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_Current Cites_
Volume 10, no. 2
February 1999
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
This issue guest edited by Roy Tennant
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.2.html
Contributors:
Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips,
Roy Tennant, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
Beamish, Rita. "Rescuing Scholars from Obscurity." The New York Times
(February 18, 1999): D7. - How to get wider distribution of obscure
dissertations? Answer: the Web (of course). This article profiles
various enterprises for distributing dissertations including two
commercial sites, Dissertation.com (http://www.dissertation.com) and
UMI (http://www.umi.com/). Also profiled is Virginia Polytechnic
Institute (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/) which provide free access to
its dissertations and is pushing other schools to join its Networked
Library of Digital Dissertations (http://www.ndltd.org/), which they
hope will become a worldwide clearinghouse of dissertations. - MP
Besser, Howard and Robert Yamashita, "The Cost of Digital Image
Distribution: The Social and Economic Implications of the Production,
Distribution and Usage of Image Data", 1998,
(http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon/). - "A
Mellon Foundation grant was awarded to UC Berkeley to study the costs
and benefits of the networked distribution of digital museum
information for educational use. This study takes advantage of the
existing collaboration between the seven cultural repositories and
seven universities that make up the Museum Education Site License
Project (MESL), and utilizes professionals from the participating MESL
institutions as well as the communications and collaborative
structures that MESL established." This is a significant study of the
issues involved in creating and delivering digital archives of primary
materials in an online environment. The study concentrates on the MESL
project, and thus to images and delivery in a campus setting
primarily, but many of the issues and findings extend well beyond
that. Of particular interest is attention paid to the end-user and
demand and use of such databaases. The Executive Summary
(http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Imaging/Databases/1998mellon/finalreport/
0-execsummary.html) provides a concise 9 page overview of this very
detailed study. - RR
Chapman, Stephen, Paul Conway and Anne R. Kenney "Digital Imaging and
Preservation Microfilm: The Future of the Hybrid Approach for the
Preservation of Brittle Books" RLG DigiNews 3(1) (February 15, 1999)
(http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews3-1.html#feature1). -
This short piece is a useful summary of the main findings of the full
report of the same name, published by the Council on Library and
Information Resources (CLIR) at
http://www.clir.org/programs/cpa/hybridintro.html in Microsft Word
and Adobe Acrobat formats. The purpose of this report is to
disseminate information on this hybrid approach to preserving brittle
books, and to stimulate further discussion and research into this
strategy. Topics covered include the characteristics of microfilm both
as a source for, and end product of, digital conversion, the choice of
a digital conversion path (film first or scan first), and proposed
administrative and structural metadata for the page images. - RT
Dale, Robin. "Lossy or Lossless? File Compression Strategies
Discussion at ALA " RLG DigiNews 3(1) (February 15,
1999)(http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews3-1.html#technical1)
. - The American Library Association Midwinter Conference in
Philadelphia at the end of January 1999, was the site of a discussion
by six experts about the pros and cons of "lossy" and "lossless"
compression schemes. Lossless compression schemes can reduce the size
of a file without losing any of the information contained within it;
lossless schemes sacrifice some data to achieve greater file size
savings. The six experts included some of the top people in the field:
Carl Fleischhauer from the Library of Congress, Louis Sharpe, III of
Picture Elements Inc., Howard Besser from UC Berkeley, Peter Hirtle
from Cornell, Joy Paulson of the University of Michigan, and Steven
Puglia from the National Archives and Records Administration. The
common theme of the remarks are that "it depends". Given one set of
circumstances and goals lossless compression is called for (for
example, for the preservation of digital masters), while lossy
compression is often perfectly acceptable for other situations (for
example, for derivative versions to be delivered to the end-user over
a computer network). Recommended reading for anyone facing file format
decisions for digital images. - RT
"Digital Libraries: Technological Advances and Social Impacts"
Computer 32(2) (February 1999). - The focus of this issue of Computer
is on digital libraries, with six articles including the introductory
piece (from which the special section derives its name) by Bruce
Schatz and Hsinchun Chen. Half of the articles are from three of the
six NSF-funded Digital Library Initiative projects (Cornell, Stanford,
and UIUC), with additional contributions from those working with the
JSTOR (journal storage) and New Zealand Digital Library projects.
