Week 5 Readings

1.) Wikipedia Article - Data Compression

I really like the fact that we start off each weeks readings with a Wikipedia article - they provide a good overview for what we will read about more in depth later. Again, this article was a good overview though it did not go as in depth as some of the other ones.

Data compression is also known as source coding. It is the process of encoding information using fewer bits. Both the sender and the receiver must understand the coding schema - you must know how to decode it. Data compression is useful because it reduces the consumption of expensive resources (such as hard disk space or bandwidth).

There are two different kinds of data compression - loseless and lossy. Loseless compression uses statistical redundancy to represent data more concisely and without error. It is used more for text-based compression. Lossy data compression is possible if some fidelity loss is acceptable. Lossy compression "rounds off" some of the less important information. This is used more with visual or audio data - where some loss of quality is okay and you still get the same basic idea.

2.)Data Compression Basics

As blackboard said these were long documents but did a good job in covering the basics of many different kinds of data compression. The articles were technical enough, but not so technical that you couldn't understand them. It did a good job of balancing the technical jargon, while still explaining the concepts to you in plain language.

I really liked the articles definition of data compression, it "lets you store more stuff in the same space, and it lets you transfer the stuff in less time, or with less bandwidth." This is a defintion anybody can understand, and does a good job of summing up what data compression is.

This article had way to much information to do a good job of summing it up in this blog, so I'm just going to point out the one thing I found the most interesting/didn't know before reading this article. I didn't realize that moving pictures are acutally just a sequence of individual images. So to compress them you compress each image individually (most likely into a JPEG). To replay them the playback device must be able to decompress the images quickly enough to display them at the required speed.

3.)Galloway Imaging Pittsburgh

This article was very informative and provided a lot of useful real world information for future archivists and librarians. The article was about a 2002 grant Pitt received to provide online access to photographic collections. Over 20 collections from 3 different instituions provided for over 7,000 images being placed online. On the website that the images are at you can do a keyword search, read about the collections and their contents, explore the images by time, place, or theme, and order image reporductions.

What I liked most about the article, and what was most informative, was the real world problems they encountered, and how they dealt with them. Although a lot of the problems they encountered were due to the fact that this project was a collaboration of three institutions the problems and solutions were very informative. Selection will always be a big problem with grants and projects of this nature. They ran into this, especially with split collections. They also ran into metadata challenges because each individual institution wanted a specific kind of metadata for their images. Copyright issues were also a problem, and I liked their solution. They provide a generic copyright warning and also an individual one specific to each image and institution, to covery all their basis.

I took a look at the website that the images are displayed on and it is very well done and has an enormous amount of very informative and cool pictures. I especially liked the sections on maps. Overall, this was a very good article and very informative for future archivists.

Week 4 Muddiest Point

I'm not sure what schema is in general. I understood what was meant by metadata schema but not what schema in general is.

Week 4 Comments

My comments on Jon's muddiest point

My comments on DJ's blog

Week 4 Readins (Addition)

I totally forgot I wanted to add some personal comments at the end of section on Gilliland. I particularly liked this article - it was probably my favorite article we have read so far. There have to be thousands of articles available on metadata and I'm really glad he chose this article that related metadata to libraries and archives so well. This article gave you a really good perspective on metadata in general and how it relates to the field we are all interested in.

Great article and great choice in making us read it!!!

Week 4 Readings

1.) Wikipedia - Database Article

This article provided an overview of databases and their features.

Databases can be either row or column orientated. Database Management Systems is the software that organizes the storage of the data. It controls the creation, maintenance, and use of the data. Most DBMS's are relational and have five components: the interface drivers, SQL Engine, Transactions Engine, Relational Engine, and Storage Engine.

There are many different types of databases, many of them highly specialized. It seemed that an operational database is the one an average person would use on a day to day basis. Databases make use of indexing, which can increase the speed of the database. Indexing allows a set of tables and rows matching a certain criteria to be located quickly. Indexing takes up a lot of storage room, and must be updated consistently, which takes time.

Like all things dealing with computers, security is a big issue for databases. They have three main things to enforce security. 1. Access Control - who can and cannot access the database, and what they can do to it. 2. Auditing Logs - What has been done, when, and by whom. 3. Encryption - data is encoded and then deciphered

Locking is how databases handle multiple, concurrent operations. Only one process at a time can modify the same data. Databases can handle multiple locks at the same time.

Overall, this article was a good general overview of databases.

2.) Gilliland - Introduction to Metadata

Metadata is "data about data" - it is widely used but understood in many different ways by different people. All information objects have three features which can be reflected through metadata. 1. Content - relates to what the object contains or is about - intrinsic to an information object. 2. Context - indicates who, what, where, why, how of an objects creation. 3. Structure - formal set of associations within objects.

Libraries and museums use metada - the information they create to arrange, describe, track, and enhance access to the information. Their goal first and foremost is to provide intellectual and physical access to materials. Larege part of archives and museums use of metadata is on context - preserving context.

