_Current Cites_
                               Volume 9, no. 10
                                 October 1998
                                 The Library
                       University of California, Berkeley
                          Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
                               ISSN: 1060-2356

        http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.10.html

                                Contributors:
                 Terry Huwe, Margaret Phillips, Richard Rinehart,
                   Roy Tennant, Jim Ronningen, Lisa Yesson

 Digital Libraries

  Kranch, Douglas A. "Beyond Migration: Preserving Electronic Documents
  with Digital Tablets." Information Technology & Libraries 17(3)
  (September 1998): 138-148. - Preserving digital information is one of
  the great challenges facing librarians and archivists. There are
  numerous issues that must be addressed, from technical details to
  organizational structures. In this piece, however, Kranch focuses
  mainly on the technical details, by putting forward the idea of
  encapsulating digital content in a "tablet" that contains all the
  hardware and software required to use it. Such tablets would,
  presumably, prevent the need to migrate the information forward into
  new systems that replace the ones used to create the information in
  the first place. Although the idea has some merit, one could just as
  easily consider the information to be "entombed" as well as preserved,
  since presumably it would not be accessible to any future systems that
  add capabilities to the manipulation of digital information.
  Nonetheless, we're too early in the digital preservation game to throw
  out any ideas too hastily. At this point every idea should receive
  serious and thoughtful consideration. - RT

  Sherwood, Lyn Elliot. "Discovering Buffalo Story Robes: A Case for
  Cross-Domain Information Strategies" Computers and the Humanities
  32(1)(1998): 57-64. - Buffalo Story Robes
  (http://www.glenbow.org/srobe/srobe.htm), a small digital exhibit from
  Canada's Glenbow Museum, is the inspiration for this author's insights
  into how to realize the potential of the digital library. Sherwood,
  the head of the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) found
  that this exhibit on the stories of the tribes of the Canadian plains
  had many related resources in government repositories, archives and
  libraries. The exhibit represents one small example of a current
  challenge in the digital environment: how to enable users to find
  related across domains. Sherwood acknowledges that "each of these
  communities is bound by its own traditions and classification schema."
  He asserts that effective access is dependent on increased
  collaboration among the many disciplines, and recommends looking
  closely at the role of authorities, thesauri and a process for mapping
  taxonomies across domains. Perhaps common sense, but essential if we
  are ever to realize the vision of the digital library as "an
  organized, selected or managed body of information." - LY

  Still, Julie and Vibiana Kassabian. "Searching for Bill and Jane:
  Electronic Full-Text Literature" Database 21 (5) (October/November
  1998): 15-24. - This month's cover story takes a closer look at
  electronic text resources available in English language prose with a
  specific focus on Shakespeare, Austen and nature writing. This survey
  is helpful not only for the references to major electronic guides and
  archives on literary resources (both free and fee-based), but also for
  detailed evaluations of individual resources. The authors recognize
  that "people do not usually use electronic texts to read works, but,
  rather to study them." Based on their review, there is ample material
  on Shakespeare for all types of users, some on Austen but very little
  on the genre of nature writing. Their conclusions? Available resources
  still focus on the most widely known or studied authors. And the value
  of these resources for scholars depends on whether they are based on
  authoritative editions and include value-added materials or search
  features. - LY

 Electronic Publishing

  Baca, Murtha, ed. Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital
  Information Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1998, ISBN
  0-89236-533-1. - This concise booklet follows the publication of the
  Getty's earlier Introduction to Imaging with the same small-sized
  format, introductory but not simplistic information, also priced at
  around $8. Just as the earlier publication was an introduction to
  digital imaging from many angles, this booklet introduces the reader
  to the world of standards, with an emphasis on semantic standards such
  as LCSH and AAT. It also provides an overview of different kinds of
  metadata such as record structures (MARC, EAD) and interchange formats
  and tools (SGML, Z39.50). - RR

  Day, Colin. "Digital Alternatives: Solving the Problem or Shifting the
  Costs?" Journal of Electronic Publishing 4 (September 1998).
  (http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/day.html) - While some of us may
  be pinning all of our hopes on electronic publishing as the solution
  to the ills that currently plague academic publishing, Colin Day --
  writing about the academic mongraph -- has made it his responsibility
  to debunk those dreams. Publishers, he observes, are driven by the
  wishes of authors on the one hand and readers on the other. As far as
  he can tell, there is no pressure from either group for any type of
  product "other than the traditional codex, carefully edited, nicely
  produced, and energetically marketed." Digital publication of a
  monograph simply shifts the cost of production from the publisher to
  the scholar. - MP

