Week 7 Lab

http://www.pitt.edu/~edh25/index.html

Week 8 Reading Notes

I have some thoughts regarding last week's CamTasia lecture.

First, what new librarians really need is a "best practices" guide on how to design a library website. With so many options like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and LibGuides, librarians are faced with so many platform options that they don't know which one to use to design a website.

Second, because librarians may be employing the above platforms to design library websites, what is the value in learning HTML? Now I know that we should have at least an elementary knowledge of HTML, but what is the scope of that elementary knowledge? Are we learning too much HTML, and should we spend more time learning a website design platform, like Frontpage or Dreamweaver?

I feel that library schools must define the scope of basic website development skills more clearly, so that we are not wasting time on knowledge which we will not use. If we don't use a certain piece of knowledge, it's obsolete and we will forget it.

Third, it is very hard to read this week's readings on Cascading Style Sheets before doing the lab. We should be assigned both the reading and the lab at the same time, so we can get a firm comprehension on what CSSes are. I believe this will be more useful for future LIS 2600 students in the future.

Just my two cents!

Week 6 Lab

Barcode is 0088888888

Week 7 Reading Notes

After reading "Beyond HTML," I felt that it was outdated. For example, Goans, Leach and Vogel seem to emphasize the importance for librarians of learning HTML.

While I believe that all librarians should have a basic knowledge of HTML, I believe there is an "easy" solution that may help librarians. Institutions can subscribe to Springer LibGuides, to permit their librarians to create LibGuides which are similar in look, content, and feel. We at Temple employ LibGuides and are able to customize them within limits. Therefore, we don't need to know the details of setting up or navigating a CMS that much. The drawback, of course, is that Springer LibGuides costs money annually. A CMS-system customized to one's institution would cost time and effort upfront, but later, one may not need to pay for it.

Week 5 Lab

http://www.pitt.edu/~edh25/index.html

Week 6 Reading Notes

I fully advocate Sergey Brin's philosophy of the 80-20 principle in the workplace!

If people at their workplace were actively encouraged to work on their passion for 20% percent of the time, as long as that related to the institution, I believe they would be adding more value to their organization in the long run.

The examples he used of Mendel discovering the alws of genetics in his spare time, Froogle being invented during a programmer's 20% time, or Google Desktop bar being invented in another person's leisure time all serve as support.

It is a pity that most organizations do not permit their employees to engage in this principle more often.

Week 4 LAB

Task 1: http://screencast.com/t/N7ZRE4PhMmt

SELECT * FROM isi_jcr_report_isls

WHERE j_abbr='ANNU REV INFORM SCI'

AND jcr_year=2007

Task 2: http://screencast.com/t/MMn3UFAj4

SELECT j_abbr, j_if

FROM isi_jcr_report_isls

WHERE jcr_year=2008

AND j_if > 1

Week 5 Reading Notes

In this week's Wikipedia reading about Computer Networks, I greatly enjoyed the section on Overlay Networks. The reason why is because, finally, for the first time, I have a better understanding of how peer-to-peer networks seem to be set up.

This inspired to think about how overlay networks might help libraries. The article mentioned that "Akamai Technologies manages an overlay network that provides reliable, efficient content delivery."

How might an overlay network help libraries?

On a search using PittCat's Summon, I found a couple articles that seem really good. One is called SDQE: towards automatic semantic query optimization in P2P systems, and this describes a new system employed to retrieve information embedded in overlay networks.

Another competing paper talks about a similar system, but this time, with an emphasis on the semantic Web, p2pDating: Real life inspired semantic overlay networks for Web search.

Finally, one last paper talks about Pepper, a P2P network specifically designed to search and browse digital libraries.

Hopefully, one day I'll be tech savvy enough to dig and comprehend what these papers are saying =) .