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_Current Cites_
Volume 10, no. 1
January 1999
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.1.html
Contributors:
Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips,
Roy Tennant, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson
Editor's Note: Commencing with our tenth year of publication, Current
Cites will no longer use subject/category headings. As the world of
information technology has evolved over the past ten years, it is
becoming increasingly difficult, and often times impossible, to assign
our citations into one distinct category. More often than not,
citations touch upon many categories; for example, a digital library
article will often discuss electronic publishing and networking issues
as well. We encourage the use of our Bibliography-On-Demand service,
(http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/bibondemand.cgi) which
enables readers to construct subject-specific bibliographies from the
Current Cites database of bibliographic citations.
_________________________________________________________________
Buchanan, Leigh. "The Smartest Little Company in America" Inc. 21(1)
(January 1999) (http://www.inc.com/incmagazine/archives/01990421.html)
- I recommend the entire January issue of Inc. because it reflects the
business world's concern with information overload and how to handle
it; this particular article is cited because librarians need to know
when they're being appreciated. Amid editorial comments about "taming
the info beast" and "the unbearable glutness of being" we have this
profile of a corporate librarian who is highly valued for her ability
to confront the chaos and extract what's valuable. CEO Duncan
Highsmith meets regularly with the librarian, Lisa Guedea Carreno, to
draw upon her mastery of information systems and, more importantly,
her ability to synthesize and make cognitive connections in ways that
no software can. Highsmith felt that he had missed golden
opportunities through ignorance of coming trends, and he uses the
meetings with his librarian to ensure that never happens again.
Developers of "push" personal information programs take note: this
woman's skills are the yardstick against which your products will be
measured. - JR
Chilvers, Alison and John Feather. "The Management of Digital Data: A
Metadata Approach" The Electronic Library 16 (6) (December, 1998):
365-372. - If you're concerned and frustrated about the preservation
of digital data, Chilvers and Feather remind you that you are not
alone. This article is a preliminary report from their research on the
role of metadata in helping organizations effectively preserve data.
The authors use a case study approach, conducting semi-structured
interviews with key players in the information community (including
major data creators, and users in the science and financial services
industries, along with libraries and archives). Not surprisingly, the
initial interviews reveal that organizations face many challenges as
they attempt to achieve long-term preservation of digital data. With
little research on the longterm preservation of many digital record
types, some key concerns include the variety of metadata formats, the
prevalence of embryonic, fragmentary and variable organizational
policies, and the lack of trust in 3rd party preservation. Their
research also highlights the increased importance of selection
mechanisms for long-term preservation. While the authors note that
organizational goals drive the parameters for the preservation of
digital data, they stress the need for a coordinated approach to
metadata (or "super-metadata") which is the ongoing subject of their
research. - LY
Doran, Kelly. "Metadata for a Corporate Intranet" Online 23(1)
(January 1999) :42-50. - Much of what we read about metadata, at least
here in the groves of academe, is on the "megameta" level - policy and
standards with a large scope. In contrast, this article is about an
application of metadata to solve a common real-life problem: finding
anything in an organization's forest of online resources, which
sprouted haphazardly over many years. The author is an Electronic
Information Specialist at Weyerhauser, which has thousands of
employees scattered around the United States and Canada. She describes
the development of a plan, a controlled vocabulary and a metadata
generator program which data owners use to tag their documents with
the HTML <META> tag (not XML; she explains why in a sidebar). Though
the text of this article is not offered at the Online website, two
related ones are offered there and in the magazine: "Metadata:
Cataloging by Any Other Name"
(http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL1999/milstead1.html) and
"Metadata Projects and Standards"
(http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL1999/milstead1.html#projects).
