Unit 13 Security & Privacy

1-The video No Place to hide is not operational.
2-Interesting paper with lots of websites to link to for further information.
3-This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc.

Jeffrey Rosen-Is Privacy Dead?
Presents some interesting points on US & UK views of surveillance; believes these can be reconciled.
Facebook: Scary what facebook can do with material once posted. "Big Brother" & "1984" rolled into one.
Jonathan Zittrain-The Future of the Internet
Fascinating, humorous, and serious look at where the Internet is going. We probably need to have someone help get rid of the hackers, spammers, virus/worm writers that destroy sites and steal data. While trying to cultivate creativity, what can be done to protect form those who want to use the Internet to destroy.

Comments and Muddiest Points Unit 12

Comments:
Very interesting readings, understandable and found very useful information.

Muddiest Points:
Really didn't find any.

Unit 12 Social Software (11/25)

This week's readings were quite interesting. I particularly liked the article on weblog and social tags. It seems to me that now that I've had a little experience with blogging,(I did not have a blog nor followed any prior to this class),and finding info on the web, I believe I understand these articles better. I am a slow learner and need to re-read things a couple of times.

Weblogs:their use and application in science and technology libraries:
-presents a brief history of the development of blogs and provides resources for further reading.
-Great definition of a blog "...a Web site resembling a personal journal that is updated with individual entries or postings..."
-very useful feature of blogging software: the facility to automatically archive entries and allow for searching, browsing and reviewing of stories and postings.
-discusses blog use in literature search, its applications in science and technology librarianship (where blogging software is a great tool for those working on projects)
-defines RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds; Use of these in libraries, gives example of LISFeeds as a site that collects library-related RSS news feeds.
-Talks about reference and student blogs.
-Agree with the conclusion: "...The challenge for librarians is to become familiar with the weblog and its potential, and explore new ways to further its development and application in science and technology librarianship."

Using a wiki to manage a library instruction program (LIP):Sharing knowledge to better serve patrons:
-Had never heard of nor used a wiki before.
-Great tool to manage work in an LIP.
-Anyone can create a wiki.
-The name is particularly appropriate.
-Can use wiki to:
=share knowledge; use as centralized resource collaboration tool, streamlining work flow and allowing quick update of outdated info.

Creating the academic library folksonomy:Put social tagging to work at your institution:
-Social tagging is new; allows the creation of bookmarks/tags for Web sites and saves them online. (sounds a little like adding sites to 'favorites' websites)
-del.icio.us allows sharing of tags. (visited site, found great info on writing on line, editing photos)
-Librarians can identify the best Web resources in various subject areas and then tag them for patrons' use.

Jimmy Wales:"How a ragtag band created Wikipedia"
-Great story, ensure every person on the planet is given access to human knowledge.
-Ideal becoming reality.
-Neutral point of view; no biases.

Muddiest Point Unit 11

Scholarly publishing as a specific circumscribed example of scholarly communication?

Comments on Readings

Interesting readings; some easier to read than others.

Unit 11 Readings

Digital Libraries:
-Searchingdigital libraries is problematic.
-Searching thrawted by scholarly information contained in 'information silos'.
-Difference between providing access to discrete sets of digital collections & providing digital library services. (because looking for particular digital collection?)
-Ultimate goal is to provide problem free access.
-Federal support was important to evolution of digital library technology.
-Large number of ejournals now available.

Dewey Meets Turing
-Digital Library Initiation brought together librarians and computer scientists.
-Computer scientists saw an exciting way to conduct research and impact daily society in working on digital library projects.
-Librarians saw an opportunity for increased funding.
-Advent of Web frought confusion as consumers also became producers of information.
-Increased costs of ejournals forced academic libraries to concel subscriptions.
-Online publishing was good for self publishing but looked upon warily by academic world.
-Although access to information is containedwithin a technical infrastructure, core elements of librarianship remain constant.
-Hubs of core collecitons will require librarian sstewardship.

Institutional Repositories:Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age
-Somewhat interesting but long and occasionally dense article on institutional repositories (IR).
-IR allow universities to apply leverage to accelerate changes in scholarship and scholarly communication.
-This was made possible by decrease in online storage costs, and the open archives medadata harvesting protocol.
-MIT and Hewlett Packard partnered to develop an institutional repository system which is now a model for other universities.
-An IR should not olnly contain its members works and make these available but also needs to preserve them.
-Scholarly publishing while different form scholarly communication, is a specific circumscribed example of scholarly communication.
-The effective operation of web sites chould be in the hands of professionals who are conversant with software complexity, secruity risks, backup requirements and other issues.
-Author lists cautions about IR.
IR's can serve as propellers of change for institutions of higher education.

http://www.pitt.edu/~eam99/

Here is Assignment 6.

Unit 10 Readings

Some were interesting, one was very dense.

Web Search Engines: Part 1
-Amazing amount of data being searched.
-Interesting that there's a politeness delay among machines.
-Speed of retrieval is unbelievable but having initiated searches & found relevant data am grateful for its existence.
-Ironic use of the world "crawl" which to me means to move slowly while in reality these 'crawls' are done, dare say at the speed of light.
-Agree wholeheartedly that:
"...Engineering a web-scale crawler is not for the unskilled or fainthearted..." So English & History majors need not apply.

Web Search Engines: Part 2
-?"... An inverted file is a concatenation of the posting lists for each distinct term..."
-# of machines & documents is astounding.
-?"... PageRank computation is an eigenvector calculation on the page-page link connectivity matrix..."
-Would say interesting article, not "fascinating".

Current Developments:
-Dense article.
-Assumption of "... high level of familiarity with how the protocol works..." indicates I probably won't understand it.

The Deep Web:Surfacing Hidden Value:
-Nice image of the Deep Web as an ocean
-Similar to today's knowledge of the ocean, only limited exploration of the deepest part because need special equipment (directed query) to withstand the water's pressure.
-Not aware of NorthernLight and Fast as search engines; nor there were search engines and search directories.
-Excellent statement: "...Discovery comes form looking at the world in new ways and with new tools..."
-Pure scientific statement: "...It has been said that what cannot be seen cannot be defined, and what is not defined cannot be understood..." or seeing is believing.
-Largest % of deep sites by subject areas with the Humanities leading with 13.5%, followed by News,Media with 12.2%.

Assignment 6 Web Page

This is by far the most difficult assignment yet. I have finally figured out how to write and get a web page to appear! Now the trick is to put it all together; at least I can say I tried. Creating the language is worse than Greek to me, no disrespect intended; it just looks like a lot of 'math equations' and it makes my head 'feel like it's going to blow up' to quote a fellow classmate.

Assignment 6

This assignment is proving to be difficult. I don't enjoy writing programs, I understand the need to be familiar with the technology however, once out in the real world, I will definity hire a webmaster.