The structure of metada is important - it can provide visual cues to researchers. The more structure you have the more searching and manipulating you can do. Metadata is also used in digitization, primarily as descriptors of the context.

The primary functions of metadata are: Creation and reuse - either created digitally or converted into digital format, Administrative/Descriptive - metadata should be added to descriptors especially dependign upon the intended use of the object, Organization and Description - describing and organizign objects in a collection, Validation - prove the authenticity and trustworthiness, Disposition - metadata is key component in documenting disposition of objects.

3.) Miller - Dublin Core.

This article was about DCMI. This article was pretty basic and didn't really say all that much, yet at the same time was very confusing. I'm fairly good with computers and know a lot about them, yet I didn't really have any idea what this article was saying - or more importantly what it was trying to convey to the reader. It basically just listed the main aspects of DCMI in very technical terms and nothing else.

What I think the main points of it were that they realized there would never be a "true" set of semantics so in making DCMI they had to make the ability to mix semantics necessary. You must refine general semantics to say something more specific. The ability to specify a particular encoding system is critical. Things may be written and said in different ways, but they need to be written in the same code.

Standardds are necessary for DCMI to work on a global level. The standards must be as precise as possible.

Overall, I really didn't understand the point of this article (not the point of why we had to read it - I understand why we had to read about DCMI - the actual main point of the article. And even though I have a fairly good understanding of computers and understood most of the technical jargon in teh article it was still confusing. I'm sure most people were probably even more confused than I as. Oh, well - it will be a good thing to learn in class this week at least.

Week 3 Muddiest Point

I really didn't have a muddiest point again this, I pretty much understood everything we talked about in class. I will give my input again on what I thought other people might be confused by though. During one of the breaks I was talking to some people who were confused about command line OS. They seemed to think that everything you did had to be done by command line (ex. the one person thought that to type in a word processor you had to use a command line for everything you typed). It might be easier to explain to them that modern day command line OS are just like DOS that we all used to use. You only need to type in a command to say open a program - then the program is used just like it would be on a GUI OS. Also, that a lot of modern command line OS's are similar to GUI OS's in that you can now point and click to perform basic tasks.

Week 2 Flickr Assignment

The URL for my week 2 Flickr Assignment is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42358515@N07/sets/72157622239735561/

Week 3 Readings

1.) Thurott, "An update on the Windows Roadmap"

This article provided an overview of the future of three different Windows operating Systems.

Windows XP - as an XP and Linux user (I have my hard drive partitioned to run both) this section was the most useful to me. Here I learned that SP3 was just released for XP, and that Windows has extended support for XP until 2014. These were both important for me. It also provided information on downgrading to XP if you are buying a new computer that comes with Vista standard.

Windows Vista - this section provided important updates that Vista has. Vista has improved their security and fixed most of the compatibility problems it was experiencing when first released. I had never heard of the "telemetry system," so that was an interesting read. Vista employs the "telemetry system" which gathers anonymous information about how customers are using Vista. Information gathered from this was put into SP1.

Windows 7 - the article also talks a little bit about Windows new OS, Windows 7, due to be released in early 2010. They are taking feedback about Vista into consideration for this new OS.

2.) Mac OS X Articles

I have used Macintosh's numerous times before, but have never really studied them or their OS, so this article was the most informative and interesting to me. It was nice to study something I have used before, but know almost nothing about. One of the big things I did not realize about Mac OS X is that it has been used exclusively on Mac's since 2002, and that they have released different versions of it since then. I thought that Mac OS X was similar to Vista - Mac's newest OS and not that Mac OS X 10.6 was their newest OS (similar to how Linux OS are released). Although it is clear to see now, I did not realize Mac was a Unix based OS. OS X is currently used in servers, the iPhone, and iPod Touch, as well as on personal computers.

OS X was a complete overhall and huge step up from OS 9. Some of the better features were its improved ability to run multiple applications, and visual improvements like the Aqua theme. The XCode which supports C, C++, and Java was also new to me. Some newer versions of OS X have had some hardware issues with older computers though (as have Windows OS).

Mac's transistion to Intel processors brings out an interesting point and problem I would like to make about Apple computers. Mac computers transitioned from PowerPC to Intel processors and there have been some compatibility issues between the two.

One of the main problems I have always thought about with Apple computers is that they are basically the exact opposite of open source. Because Mac operating systems can only be run on Apple computers it does not allow for the best minds, and competition to be making the best computers and software. Apple has only a limited number of employees workign on improving their hardware and software. Windows allows for competition because anybody can make a computer using the best parts available and install one of their OS's on that computer. Mac has limited themselves to the hardware and software their corporation can come up with. The transition from an Apple related processor (PowerPC) to a third part processor (Intel) shows that Apple has too limited resources to keep on top of the game for every component of a computer.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading these articles because I did not know alot about Macintosh operating systems.

