Week 9 Readings

All of the assigned articles dealt with the archival side of digital libraries.  "The Open Archive Information System Reference Model" went into great detail about how an OAIS-compliant system should be set up and function.  I personally appreciated not just the easy to follow explanations, but also the real world examples given in each section.

"Actualized Preservation Threats" and "Research Challenges in Digital Archives" delve into another side of this issue.  As implied by their titles, digital libraries and archives have some kinks that need to be managed and worked out.  "Research Challenges" covers the broad overview of problems including how digital collections are large and full of a variety of items, making preservation and organization difficult.  "Actualized Preservation" is more of a case study, following a particular digital library and the problems its staff encountered.  These, by the very nature of the article, tend to be narrower in scope than "Research Challenges."  Threats cited in this article included media, hardware, and software failures along with human errors.

"Preservation Management of Digital Materials" is an extensive handbook that seems to include all of the concepts and issues presented in the other readings.

Week 8 Muddiest Point

I have no muddiest point this week.

However, I am curious to know how the Hurricane/Frankenstorm Sandy might affect the FastTrack weekend.  I'm flying in from Virginia and I keep hearing that major prolonged power outages are expected for even Pittsburgh.

Week 8 Readings

Taking these readings as a unit, the Lynch article on the history and background of Z39.50 would be helpful to read first as the concept is referenced in several of the other readings.  The language of this article is fairly simple and easy to follow, however, there are several points where the author interjects his opinion rather harshly.  This startles the reader out of their rhythm and, for a beginner especially, it is hard to figure out how in proportion these opinions are to the related community.

As for the other readings, "The Truth About Federated Searching" was particularly interesting in that I still hear some of these myths nine years after this article was published.  "OAI for Beginners" is a great resource actually written with beginners in mind - except for a few technical sections here and there, I had no trouble understanding it.  Even then, I reread those sections just to be sure I had a firm understanding before proceeding.  "Search Engine Technology" feels like a call to action in many ways.  Lossau brings up a point that is still a concern in library communities: Will commercial endeavors like Google wipe out library-created search systems?  He doesn't seem to think that will be so, but libraries must adjust, presumably in the ways he extensively detailed.

Week 7 Muddiest Point

I have no muddiest point this week.

Week 6 Muddiest Point

I have no muddiest point for this week.  On a technical note, I did notice an issue with the recording where the slides didn't display very well during the presentation.  I downloaded the slides and followed on my own without too much trouble.  I'm not sure if I'm the only one having this issue, but I thought I'd post it just in case.