Kudos to the editors of Online for including three articles on
metadata in a special section devoted to intranets, because it makes
the point that without data about your data, you're lost in the woods
without a compass. - JR
Guernsey, Lisa. "California State U. Tries to Create a New Way to Buy
Online Journals" Chronicle of Higher Education 65 (20) (January 22,
1999): A18. - This article describes California State University's
statewide initiative to create a digital library of electronic
journals. CSU has announced a request for proposals to attract the
attention of large publishers who will bid on the opportunity to
provide e-journals. Although CSU hope to be able to "pick and choose,"
there remains some concern about blanket coverage. For example, even
if all offerings from UMI, Gale and Information Access Co. were
included, a full 30 percent of the university's journal titles would
not be covered. To fill the gap, many smaller licenses would be
needed. - TH
Lankes, R. David Building and Maintaining Internet Information
Services: K-12 Digital Reference Services Syracuse, NY: ERIC
Clearinghouse on Information & Technology, 1998. - This volume is the
doctoral dissertation of the co-founder of the famous "AskERIC"
service (see http://ericir.sunsite.syr.edu/), David Lankes. Lankes
has been involved with providing digital reference service for some
time, and therefore is no stranger to the issues involved. But the
usefulness of this volume does not rest on his experiences alone, but
the accumulated experiences of many individuals and organizations
presently offering digital reference services. Lankes thoroughly
surveyed the field, interviewed the practitioners, and mapped their
process of question answering. These models of interaction were then
boiled down to a standard model for this kind of service. This
thorough and thoughtful treatment of this topic will no doubt form the
foundation of the literature in this emerging field for some time to
come. - RT
Lipow, Anne G. "Serving the Remote User: Reference Service in the
Digital Environment" Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian
Information Online & On Disc Conference and Exhibition, Sydney, 19-21
January 1999
(http://www.csu.edu.au/special/online99/proceedings99/200.htm). - If
you are a librarian, read this keynote speech. If have anything to do
with providing library reference service, commit it to memory. Lipow
makes a compelling case for rethinking how we provide assistance to
library users, and advocates that we should provide reference service
to information seekers "at the place where they are when they have a
question." The fact that information seekers are increasingly
somewhere outside a library when they get stuck is the problem, and
Lipow asserts that we must get better -- much better -- at serving
their needs. Lipow's perceptions of the problems and the possible
solutions she describes have partly emerged from an effort spearheaded
by the Library of Congress to address the issue of providing
appropriate reference service in a digital environment. Even if you
don't agree with her suggested solutions for providing "in-your-face
reference service" you owe it to yourself and the profession to
consider carefully the implications of not implementing what she (and
others) suggest. I have, and I can assure you it isn't pretty. - RT
Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Information Online & On Disc
Conference and Exhibition, Sydney, 19-21 January 1999
(http://www.csu.edu.au/special/online99/proceedings99/). - The
proceedings of this conference are a treasure-trove of reports on
interesting projects and think-pieces on important topics (see the
citation in this issue for "Serving the Remote User"). Australia is
blessed with a cadre of professional librarians on the cutting edge of
technological change, and these proceedings exhibit some small part of
what they are accomplishing, often with very little attention from the
rest of the world. You will also find some presentations from token
Americans as well (Anne Lipow, Peter Lyman, Greg Notess, Marydee
Ojala, and others). - RT
Stalder, Felix. "Beyond Portals and Gifts: Towards a Bottom-up
Net-economy" First Monday 4 (1) (January 4, 1999)
(http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_1/stalder/) - Stalder argues
that the Internet is a victim of its own promise: the liberation of
information. He views the vaguely utopian rhetoric that drives much
popular thought about the Internet as "a strange hybrid of 60's
progressive libertarianism and 90's aggressive venture capitalism."
The slogan "information wants to be free" still shapes the dynamics of
online content consumption and production, which has caused Internet
portals to shift their revenue strategy from "selling to the audience"
to "selling the audience." Moreover, much of the activity that occurs
on the Internet is non-economic, such as providing directions or
cooking recipes; Stalder regards this kind of activity as
fundamentally social, and so it eludes economic formulae and notions.
- TH
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites 10(1) (January 1999) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright © 1999 by the Library, University of California,
Berkeley. All rights reserved.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1999/cc99.10.1.html
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Editor: Teri Andrews Rinne, trinne@library.berkeley.edu, (510)
642-8173