Although most of what is described in these articles comes from the
"big science" end of digital libraries, some useful nuggets for the
rest of us can be mined. In particular, the JSTOR article -- being
more focused on production than research -- is useful in terms of the
technical decisions that were made while mounting a massive archive of
digital material. - RT
"Digital Library Using Next Generation Internet" IEEE Communications
Magazine 37(1) (January 1999). - This special focus on digital
libraries includes six articles from various research perspectives,
mostly industry (IBM, NEC, etc.), edited by Chung-Sheng Li and Harold
S. Stone. Although a few of the articles are somewhat cutting-edge
(such as the one on software agents) and unlikely to be of practical
use any time soon, others (such as the one focusing on IBM's digital
library projects and the one on searching the Web) either relate to
projects in production now or technologies that are on the near
horizon. All things considered, if you are trying to soak up anything
related to digital libraries, go for it. Otherwise, take a pass. - RT
Gessner, Rick. "The Next-Generation Layout Engine: Netscape's Gecko"
Web Techniques 4(3) (March 1999):63-70
(http://www.webtechniques.com/features/1999/03/gessner/gessner.shtml).
- If this were a puff piece about the latest Netscape technology, you
would not be reading about it here in Current Cites. No, you're
reading about it here because Gecko is potentially much more. Gecko is
being developed under the Open Source model via Mozilla.org
(http://www.mozilla.org/), which means pretty much anyone can help
work on it, and the benefitd accrue to everyone. A "layout engine" is
a piece (or many inter-related pieces) of software that can take an
object instance and any associated files (such as style sheets,
images, etc.) and render those objects on your screen. At the heart of
every Web browser is a layout engine, for example. In fact,
differences between layout engines in different Web browsers cause no
end of grief for Web authors striving for minute control over the look
of their Web pages. As a "next-generation" layout engine, Gecko is
aiming to provide full and native support for HTML and XML, cascading
style sheets (full CSS1 and partial CSS2), and the Resource
Description Framework (RDF). Gessner (a Netscape employee) claims that
when Gecko ships, it will be "the fastest, smallest, most
standards-compliant HTML layout engine available." We'll see. But
meanwhile, don't let the little reptile escape your notice. - RT
Greenstein, Daniel. "Publishing Scholarly Information in a Digital
Millenium" Computers and the Humanities (32) 4 (1998): 253-256. - This
special issue of Computers and the Humanities features a collection of
stories based on a variety of commercial and scholarly forays into
electronic publishing. While these four case studies may not top your
reading list, Greenstein's preface does provide a good introductory
synopsis on the risks, rewards and future directions for electronic
publishing. He also has a call to action for the scholarly community:
it's time to better articulate requirements (both as consumers and
producers) with regard to electronic publications. - LY
Lossau, Norbert and Frank Klaproth, "Digitization Efforts at the
Center for Retrospective Digitization, Gttingen University Library"
RLG DigiNews 3(1) (February 15, 1999)
(http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews3-1.html#feature2). -
Detailed technical descriptions of digital imaging projects are rare,
which makes this short piece more interesting than it would be if they
were not. Those libraries, museums, and archives that are setting up
scanning operations are faced with an array of difficult decisions for
which there are few guidelines. For anyone in such a position, it can
be useful to discover what decisions others in similar situations have
made. This piece describes some of those decisions made by the
Gttingen University Library, with links to more complete descriptions
(including, for example, a description of the metadata elements they
insert into the TIFF file header). Anyone interested in the
nuts-and-bolts side of digital libraries should take a look at this. -
RT
Withers, Rob and Jane F. Sharpe. "Incorporating Internet resources
into bibliographic instruction." College & Research Libraries News 60
(February 1999): 75-76. - Some practical tips on incorporating the
Internet into bibliographic instruction: don't try to cover
everything; instead, identify pertinent topics such as effective
searching, evaluating resources, or resources in a particular
discipline; have a back-up plan (the age-old "technical difficulties"
problem); market your skills to the faculty who may not associate
Internet training with the library. Teaching the Internet within the
contraints of the traditional instruction section is a challenge and
the authors have provided a short, practical checklist of how to do so
effectively. - MP
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 10(2) (February 1999) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright © 1999 by the Library, University of California,
Berkeley. _All rights reserved._
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.2.html
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Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library.berkeley.edu, (510)
642-8173