NOTE: Credit given to first 3.
Class began today with the taking of pictures. Chris Ye's picture was used as an example as it was transformed into a tiff file.
Using the class home page we linked to the Computers and Tools section. There we briefly discussed kms, Marian (an alternative to VTLS), and xprcedit.
Next we jumped to the Calendar. While discussing this section we were given a variety of topics to consider. We were told to use 5604b as part of the subject for all email submissions. An alternative to class attendence was offered by viewing a taped version of the lecture in the Whitimore tv studio every Monday at 6:30pm. Then looking at the schedule itself, September 7, was identified as a library tour day.
Quick stops were made at the Syllabus-Blacksburg, and Units/Course Outline links where basically we learned that information was accessable through several avenues. We ended the class by looking at the Classnotes/Overheads. Under the Unit DL Course Notes listing we glanced at Digital Libraries and discussed Quotations, Example:The CORE Project, NSF/ARPA/NASA Reseach on Digital Libraries, Functions of Traditional Libraries, Electronic Publishing, Principles of Digital Libraries, and a functional view of Information Retrieval.
The topic of digital libraries was introduced today. Digital libraries will enable people to access information and communicate with others in a reliable, secure, and cost-effective manner. The ultimate goal of digital libraries is to allow people to increase their productivity.
The CORE project was discussed as an example of digital libraries. This digital library contains information about chemistry. It utilizes the resources of the American Chemical Society, the Chemical Abstracts Service, OCLC, and Bellcore. Some relevant statistics about the CORE project library were provided.
Research on digital libraries was briefly discussed. Prompted by a 1991 white paper presented to the National Science Foundation by Lesk, Fox, and McGill, $26 million was awarded in October 1994 for research in digital libraries. Six universities will lead the research efforts. Each is responsible for several subtopics in the area of digital libraries.
Many important functions provided by traditional libraries will also need to be carried out by digital libraries. Digital libraries should continue to maintain collections of works. Digital libraries will organize information in a logical manner and represent information in a useful format. Digital libraries will need to be readily accessible. Retrieval of information should also be facilitated. Digital libraries, like traditional libraries, will still be used to analyze, synthesize, and disseminate information. Similar to current catalog information, digital libraries will also need to provide indices and other pointers to where particular information resides in the library. Appropriate access control measures will need to be taken as well to protect the information in the digital library from unauthorized access. Access rights on a user by user or group by group basis will most likely be used to enforce this security.
As more and more information becomes available in digital form, traditional libraries are transforming into digital libraries. The flexibility of digital formats will allow the user to retrieve information in a variety of forms and in a variety of ways. Word processing, document management, and document markup are all important components of building and maintaining digital libraries.
Information Storage and Retrieval provides the foundation for building digital libraries. The relevant models were mentioned but not discussed in any detail.
Nine digital library principles were introduced. These principles should be kept in mind as digital libraries are constructed. If they are, the usability and future archival value of the library are likely to be good.
In 8/24 lecture, we covered several miscellaneous materials. One
interesting thing is that Dr. Fox showed us a demo on how to access the
articles on-line through:
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/TR/Search/
During the process of browing through Assignment and Weekly Calender,
he mentioned the tradeoff "convenience vs. redundancy," referring that a
document can be pointed by 2 distinct regions of text.
eaf:
This seems a
bit unclear. One point is that hypertext allows small chunks to be
extracted, and then linked to from several places. Another point is that
declarative markup lets documents be rendered to screen or paper in a
variety of ways.
Then he went over some basic information of Digital libraries. Digital
libraries have the potential of being able to provide more ease to access
information.
In addition to providing traditional libraries services, they also encapsulate word processing, document management, markup and SGML enhancements. Information Retrieval provides a base to build digital libraries.
At the beginning individual photographs of the class were taken using a Quicktake (Apple) digital camera. Additional parts of the WWW site for the course were introduced. The class was divided into discussion groups for the debates on digital libraries on Tuesday. The class ended with a brief introduction to the concept of digital libraries.
The class started with everyone being captured on film by Dr. Fox and his Quick Take camera! After this we were batched into groups for the debates to be held in class on Tuesday on Digital Libraries. We then discussed the various computer tools that we will be using during the duration of this course. We were then given a brief introduction to Digital libraries and the objectives of this unit were made clear. Lastly we went over a brief summary of the three articles that are the required reading for this unit.