  Sosteric, Mike. "At the Speed of Thought: Pursuing Non-Commercial
  Alternatives to Scholarly Communication" ARL Newsletter 200 (October
  1998). (http://www.arl.org/newsltr/200/sosteric.html) - By now, to
  talk of the crisis in scholarly communication and to express outrage
  over the escalating costs of journal literature is to sound like a
  broken record. And despite our greatest hopes that new technologies
  will be the solution to this crisis, it looks as if electronic
  publishing has only served as yet another opporutunity for commercial
  publishers to increase their profits; some commercial publishers (the
  few that are left in the increasingly monopolized world of academic
  publishing) have been know to force libraries to purchase both paper
  and electronic versions of their journals at rates that are even
  higher than the standard print costs. Libraries are virtually
  powerless to offset the practices of commercial publishers. At the
  same time, independent scholars are reluctant to take up the call to
  independent publication because too much work is involved, editorial
  duties are not highly regarded when it comes to tenure and advancement
  and there is no organizational support systematically advocating for a
  revolution in scholarly communication. This is where Mike Sosteric
  comes in. He is the director of the International Consortium of
  Alternative Academic Publication (ICAAP) (http://www.icaap.org/),
  whose mission is to "reduce the barriers to independent scholarly
  publication by bringing together scholars and institutions from all
  countries and all disciplines who are interested in bringing economic
  health back to the scholarly communication system." In order to
  fulfill its mission, the group will provide editorial assistance
  (HTML, copy editing, etc.), develop an apprenticeship program for
  young scholars to train them in the art and science of scholarly
  communication, and work to develop technical standards for electronic
  publishing. - MP

  Varian, Hal R. "The Future of Electronic Jounals" Journal of
  Electronic Publishing 4 (September 1998)
  (http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/varian.html) - In this article,
  a reprint of a talk he delivered at the Scholarly Communication and
  Technology Conference (http://arl.cni.org/scomm/scat/) in April 1997,
  Varian looks at the economics of journal production in order to make
  some observations about the future of electronic journals. Electronic
  submission and distribution of manuscripts among editorial staff and
  reviewers can reduce the cost of journal production by almost
  one-half. Electronic distribution can bring further savings and has
  the value-added benefit of allowing precise monitoring of the number
  of hits per article, full-text search capabilities, and hyperlinkage
  to other relevant articles. Varian provides a provocative model for
  how electronic journals can solve what he calls the "filtering" issue.
  In the current scenario, more and more articles are being published.
  In other words, if you really want to publish something, chances are
  you can find someone to publish it; this indicates that the filtering
  function of peer review -- designed to ensure that only the work
  that's worthy gets published -- may not be working. While electronic
  publishing will only add to the information glut, Varian's model
  proposes that reviewers' anonymous evaluations be linked (and
  searchable) to the actual article. - MP

 Networks & Networking

  Fleming, Jennifer. Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience
  Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates, 1998. - Probably the second
  most common Web problem (the first being the "World Wide Wait"), is
  getting lost in webspace. This is the experience of becoming
  disoriented and not knowing which link to click to get to where you
  want to go. Many Web sites seem to almost delight in making us puzzle
  over what we can find at the site, or how to get around, or even the
  meaning of certain buttons or labels. Chin up, help has arrived.
  Fleming's book is chock-full of good information, advice, examples,
  diagrams, screen shots (both in full-color and black-and-white), and
  links. With this book, and the recently released Information
  Architecture for the World Wide Web (cited in the March 1998 issue of
  Current Cites), Web managers can no longer use ignorance as an excuse
  for creating unorganized piles of documents instead of useful Web
  sites. - RT

 General

  Proceedings of Reference Services in a Digital Age Washington: Library
  of Congress, 1998 (http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/digiref/). - Don't come to
  the proceedings of the Library of Congress-sponsored institute
  "Reference Services in a Digital Age" to have your questions answered.
  It won't happen. Rather, what this site may help you to do is to raise
  some new questions. What _should_ reference services be like when
  increasingly the information our users need is in digital form, and it
  can be accessed without ever stepping foot in a library? How can we
  interject human (and humane) assistance into these new environments?
  What new roles are there for reference librarians? What new kinds of
  education and training are required to become proficient at providing
  service? These are important questions, and questions that institutes
  such as this can help us frame and deal with as a profession. - RT
    _________________________________________________________________

Current Cites 9(10) (October 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356 Copyright
1998 by the Library, University of California, Berkeley. _All rights
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