Week Eleven Readings

A lot of big ideas this week. I’m not sure where to start with the UCLA piece, but we’ve read a lot of William Arms’ work this semester and I’m pretty sure that this was the best one. In this article Arms is a powerful advocate for users of digital libraries, who, at some base level, really want to use one and only one digital library. Another way of thinking of this is federation (EBSCO calls it integration). On the technical side, this means interoperability not just in terms of search protocols, like Z39.50, but in terms of interfaces as well.

Elsewhere Roush, that link doesn’t work – get it through ULS, vacillates between cheerleading the Google Book Search and giving some librarians a chance to express their reservations. I think he’s correct that public and private digital librarieswill coexist, with occasional linkages, although it seems like he thinks Google Book Search is public when, in fact, it is not. So much for Arms’ users’ viewpoint. He also fails to account for Digital Rights Management.

Muddiest Point #9

We talked about evaluations this week: any examples of DLs that changed because of evaluations? I wasn't sure if Tufts and the others you mentioned around the 2 hour mark of lecture fit this bill.
In theory DLs should be easier to adapt/modify based on user critiques than brick and mortar libraries, or does most of this take place in testing/beta prior to the launch?

Week Ten Readings

All libraries are for and serve a specified population, even if they are digital. We were introduced to this in week one, but we’ve been ignoring it since… until now.

You can find the Arms chapter here, as Blackboard has the wrong URL. Panel 8.1 in particular is useful, a nice glossary of terms we’ll be using this week.

Kling and Elliot eloquently and succinctly make their point that one should not use a one size fits all model when designing a digital library. This article was a welcome breath of social science in this course. It’s nice to read something I fully understand.

Saracevic (pdf) asks why DLs aren’t really evaluated (although they will be in this class) and examines some of the evaluations out there. It’s a bit dry, but the points are well-made.

Finally, it’s ironic that all this week is about usability and how things look, but only the final reading (Sheiderman and Plaisant) has pictures. More of those would have been useful, especially in the Arms chapter.

Muddiest Point #8

A meta-muddiest point: since Dr. He did not lecture does that mean he won't answer any questions we had about the guest lecture?
A course-related muddiest point/rant: I have zero grades for this course. We are 2/3rds of the way through the semester. This is not acceptable.
A lecture-related muddy point: digitization overall and digital preservation in particular are very expensive, although the costs are declining. Given that, there have been very few mentions of the digital divide in this course, in that Google can spend its money and large research universities can spend their as well as grant money, but where does that leave small colleges, mid-sized universities, and public libraries?