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_Current Cites_
Volume 8, no. 10
October 1997
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1997/cc97.8.10.html
Contributors:
Christof Galli, Kirk Hastings, Terry Huwe,
Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart,
Jim Ronningen, Roy Tennant
DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Friedlander, Amy. "D-Lib Magazine: Publishing as the Honest Broker"
The Serials Librarian 33 (1-4) (Spring 1998)
(http://web.mit.edu/waynej/www/friedlander.html). -- Ask anyone
involved in the creation of digital libraries what the most important
journal is in their field, and most will name D-Lib Magazine. In it
you get cutting-edge research reports, descriptions of production
services, highlights of new projects, and much more. In the two years
since it was begun it has already become an indispensable resource,
for which the evidence is here in your hands (at Current Cites we cite
only the best, and a number of D-Lib Magazine's articles have made cut
over the last two years). The editor Amy Friedlander bridges the
library and computer science communities with aplomb, and gathers
articles that illustrate issues and advances that inform the work of
both. In this piece she describes the philosophy behind the D-Lib
server organization. -- RT
Duranceau, Ellen Finnie. "Beyond Print: Revisioning Serials
Acquisitions for the Digital Age" The Serials Librarian 33 (1-4)
(Spring 1998) (http://web.mit.edu/waynej/www/duranceau.htm). -- As
many librarians have realized by now, the game has changed. Not only
are we not doing the same thing we did five years ago, but in many
cases we could not have even imagined it. If you need proof of this,
read this article. Web-based serials simply cannot be dealt with in
the same fashion as print, although even floppy-disk and CD-ROM-based
serials were not enough to break the print mold. This article provides
a thorough description of what makes Web-based serials so different in
terms of library procedures. Read it and weep. -- RT
Dartois, Myriam, et. al. "A Multilingual Electronic Text Collection of
Folk Tales for Casual Users Using Off-the-Shelf Browsers" D-Lib
Magazine (October 1997)
(http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october97/sugimoto/10sugimoto.html). -- I
admit to having been very skeptical of the claim made by this article
that an "off-the-shelf" Web browser could simultaneously display folk
tales in three different languages -- English, French, and Japanese.
Yes, Japanese. Without special fonts or language kits. It is a good
thing I'm not a betting man, or I'd be eating my hat right now. Run,
don't walk, to http://www.DL.ulis.ac.jp/oldtales and see for yourself.
I loaded their applet over a 28.8K modem connection using Netscape
3.01 and was very impressed. By contrast, other (admittedly more
complex) applets I 've recently tried to load over a 10Mb network
connection using Netscape 4.0 have not only taken orders of magnitude
longer to load but have also crashed my computer. This project is well
worth checking out if you want to be either a producer or a consumer
of texts in non-Roman character sets. -- RT
Xu, Amanda. "Metadata Conversion and the Library OPAC" The Serials
Librarian 33 (1-4) (Spring 1998)
(http://web.mit.edu/waynej/www/xu.htm). -- Every once in a while I run
into an article that gives me a distinct impression that the person
writing it is living before their time. This is one such. I have a
feeling that most of what Xu writes about in this article will be
barely understandable to most people and yet may be taken for granted
within five years. Xu's basic thesis is that the best interface to
information for library users is the library catalog. Given that, why
should we force our clientele to use a separate interface to access
Web resources? Why not "suck in" metadata from Web resources into our
library catalogs and provide our users with "one-stop" shopping? Why
not indeed? Well, the very idea is anathema to many -- mainly those
charged with creating and maintaining a highly structured and
high-quality library catalog database. To some degree, this
philosophical issue is at the very core of our future digital
libraries. Will our users increasingly see a division between print
and digital? Or will we use technology to bring them ever closer
together? Xu is of the latter camp, but unfortunately she may just be
a few years too early for most readers. Read this article, read it
again, then read between the lines. Then think about possibilities and
our users who depend upon possibilities realized. -- RT
NETWORKS & NETWORKING
Junion-Metz, Gail. K-12 Resources on the Internet: An Instructional
Guide. Berkeley, California: Library Solutions Press, 1997.
