Assignment #6

Here is the link to my website:
http://www.pitt.edu/~jvp3/index.htm
It was driving me insane because I was typing it in without the "index.htm" part and wondering why my pages were not there!  After an hour or so of banging my head against the keyboard, I looked at other people's sites and realized I wasn't typing the complete address.
Anyways, comments and constructive criticism (not that anyone would be mean) always appreciated.  I'm particulary interested to know if the colors look okay.  They look fine on my computer but I know other screens may be different. 

Comments for 11/21 to 11/27

Comments for the days including and falling in between November the twenty first and November the twenty seventh, two thousand and ten.

11/26
http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/11/assignment-6-website.html?showComment=1290823294017#c2403492476335415426
11/27
http://archivist-amy-in-training.blogspot.com/2010/11/week-12-social-software.html?showComment=1290912238117#c4089830660148872951

http://lostscribe459.blogspot.com/2010/11/week-12-reading-notes.html?showComment=1290913355450#c7285430667825782658

11/22/11 Muddiest Points

Google History
How does Google keep a record of search queries?  Does it follow IP addresses?  I would imagine that there are privacy issues concerning this especially if Google can keep records of search queries for years.  I would also assume that this history would be less useful in a library setting where you have multiple patrons using the same computer and making a variety of queries. 

Web Crawling
If web crawlers only have a certain amount of time to go through pages before they have to start over, what happens to the pages at the end of the queue?  Are they part of the massive list of web pages the search engine can never cover or does the crawler send out an "alert" indicating that it either needs to be given more time or that the other pages need to be picked up by another crawler? 

Comments for 11/14-11/20

11/15
http://pratt2600.blogspot.com/2010/11/1115-reading-notes.html?showComment=1289835684953#c8519360147575111377
11/20
http://mszewczak.blogspot.com/2010/11/reading-notes-week-11.html?showComment=1290309366089#c3817390433239058446

http://archivist-amy-in-training.blogspot.com/2010/11/week-11-web-search-and-oai-protocol.html?showComment=1290309928178#c901832122227664093

Week 9 Comments

11/12
http://mszewczak.blogspot.com/2010/11/muddiest-point_12.html?showComment=1289622071489#c4003418303248369932
11/13
http://the2600.blogspot.com/2010/11/week-10-musings.html?showComment=1289698165455#c6741931214032997104

11/15 Reading Notes

Lynch’s “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age”

                In archives and records management, I often hear the words “institutional repository” being used to describe places where records are stored, preserved, and managed.   Lynch has developed his own definition that is similar in purpose but broader in what is managed (digital materials) and in who maintains it (librarians, information technologists, archives and records managers, faculty, administrators, etc.)   It takes the responsibilities of records management and applies it directly to digital material (and specifically universities.)   Scholarship has certainly evolved in the digital age and it offers both opportunities to document these changes as well as challenges in figuring out how to do so, especially when those scholars doing the communicating are less concerned with managing it themselves.  While I agree with Lynch that the “complex, cumbersome ‘gate keeping’” policies can be a deterrent, I disagree that “simple, low-barrier-to-submission” is the solution.  Simple, yes; low-barrier, no.  As archives and records managers have already learned, ambiguous collection policies can lead to a glut of unnecessary and unusable information.  Lynch’s foreboding conclusion that future failures are likely to lead to a great loss of information also does not offer much confidence in the system.   

Mischo’s “Digital Libraries: Challenges and influential Works”

                This article shows that, while there are still many challenges to effective search and discovery of digital resources, there are many institutions and companies trying to tackle the problem and in many different ways.  It is impressive how many publishers now provide online journal titles which I would assume means that, despite worries that online versions are killing print sources, publishers do see this as a valid and useful dissemination tool.  I also find it interesting how search and retrieval techniques are being compared to Google which says a lot about how people like to search and the power of Google.

Paepcke, Garcia-Molina, and Wesley’s “Dewey Meets Turning: Librarians, Computer Scientists, and the Digital Libraries initiative”

                I found this article both informative and entertaining.  It is interesting to read about both sides of the story between librarians and computer scientist after “And then the Web happened…” particularly about how both sides viewed the same issues (such as information retrieval) from different points of view.  The Web caused an explosion of information to scatter across the far reaches of the globe.  Librarians and computers scientist are trying to find ways to organize this chaos into something we can use.  Librarians do it the traditional way with categorization and computer scientists do it with linking.  While this has lead to some tensions between the two, this article makes me believe that we are trying to work things out.  

Assignment 5

User Name: JVP3
Bookshelf: JVP3-Forgeries
http://upitt01-staff.kwc.kohalibrary.com/cgi-bin/koha/virtualshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=128

I personally found the Koha MARC record search feature a little problematic.  For one thing, it would not let me search for only an author's name.  I tried to add the book price to all of my records and in the process discovered that it is rather difficult to find that information online.  The creating of the virtual bookshelf was quite simple except for having to keep a separate list of barcodes.  Is there a way of looking up barcodes in Koha if, heavens forbid, you loose the barcodes? 
And just a side note: I got a kick out of the Jing video when, upon getting search results for the title "python", the top result was titled "And now for something completely trivial."