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                           _Current Cites_
                           Volume 9, no. 11
                           November 1998
                            The Library
                 University of California, Berkeley
                    Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
                          ISSN: 1060-2356
       http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.11.html

                           Contributors:

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


 DIGITAL LIBRARIES

  Duguid, Paul. "Information and Libraries" Red Rock Eater News Service
  (November 17, 1998) (reposted to DIGLIB and archived at
  http://listserv.nlc-bnc.ca/cgi-bin/ifla-lwgate.pl/DIGLIB/archives/digl
  ib.log9811/date/article-39.html). - Duguid uses a question facing the
  San Jose State University Academic Senate, regarding whether to merge
  the university library with the city's public library, to address
  broader issues related to both print and digital libraries. In
  particular, he takes to task computer scientists who assume to know
  what goes on in libraries while accepting millions of dollars to build
  digital versions. But the main point he makes is that obscuring, or
  allowing to remain obscured, the differences between information
  needs, information seeking behavior, and the clienteles doing the
  seeking, can only lead to disasters -- whether they are of the digital
  or institutional kind. - RT

  Nunberg, Geofrey. "Will Libraries Survive?" The American Prospect (41)
  (November-December 1998): 16-23
  (http://epn.org/prospect/41/41nunb.html). - The title of this piece is
  provocative but misleading. Nunberg ends up addressing not so much
  whether libraries will survive at all, but rather in what form. But
  that is a minor quibble about an article that is thoughtful,
  informative, historically accurate, and in the end, compelling. As
  those of us involved with creating digital libraries are well aware,
  it is a time-consuming and expensive undertaking. Nunberg is aware of
  this, and is also aware of the hidden impacts of dropping computers
  into public libraries and expecting the library budget to absorb the
  costs of their care. So although the munificence of the Gates Library
  Foundation in connecting public libraries to the Internet is welcomed,
  it is important for us as a society to realize it is but a beginning
  step. Nunberg uses as his historical parallel the donation of almost
  2,000 public library buildings by Andrew Carnegie a hundred years ago.
  Carnegie's donation was limited only to the physical facility, leaving
  not one dime to stock it with anything worth reading. That American
  communities eventually rose to the challenge of making libraries out
  of the donated shells is a tribute to the capacity of American
  citizens to realize the importance of such a cultural and intellectual
  resource. Now, Nunberg asserts, we face no less of a challenge as a
  society. We can either rise to the challenge of providing the needed
  funds to stock our digital libraries, or fail to realize its
  importance. - RT

  Pack, Thomas and Jeff Pemberton. "Intranet Management, Content
  Development and Digital Gift Shop: The Cutting-Edge Library at The
  Atlanta Journal-Constitution" Online 22(6) (November/December
  1998):16-24. - At first glance, the library for a daily newspaper
  would seem to be a special case - too special to interest anyone
  outside. However, there are lots of ideas here for exploiting the full
  potential of networked information systems in any organization where
  information is the product. The News Research Services (NRS) staff at
  the Journal-Constitution have developed their intranet to put current
  and archival files on the desktops in the newsroom, and trained
  reporters and editors to do some searching, which leaves NRS staff
  free to delve into lengthier or deadline-pressured research. The
  corporate Web site has become a profit center for the company thanks
  to the staff's creative arrangements for marketing the articles and
  photos for which the paper holds copyright. While the article's focus
  is on innovative new projects, there is also adequate description of
  how the staff fulfills its traditional mission of fact-finding for the
  writers. They seem to do a fine job of it, and use their
  resourcefulness to provide background information through such media
  as custom intranet pages full of relevant data for anticipated hot
  topics. But this brings up a quibble: we never get to hear from the
  end users. Throughout the article, there's plenty from NRS staff and
  management about how well things are going, but nothing from the
  reporters and their editors. I expect some boosterism from
  publications like Online, where the editorial policy seems to be
  "information professionals congratulating information professionals,"
  but it's a lot more convincing when we're allowed to hear from the
  people served by the information professionals too. - JR

 ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING

  Bray, Tim. "Stretching the Document Concept" Web Techniques 3(12)
  (December 1998): 43-46. - According to Tim Bray, who should know, the
  Extensible Markup Language (XML) blurs the boundary between documents
  and data. This blurring, Bray reasonably asserts, will lead to
  interesting cominglings of document-centric users like humanist
  scholars with data-centric users such as management information
  systems (MIS) geeks. While bringing these two camps together in the
  same room may not lead to the same kind of cataclysmic event as the
  joining of matter and anti-matter would, it nonetheless may be
  interesting. Bray thinks it is both inevitable and good that
  document-centric people and data-centric people will be forced to come
  together to share a common vocabulary and some common tools. So do I.
  In any case, this piece provides an interesting insight to a possible
  watershed event that may slip past almost unnoticed by those too busy
  watching the XML hype machine roll on. - RT

  Soojung-Kim Pang, Alex. "The Work of the Encyclopedia in the Age of
  Electronic Reproduction" First Monday 3 (9) (September 9, 1998)
  (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_9/pang/) - The author
  explores how the advent of e-text literature affects the "craft" and
  everyday work of editing. He focuses on the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
  which has actively navigated from print, to CD-ROM and to the World
  Wide Web. He asserts that the digitization of the encyclopedia has
  affected the structure of articles, and that it also has begun to
  affect the character of editorial work, the responsibilities of
  editors, and their relationships with authors, animators, and others.
  This is a useful exploration of how Net innovations affect other
  professions besides libraries. Soojung-Kim Pang goes beyond the usual
  analyses of the fate of linear narrative, and copyright. - TH

 NETWORKS & NETWORKING

  Bambury, Paul. "A Taxonomy of Internet Commerce" First Monday 3(10)
  (October 5, 1998)
  (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_10/bambury/) - Bambury offers
  a clarifying piece that de-mystifies the terminology of the interplay
  between commerce and the Internet. He utilizes an "empirically derived
  classification system" (or taxonomy) of existing Internet business
  models. His taxonomy has two main branches: "transplanted real-world
  business models" and "native Internet business models." After
  comparing the two modes of description, he evaluates the role of
  business, governments, regulation and ideology. He asserts these two
  branches of Internet commerce are at odds, and may not be able to
  co-exist indefinitely. The aggressive nature of the real-world
  business model tends toward domination, whereas the native Internet
  economy and culture is "largely free, disintermediated, deep-rooted,
  ecological, decentralized, radical and politically sophisticated."
  Most likely, one or the other will prevail -- though we can always
  hope for a hybrid or new entry. - TH

  Raymond, Eric S. "Homesteading the Noosphere" First Monday 3 (10)
  (October 5, 1998)
  (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_10/raymond/) - Despite a
  grandiose (and frankly Rheingoldian) title, this critique of "hacker"
  culture is really a rather interesting article. Raymond compares the
  so-called "gift economy" of the Internet with the belief system of
  property rights. He argues that there is a contradiction between the
  official ideology defined by open-source licenses and hacker culture.
  He examines the "customs" that regulate the ownership and control of
  open-source software, and suggests that they imply an "underlying
  theory of property rights homologous to the Lockean theory of land
  tenure." He concludes with an analysis of the implications and the
  need for better conflict resolution tools. - TH

  Schwartz, Alan and Simson Garfinkel. Stopping Spam: Stamping Out
  Unwanted Email & News Postings. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates,
  1998. - These days there are only two kinds of people: 1) those who
  have been victims of spam (unwanted, mass-distributed messages), and
  2) those who are not on the Internet. Of the latter category, many are
  less than three years old or are in a coma, and can hardly be blamed
  for not being victimized like the rest of us. But hold the phone. Now
  help is here, albeit of the "help yourself" variety. That is, as this
  book so completely documents, there is no silver bullet for slaying
  spammers. Rather, there are a variety of tricks and techniques which
  may render one somewhat spam-proof, but they will hardly rid the
  universe of these vermin. But if that's all you're after, then go to
  it. And as for those of us who may not wish to spend several days
  setting up various barriers to block this garbage, the beginning of
  this book is an amusing (in a twisted sort of way, perhaps) and
  thorough historical account of spam, dating back to the 1970's (yes,
  Virginia, the Internet is indeed at least that old). Given the size of
  the Internet these days, if misery loves company we've never had it so
  good. - RT
    _________________________________________________________________

  Current Cites 9(11) (November 1998) ISSN: 1060-2356
  Copyright 1998 by the Library, University of California,
  Berkeley. All rights reserved.
  http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/1998/cc98.9.11.html

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