Showing posts with label three. Show all posts
Showing posts with label three. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Week Three Muddiest Point
I was really interested in the discussion of different file types and their different features and uses. I'm wondering if there's a good, clear, concise resource online somewhere that outlines all of them? I'd love to have a quick comparison chart or something to refer to when choosing which to use.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Week Three Readings
Lesk
It's interesting to read an author's musings about how to retain control of the layout of a document while still allowing for flexibility of viewing options, when said musings are being displayed as a PDF. Likewise the discussion of different scanning options when reading a scanned page. The discussion of how OCR technology has progressed is encouraging, and it seems like the ease and cost-effectiveness of converting texts to sophisticated digital format with high functionality will only increase with time. Pitt subscribes to a historical newspaper collection (can't recall the name) that solves beautifully the display problems mentioned in 3.4. I didn't realize that CMU had such a large book-scanning project underway. Lesk reiterates the crucial point, however, that reading off paper is still preferable to most people than reading from a screen.
Arms
This chapter deals with a lot of the same issues I picked up in Lesk. I appreciate the in-depth discussion of Unicode, which I know is a vital standard for displaying diverse languages but I don't know much about (e.g. UTF-8 encoding). Ditto the explanation of DTDs and SGML. The section on XML is extremely helpful, as it's a concept I've had trouble grasping in the past.
Lynch
Identifier systems are a critically important aspect of digital libraries--and really any digital/networked collection--that I haven't given much thought. I think laypeople (like myself) tend to think that you have a URL or filename and that's all you need, but Lynch identifies several contexts and usages that require a different approach. Also, though I've seen them before (I believe through the Government Printing Office), I didn't realize that PURLs were an OCLC creation.
It's interesting to read an author's musings about how to retain control of the layout of a document while still allowing for flexibility of viewing options, when said musings are being displayed as a PDF. Likewise the discussion of different scanning options when reading a scanned page. The discussion of how OCR technology has progressed is encouraging, and it seems like the ease and cost-effectiveness of converting texts to sophisticated digital format with high functionality will only increase with time. Pitt subscribes to a historical newspaper collection (can't recall the name) that solves beautifully the display problems mentioned in 3.4. I didn't realize that CMU had such a large book-scanning project underway. Lesk reiterates the crucial point, however, that reading off paper is still preferable to most people than reading from a screen.
Arms
This chapter deals with a lot of the same issues I picked up in Lesk. I appreciate the in-depth discussion of Unicode, which I know is a vital standard for displaying diverse languages but I don't know much about (e.g. UTF-8 encoding). Ditto the explanation of DTDs and SGML. The section on XML is extremely helpful, as it's a concept I've had trouble grasping in the past.
Lynch
Identifier systems are a critically important aspect of digital libraries--and really any digital/networked collection--that I haven't given much thought. I think laypeople (like myself) tend to think that you have a URL or filename and that's all you need, but Lynch identifies several contexts and usages that require a different approach. Also, though I've seen them before (I believe through the Government Printing Office), I didn't realize that PURLs were an OCLC creation.
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