The article that William H. Mischo wrote gave a nice overview of the hurdles that need to be jumped in order to have a successful digital library. I really liked the idea that there is a "difference between providing access to discrete sets of digital collections and providing digital library services." I do believe that there is a lot of confusion between the two, and because of that, potentially in some cases, patrons are not getting all of the services they need. I noticed that the author cited Michael Lesk. I do not consider him the most credible source. In the book that we read in 2000, I believe that he suggested that the Internet only takes up 10G's of data.
The article Dewey Meets Turing talked a bit about the relationship between librarians and information technology. It has been made very clear in our classes that this relationship is an incredibly vital one. I particularly liked the section Mutual (Mis?)Conceptions. I thought there were some really interesting ideas presented in this section.
The article by Clifford A. Lynch discussed institutional repositories and some of the challenges that they face. I thought one of the more valuable aspects of this article was the section regarding the cautions for institutional repositories. Institutional repositories can really provide a lot of scholarly communication if set up properly. Lynch lists several reasons why repositories can fail (such as incorrect policy, management failure or incompetence, or technical problems.) These maybe aspects of our future jobs that we will have to become well versed in, in order to be successful.
3 comments:
Hi Abby,
Who is Michael Lesk? Which book was his and does he have a scholarly background?
Dear Abby,
I agree that there is often confusion between digital libraries and the digital services that libraries provide. It is difficult sometimes for patrons especially to know which they need. I guess that makes it our job to help them see the light.
I also agree that people sometimes do not see the difference between useful tools to acces information and the information simply being there. In general, it seems to me that libraries have terrible online interfaces for their tools. If these were improved, more people would likely use them successfuly.
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