Muddiest Point

I could use some clarification in regards to the design report accompanying our final projects. I am not sure what information to include in some of the categories, particularly user requirements, conceptual design, data collections, and sample information access scenarios. I have a general idea of what these might mean, but examples would be very helpful. Is there a finished report we could look at?

Muddiest Point: Digital Preservation

There has been a lot of talk about what would happen to a library's licensed digital resources if the vendor went under -- since nothing is physically on the shelves, access to all those materials could be lost as though it never was. But I have heard that some vendors offer guaranteed continued access through third-party permanent repositories, and that some institutions are partnering with each other to build and maintain the same. Can you point to any examples of these types of ventures?

Preservation in Digital Libraries

Rieger
I am glad to see digital preservation issues being addressed so thoroughly. Though it’s more of a minor point, I’m particularly intrigued by the concept of shared print storage facilities – it strongly suggests that digital is becoming the default, with print just the backup/alternative. It also has interesting implications for the way competing institutions might find themselves collaborating. I think one of the crucial points raised in this report (though maybe not directly related to digital preservation) is the call for libraries to develop more “scaleable and flexible infrastructures” and to rethink their collection development policies. Digital resources are truly changing the landscape of traditional resource management practices. The most important issue raised, however, was the fact that so many standards and best practices are so far out of date. That’s a field that requires a lot of development very quickly, especially with the advent of these large-scale ventures.

Jones and Beagrie
Although digitization has been touted by some as the solution to preservation of print resources, it has become clear that digital objects require just as much if not more effort and funds to maintain. Paper can sit on shelves untouched for decades and still fulfill its intended function; it would be very difficult, at this point, to access a digital object from forty years ago. This handbook emphasizes the fragility of digital media, and the advance planning and quick action necessary to keep it intact and functional. It also identifies the key stakeholders for long-term preservation efforts. Unfortunately the section on cost is probably all too accurate when it says, essentially, that there is no way to estimate it.

Littman
This is a useful reflection from someone who clearly has much experience in the digital resource field, and has faced many of the problems that digital libraries have and will continue to face. The four categories of failures he describes -- media, hardware, software, human -- are ever-present risks in any digital library, and it is important to keep those various risks in mind when designing and managing a DL. Littman suggests that human error was the most serious threat to his own project, which is a lesson that any DL team should consider very seriously.

Muddiest Point (Access in Digital Libraries II)

Point 1: OAI-PMH seems to rely on consensus amongst all participants as to which metadata standard to use (i.e. Dublin Core). However, I imagine it is difficult to convince people to provide DC metadata if they are using a different standard for their own purposes -- it's just more work. What I wonder is whether it is easier to try to get people to agree on one standard, or whether it is possible to develop a new protocol that is capable of recognizing and harvesting multiple metadata schemas.

Point 2: If Z39.50 is not designed for full-document retrieval, is there a different standard in the works that addresses that growing need? Is there any institution that has successfully implemented a different system?

Unit 5 Readings

Witten
2.2
I like Witten's emphasis on presenting an image of stability and continuity to the user, despite the impermanence and fluidity of digital documents. I hadn't previously considered the comparison between different editions of a physical work and different modifications of a digital document. The discussion on authority control is not new information, but I wonder if it is more or less relevant/necessary in the context of digital libraries with sophisticated search functions. The LCSH information is also not new, though it's a good overview of basic cataloging practices. It is interesting to contrast the linear arrangement of books on shelves with the endless rearrangement possible in a digital collection.
5.4-5.7
Good overview of MARC and DC. BibTeX was new to me; I like that it seems compatible with XML. Refer seems, on the surface, a little more comprehensible to me, but maybe I'm just drawn to the alphabetical ordering of categories. The section on TIFF was enlightening; I had no idea the format carried so much metadata. I'd like to explore that capability further. MPEG-7 seems extremely useful for digital libraries; the projected capabilities mentioned are pretty amazing, although the technical stuff was a little over my head.
Automatic extraction of metadata makes me a little nervous, perhaps because I am a firm believer in authority control. Many of the methods discussed seemed iffy, though key phrase assignment/extraction seems useful. With the volume of information out there it's useful to have some automated methods, but there will always be a need for manual assignment of metadata. Phrase hierarchies actually seem pretty interesting, though all the talk about complex algorithms is beyond me.

Gilliland
The table on typology of data standards is a really useful way of thinking about this stuff (e.g. LCSH vs. AACR, MARC fields vs. MARC21). Tables 2 and 3 are useful as well. She makes an important point that metadata for digital objects needs to exist independent of the current storage/retrieval system in order to survive migration.

Weibel
It's encouraging to read the reflections of someone who was involved with Dublin Core from its very first development. I laughed a little when he mentioned that "participants spent an hour of scarce plenary time talking about Type before realizing that the librarians and the computer scientists had been talking about completely different concepts" -- but the important thing is that they produced a functional standard in the end. Weibel questions the possible future effect of "folksonomies" on the metadata landscape, and I am both interested and discomfited by the notion. I liked his anecdote about the China-Mongolia railroad gages.

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.

Assignment 2: Flickr

I chose to scan the front pages of various national newspapers from the 2008 election. They can be found here.