3.) Garrels, "Introduction to Linux. A Hands on Guide"

I also enjoyed this article on Linux. I am familiar with Linux (I run both Linux and Windows on my computer - though I use Windows approximately 75% of the time) so it was nice for me to read about some of the stuff I didnt' know about Linux. I didnt' know that Unix was developed by Bell Labs or that C was developed specifically for Linux. I didn't realize that Linux was named after a guy named Linus who started to develop it after PC's became powerful enough to run Unix.

Linux is now available on desktops, laptops, servers, PDA's, mobiles, and a host of other things. Linux is now much more user friendly than it was in its beginning days. Linux has even incorporated some GUI's to ease the transition from Windows to Linux. Linux is an open source piece of software. Open source means that anybody can improve or change the software, as long as they keep the original available. Open source generally gets thigns done better and faster, becuase you have a ton of people with different computers and backgrounds workign on making something or solving some problem. Linux is completely free and is extremely secure. One of the problems with Linux and open source is that there are to many distributions. One must make sure that the distribution they wish to install will run on the hardware their computer has.

Muddiest Point Week 2

As I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the hardware of computers I was not really confused by any of this weeks lecture, and don't really have a muddiest point.

Because of this I will give my input into what I think the other students may have been confused by - or what you could have explained a little more through. Although binary is an extremely complex thing to understand, and the majority of librarians and archivists are never going to need to know binary, I think you could go into a little more detail on how binary works. I think it is always important to have at least a basic understanding of the tools you are working with. Binary is an important part of the computer and could have been explained a little more thorough.

Muddiest Point Week 1

Information Technology - from both the class lecture and readings it seems to me that IT is acquiring, storing, managing, etc. information. IT's goal is to help people create and use information. From the words information and technology this makes perfect sense to me and seems to be the correct definition of IT.

Why then do when most people think of IT in the job market it is generally thought of as the "computer people?" The people that come to your office and fix your computer, get rid of your viruses, install new software. IT in the public's view (at least in the corporate world) seems to refer to computer technicians or computer scientists - the people that fix your computer - and has nothing to do with information. Is this a legitimate description of an IT professional and if not how did this public perception come about?

Week 1 Readings

1.) Vaughan, J. Lied Library

An overview of UNLV's new library building (Lied Library) and the technological advances and upgrades that came with the new building. This article was a good basic reference for anybody in the planning stages of building a new library (academic, public, etc.). This article is fairly basic, and anybody planning a new library would need to do more in-depth research. Overall, this article provides a wide range of categories for planners to look into and research further.
Some of the main points that I found either interesting or odd were:

• The ability to replace over 600 computers while the library was still open. Key points he made about this were that the staff acquired the software to the new computers early so they cold familarize themselves with it. The storage and delivery company really seemed to help them out with spacing shipments out.
• Space considerations - as the library goes so does the staff - don't forget about the staff's increasing space needs while plannign a library
  
• Don't underestimate security - both physical and computer security

The one main problem I had with the article is that Vaughan talks a lot about finances and where to get the money from for all of the upgrades, security, etc. needs. He offers no solution on how to obtain the money, and does not tell you were Lied Library received their money from.

2.)Lynch, Clifford Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy

Lynch (that word won't unitalicise for some reason ) believes tehre are to general perspectives in Information Technology Literacy
1. Skills in the use of tools (Word, files, etc.) - these are more superficial and info tech needs to be more complicated than this
2. How technology and infrastructure work - principles of the technological world - use this in the broad view, not just computers - very limitedly taught in schools - he aruges that this is important to everyone not just those in a field related to it

This article was a good overview of both information literact and information technology literacy. I really liked how he talked about how information technology literacy effects information literacy.

3.) OCLC report: Information Format Trends

I really enjoyed this article and thought it was well written. It provides a good overview of their point that: modern day consumers no longer care how they get their information (the container) just that they get it (the content). The article refers to the consumers as "format agnostic," and that content is no longer format dependent. Libraries and other content sellers must accomadate and change their views to this new consumer demand.

The section on Marshall McLuhan was especially intersting to me. In one of my upper level undergraduate classes i wrote a research paper on the "Rhetoric of the Millennials" (the teen/lower 20's generation that grew up in the late 90's and 2000's - the generation after Generation X) in which I extensively studied McLuhan and "Understanding Media." I thought the authors did a good job of integrating McLuhan's "the medium is the message" into this article, and that text is the internet's media.

I had never heard of "payload" e-mail before and liked the way they used this concept to interpolate data.

The article did a good job in bringing the idea that their is a major social change underway to light. It also brings the problems of social publishing to light; the fact that there are no licenses for blogs or wikis.

The articles says that libraries used to be unparalleled collectors of content, and that this is no longer true. As a society we no longer lack content, but as the digital world continues to grow we are low lackign context.

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