalents of
Infoseek or AltaVista. - RR
Gladney, Henry M. "Safeguarding Digital Library Contents and Users:
Document Access Control" D-Lib Magazine (June 1997)
[http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june97/ibm/06gladney.html]. As digital
library collections grow and expand, it becomes increasingly important
to protect on-line documents from unapproved access or alteration,
whether deliberate or accidental. Many of us rely on Unix's native
permissions system, but it is awkward and often proves an annoying
hinderance to authorized users. This article, based on work done at
IBM's Almaden Research Center, describes an object level approach
based on organizational practice that appears to be much more
sophisticated. Although this system was developed, I'm sure, with
military/industrial users in mind, the author's discussion of the
issues involved and the solutions he has applied really helped to
clarify my thinking on the topic. - KH
Lynch, Clifford A. The Z39.50 Information Retrieval Standard; Part I:
A Strategic View of Its Past, Present and Future" D-Lib Magazine
(April 19 97) [http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april97/04lynch.html]. In the
first part of a two-part series, Lynch explains the Z39.50 standard,
describes the history of the development of the standard and its
implementation, and discusses the role of content semantics. Readers
of this series will gain not only an understanding of the technology,
but also gain the benefit of Lynch's perceptions about further
development of the protocol and systems based upon it. Unfortunately,
those who are eager for Part II must wait un til the October 1997
issue. - RT
Marcum, Deanna B. "Digital Libraries: For Whom? For What?" The Journal
of Academic Librarianship 23(2) (March 1997): 81-84. As president of
the Commission on Preservation and Access and Council on Library
Resources, Deanna Marcum describes her organization's formation of a
National Digital Library Federation whose mission is to address the
complications and problems associated with digital libraries. Although
research libraries are generally noted for their carefully-selected
and comprehensive collections, rising costs have forced the library
community to find new ways of providing access to the intellectual and
cultural heritage traditionally housed in the library. The goal of the
National Digital Library Federation is to explore ways that the
characteristics and capabilities of digital technologies can be
integrated with the strengths of research libraries to provide
convenient and affordable access to materials. As such the group is
urging the library community to provide leadership in three specific
areas: 1) discovery and retrieval mechanisms; 2) intellectual property
rights and economic models; 3) achiving of digital information. Marcum
argues that it is librarians who must take a leadership role -- not
commercial information providers and computer scientists who are
already seeing opportunities for themselves in the digital library --
so that they can integrate values normally associated with the library
profession to the new digital library. - MP
Maxwell, Christine, and Gutowitz, Howard. "Data Mining Solutions and
the Establishment of a Data Warehouse: Corporate Nirvana for the 21st
Century?" First Monday 2(5), May 5, 1997
[http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_5/maxwell/]. Pick up any
issue of Businessweek and you're likely to read all about "data
mining" and "data warehousing". Based on industrial-strength computing
hardware and software, these systems promise to offer new levels of
instant analysis of markets, trends and inventory-to-sales ratios. Not
so fast, say Maxwell and Gutowitz. Data is only as good as the brain
power applied to analysis. They offer the best overview of data mining
and warehousing reviewed in Current Cites to date, and propose a more
human-oriented approach. Data mining and warehousing needs to be
adaptive and to keep the business end-user in mind. Drawing (perhaps
unconsciously) on the core principles of the library profession, they
argue that effective corporate information management, is "a social
system, a physical system, and an artificial biological system, all at
the same time." - TH
Miller, Heather S. "The Little Locksmith: A Cautionary Tale for the
Electronic Age" The Journal of Academic Librarianship 23(2) (March
1997): 100-107. Despite the many technological advantages offered by
electronic resources, the catalog record is ultimately the key to
providing access to materials in the library. In this day of OPACs,
catalogers need no longer be ruled by the tyranny of the catalog card.
Miller argues that it is through technology that a greater depth and
breadth of access can be provided and she challenges catalogers to add
more subject headings to records and to consider adding summaries to
each record so that keyword searching in an OPAC can be truly useful.
