Friday, December 3, 2010
Muddiest Point for 12/7
Can you clarify what should be included in the "problem statement" of our DL report? Also, how does the "conceptual design" aspect of the report differ from the "schemas for representing and organizing digital objects"?
Readings for Week of 12/7
The Daily Times news piece author carries many of the same sentiments as I do regarding intellectual property. While it does serve its purpose for giving incentives to create, current IP laws also have a rather "chilling" effect on technological and cultural innovations for fear of rightsholder violations. It's so important that open access becomes the norm for certain information like computer source coding. Without allowing programmers to build off each other's work we wouldn't have the technology sources we have today, such as Unix operating systems and the internet itself.
The article related to Funding for Digital Libraries Research outlines the history of digital funding, especially for the National Science Foundation. It's easy to forget and take for granted how far along technology has come in terms of storage capabilities even compared to ten years ago. Something that struck me in the reading was how the NSF's budget for their supercomputer in the 90's, $60,000,000. When the article was written, in 2005, the capabilities of that supercomputer could be largely carried out by a small network of personal computers costing around $5,000. I wonder what those figures look like today.
The article in 2001 regarding the President’s Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC) showed efforts on a grand governmental scale to highlight the importance of digitizing archives. The panel was addressed to the former President, G.W. Bush, suggesting that digital libraries are the future for expansion and provides an important framework for fostering education. This came at a time when Bush implemented his "No Child Left Behind" policies to the nation. While there were some good points to this article, such that public documents should be readily available through the Internet, the fact that it was implemented in response to one of Bush's worst policies taints the effort in my opinion.
The Clifford Lynch article was interesting, and I found one of his opening statements to be rather controversial: "...though some would argue that digital libraries have very little to do with libraries as institutions or the practice of librarianship." Just by taking this class it's easy to see the relevance of librarianship, especially metadata, controlled vocabularies, intellectual property concerns, and preservation and dissemination of information and documents to the application of digital libraries.
The article related to Funding for Digital Libraries Research outlines the history of digital funding, especially for the National Science Foundation. It's easy to forget and take for granted how far along technology has come in terms of storage capabilities even compared to ten years ago. Something that struck me in the reading was how the NSF's budget for their supercomputer in the 90's, $60,000,000. When the article was written, in 2005, the capabilities of that supercomputer could be largely carried out by a small network of personal computers costing around $5,000. I wonder what those figures look like today.
The article in 2001 regarding the President’s Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC) showed efforts on a grand governmental scale to highlight the importance of digitizing archives. The panel was addressed to the former President, G.W. Bush, suggesting that digital libraries are the future for expansion and provides an important framework for fostering education. This came at a time when Bush implemented his "No Child Left Behind" policies to the nation. While there were some good points to this article, such that public documents should be readily available through the Internet, the fact that it was implemented in response to one of Bush's worst policies taints the effort in my opinion.
The Clifford Lynch article was interesting, and I found one of his opening statements to be rather controversial: "...though some would argue that digital libraries have very little to do with libraries as institutions or the practice of librarianship." Just by taking this class it's easy to see the relevance of librarianship, especially metadata, controlled vocabularies, intellectual property concerns, and preservation and dissemination of information and documents to the application of digital libraries.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)