ISBN:1-882208-22-6. (Instructor's Supplement: ISBN: 1-882208-23-4) -
An update of last year's edition, this workbook continues in the fine
tradition of other Internet workshop guides published by Library
Solutions Press. Serving a dual purpose as both a self-paced guide for
individual teachers and librarians who want to learn about the
Internet and as a model training tool for those teaching the Internet,
this guide is divided into three modules: Module 1 provides a broad
overview of the Internet and includes everything from the history of
the Internet to the obligatory treatise on netiquette; Module 2
focuses on teaching offering suggestions for setting up a general
Internet teaching strategy and creating assignments; Module 3, for
those teachers and librarian who are not yet online, outlines the
basic issues of acquiring the Internet. Each module contains an
annotated list of resources for further exploration. New to this
year's addition is an accompanying disk that can be used with a web
browser and lists the most up-to-date addresses for the many resources
listed in the print guide. Also new to this edition is a section on
searching the web (gone are references to Veronica and Jughead). Of
particular use in this volume is the extensive bibliography of books
and journal articles (yes, print resources). As with the many other
Library Solutions Press guides, the Instructor's supplement includes
Windows and Macintosh disks which contain presentation slides that can
be used for instructional purposes. -- MP
Auditore, John and Kristin Stoklosa. "Health Statistics" College &
Research Libraries News 58(9) (October 1997):627-630, 639
(http://www.ala.org/acrl/resoct97.html). -- This guide to Internet
resources lists sites for accessing current, relevant national
statistics published by reputable organizations. The first part
includes references to good starting points like the National Center
for Health Statistics (NCHS)
(http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/nchshome.htm). Topics of other sections
include aging, AIDS, cancer, environmental health, ethnic health
issues and mental health. Most of the references are to U.S. sites but
there is a brief section on international statistics. -- MP
Lan, Zhiyong and Santa Falcone. "Factors Influencing Internet Use - A
Policy Model for Electronic Government Information Provision" Journal
of Government Information 24(4) (1997):251-157. -- The article
discusses four key issues that must be considered in order to foster
widespread acceptance of the Internet: 1) Technical development
efforts should focus on enhancing ease of use by increasing the speed
of information processing as well as creating standard to avoid
systems incompatibility. 2) Because Internet access is expensive, and
because private investment is heavily involved in the information
revolution, government information disseminated through the Internet
only reaches the well-to-do. This factor must be considered in any
attempt to render the Internet the primary mode of access for
government information. 3) Institutional arrangements which lead to
the centralization of information services and the effect of economies
of scale which lead to monopolies in the information services market
are factors that may hamper unrestricted access. 4) Finally,
psychological factors influencing information processing to be taken
into consideration include "fearful attitudes toward the Internet" as
well as lack of acceptance of this new medium by users. -- CG
Max, J. and W. Stickle. "Humanities and Arts: Sharing Center Stage on
the Internet". Request For Comments 2150; FYI 31. IETF Network
Working Group, October 1997 (http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc2150.txt)
-- This is an easy-to-understand explanation of the Internet and all
of its various services with the particular needs of artists and
humanists in mind. For those who match the profile audience and who
have resisted using the Internet, this may be just the document to
inspire them to get online and describe what they can do when they get
there. But give it to them on paper, please. In the early days of the
Internet we would joke that one could learn to use the Internet if one
could only learn to use the Internet, since everything describing how
to use it was online. Better yet, give them a copy of this document
and send them off on a long coffee break while you connect their PC to
the network. Then, when they return all jacked up on caffeine, sit
them down in front of a Web browser and show them how to type in the
URLs listed in the RFC they just read. Just be sure to escape before
they ask you what "Request for Comments" means. -- RT
Maxwell, Bruce. How to Access the Federal Government on the Internet.
Washington, DC : Congressional Quarterly, 1997. An update of his 1995
guide, the 1998 version contains descriptions of more than 600 federal
government Internet sites, hundreds of which are new to this edition.
Maxwell does not claim to list every federal Internet site or every
document ever produced by the government; for this reason, the first
section of the book lists such important gateways such as United
States Government Information
(www-libraries.colorado.edu/ps/gov/us/federal.htm) or the U.S. Federal
Government Agencies Page (www.lib.lsu.edu/gov/fedgov.html) describing
these gateways as excellent starting points in a search for federal
government information. Maxwell's descriptions of each site are
concise yet evaluative. He also does a good job of putting the
Internet into perspective noting that not everything published by the
government is on the Internet and cautioning the researcher to
question the accuracy of information retrieved. One wonders if the
publishers of this guide, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., will ever
make a website out of this guide. I, for one, would definitely place
such a website high up in my list of bookmarks. -- MP
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 8(10) (October 1997) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1997 by the Library, University of
California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
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