An excellent, comprehensive bibliography accompanies this
thought-provoking article. - MP
Weibel, Stuart, Renato Iannella, and Warwick Cathro. The 4th Dublin
Core Metadata Workshop Report" D-Lib Magazine (June 1997) [http://w
ww.dlib.org/dlib/june97/metadata/06weibel.html]. As we have reported
in previous issues of Current Cites, the Dublin Core is one of the
most promising draft standards in existence for creating metadata
records for digital objects. This report describes the work of the 4th
Dublin Core Workshop, held in March 1997 at the National Library of
Australia. The goals of the meeting were to fu rther revise the Dublin
Core in the areas of element structure, extensibility, and element
refinement. In explaining a tension between two positions taken by
conferees, the article describes a continuum of resource description
from full-text indexing (lik e Web search engines) to
richly-structured surrogates (like a MARC record). The two camps are
described as minimalists (those who prefer a simple structure) and
structuralists (those who prefer additional element attributes to
support refinement and quali fication). Out of the meeting came a set
of "Canberra Qualifiers" (scheme, language and type) which will join
the "Warwick Framework" as Dublin Core add-ons. One can hardly wait
for the upcoming DC-5 to see if we get a "Helsinki Hegemony" to bring
this al l together into a workable whole. Nonetheless, if you're in
the metadata game (and if you're building digital collections you'd
better be) then this is the draft standard to watch. - RT
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY
DeLong, Stephen E. "The Shroud of Lecturing" First Monday 2(5), May 5,
1997 [http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_5/delong/]. DeLong
explores the ways in which Web-based information competes with
classic-style lecturing for the attention of students. The explosion
of information has created multiple pathways for learning, he argues,
and the best teachers will be the ones who can teach students to
discern the differences between substantive knowledge and the dross of
cyberspace. University education will probably change dramatically as
a result, because learning is "democratized" by the network. Faculty
and administrators need to face the challenge directly, or risk losing
the status and prestige of the 800-year old idea of the university to
more nimble players. - TH
Ghosh, Rishab Aiyer. "Economics is Dead. Long Live Economics! A
Commentary on Michael Goldhaber's "The Attention Economy" First
Monday 2(5), May 5, 1997
[http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_5/ghosh/]. Point,
counterpoint. Current Cites reviewed Goldhaber's First Monday article
about the "attention economy" of the Internet in May. Netizens in the
online community "Electric Minds" were so intrigued that they posted
the cite and launched a discussion of the content of the article.
Perhaps this article, written as a response by First Monday's Managing
Editor, will heap coals on the virtual fire. It's a very interesting
synopsis of traditional economic thinking and its continued relevance
in the digital arena. Ghosh writes in a straightforward style that
will make America's unofficial religion, Economics, eminently
understandable to an entire rogues' gallery of supply-side apostates,
post-humanists, and anti-Keynesian monkey-wrenchers. But the author
avoids patronizing tones. "Scarcity is much misunderstood", he rightly
claims. He also argues that virtual citizens value a variety of online
pursuits, and they continue to defy easy description. Flame on,
Electric Minds! - TH
Jacobs, Paul F., and Holland, Chris. "Archaeology Online: New Life for
Old Dead Things" First Monday 2(6), June 2, 1997 [http://www.f
irstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_6/jacobs/]. The authors argue that digital
media is creating a whole new sphere of value for classical
archaeology. Their arguments fall into two main areas: first, high
resolution, three-dimensional imaging can bring archaeological digs to
life in previously impossible ways, thereby expanding the professional
audience and readership. Second, online, refereed articles that
include this high caliber of digitized evidence from archaeological
digs may be published years in advance of similarly documented print
publications. The upshot is that it's a very exciting time to be an
archaeologist who can master digital technology. Since specificity of
detail is a crucial element in archaeological analysis, high
resolution digital media can increase the amount of detail that can be
shared with colleagues, and enable them to participate in
collaborative analysis much earlier in the excavation process of an
archaeological dig. - TH
Sewell, David R. "The Internet Oracle: Virtual Authors and Network
Community" First Monday 2(6), June 2, 1997 [http://www.firstmon
day.dk/issues/issue2_6/sewell/]. This essay was originally published
in 1992, and explored the emerging culture and consciousness of the
Usenet group known as "Usenet Oracle". Now called Internet Oracle, the
multi-user domain continues to evolve. The meaning of authorship is
explored by Sewell in detail, and he poses some interesting questions.
