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.