For example, participants in an online dialogue experience the
submersion of individual identity into an "anonymous, collective
personality", as a stream of text plays out in a chat room. Hmmm--is
this what the Vulcan "mind-meld" feels like? Questions about
individual and collective identity are terra-firma for educated
netizens these days, but this article's original premises remain
insightful and definitive, after four years of explosive Internet
growth. It's well worth the time to revisit this article in its
updated form. - TH
NETWORKS AND NETWORKING
Bridges, Anne E. and Russell T. Clement. "Crossing the Threshold of
Rocket Mail: E-mail Use by U.S. Humanities Faculty" The Journal of
Academic Librarianship 23(2) (March 1997): 109-117. A survey of
humanities faculty at Brigham Young University and the University of
Tennesee, Knoxville revealed their use of e-mail is significantly
higher than previously reported in the literature. The authors suggest
that librarians can take advantage of this fact and encourage faculty
to use e-mail for research assistance, reference queries, interlibrary
loan requests and collection development information. Moreover, e-mail
can be used as a launch pad for humanities faculty to explore other
online library systems and electronic resources. - MP
"California Universities To Develop New Electronic Superhighway", UC
NewsWire [UC Office of the President]. This article reports on the
newly formed Consortium for Education Network Initiatives in
California (CENIC, http://www.aldea.com:80/cenic/) and it's plans to
build CalREN-2 (California Research & Education Network). CENIC is
comprised of several large universities and private telcom companies,
and CalREN-2 will provide a model for building the rest of the new
"next generation Internet" or Internet2 (http://www.Internet2.edu/).
The main improvments proposed on CalREN-2 are stability and speed (the
CalREN-2 announcement points out that at the proposed 600 mbps, the
entire 30-volume edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica could be
transmitted in less than 1 second). Real world developments in this
area are crucial for anyone involved in the Internet. Of special
concern are the vying notions that these developments will either spur
the entire Internet community to more dependable and faster
technologies or balkanize the Internet into strictly commercial and
research communities with only loose connections between them. - RR
Garfinkel, Simson and Spafford, Gene. Web Security and Commerce
Sebastopol, CA : O'Reilly & Associates, 1997. Security and commerce
are becoming increasingly important components of the jobs of many Web
programmers. As would be expected, this most recent addition to the
Nutshell Handbook series is a very in-depth guide to the risks of the
Web and what both the user and administrator can do to decrease them.
Covered are browser vulnerabilities, privacy concerns, issues with
Java, JavaScript, ActiveX, and plug-ins, digital certificates,
cryptography, Web server security (e.g., SSL, TLS, server access
methods, and secure CGI/API programming), blocking software,
censorship technology, and relevant civil and criminal issues. I
especially appreciated the section on writing secure CGI scripts,
which caused me to take a very hard look at the scripts I have running
now. The discussion of the evolving field of digital commerce was also
especially clear and helpful. - KH
Musser, Linda and Lisa Recupero. "Internet Resources on Disasters"
College & Research Libraries News 58(6) (June 1997): 403-407
[http://www.ala.org/acrl/resjun97.html]. Whether you're looking for
information about a flood or a famine or a plague of locusts, chances
are you need to know something soon. That's why the Internet is an
ideal medium for disseminating information about disasters. From large
"metasites" that cover multiple types of disasters to more focused
sites on meteorological, geophysical, biological (diseases, famines)
or technological (plane crashes, bombs, etc.) disasters, this article
provides a comprehensive, evaluative list of general Internet
resources in this area. - MP
Sheehey, Helen M. "A Community Closer to Its Citizens: The European
Union's Use of the Internet" Government Information Quarterly 14(2)
(1997): 117-142. This article discusses the European Union's
"awareness campaign" to promote integration initiatives, and
particularly its use of the Internet to grant the public, researchers,
and business people greater access to information. Two main resources
are at the center of the EU's communication strategies: databases and
full-text documents available through the WWW. Database services,
accessible via telnet include ECHO, which is mostly free to the
general public, and EUROBASES, a fee-based service. WWW resources
include EUROPA (http://europa.eu.int/), the EU's principal Web site
which provides access to important documents and background papers,
I'M Europe (http://www2.echo.lu/), which treats new information
technologies, and CORDIS (http://www.cordis.lu/), the Community
Research and Development Information Service, which provides
information on EU research and development initiatives. Sheehy notes
the absence of statistical databases from these services and points
out that detailed statistical materials are available by purchase
only. The author also briefly touches on the problems of language
equity in these resources, the absence of a long-term access policy,
and librarians' role in critically evaluating EU electronic resources.
The article is complemented by two tables listing available databases
and URL's of EU WWW servers. - CG
Sternberg, Hilary. "Internet Resources for Grants and Foundations"
College & Research Libraries News 58(5) (May 1997): 314-317
[http://www.ala.org/acrl/resmay97.html]. Next time a curmudgeonly
faculty member grumbles to you about how overrated the Internet is,
give him a copy of this article. Next thing you know, he'll be running
around the reference desk yelling "Show me the money!" The article
lists the major sources on the Internet for finding out information
about grants, foundations, fellowships, and other funding sources.
Included in the list are references to organizations, directories,
government funding webpages and electronic journals. Particularly
useful are the references to sites that offer tips and advice on
successful grant writing. - MP
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 8(6) (June 1997) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright (C) 1997
by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. All rights
reserved.
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