Assignment #3-Citeulike

My three collections (folksonomy, social tagging and zine cataloging) are saved here:

http://www.citeulike.org/user/elaina/library

Unit 6 reading

Re: Karen Coyle's article, I am really torn on RFID chips and their place in the library. I think they could be incredibly useful for locating lost materials and for preventing theft in libraries, but it seems to me that they could also be extremely invasive and could quite easily breach a patron's deserved privacy. It would be all too easy to "track" a patron this way--and this frankly makes me very uncomfortable.

LAN technology is obviously pretty crucial for libraries. The ability to for one geographic area to have a single shared network connection between all their machines makes things like printing, database subscription and IP authentication far easier to implement for students, libraries and their staff. This is a great technology that can hopefully only be improved in time.

I actually had no idea there were so many kinds of computer networks. This is kind of mind-blowing, in a really good way. As I said above, this sort of technology is crucial for a library's success, and we can only hope that faster and better networks continue to be built.

Comments

Liz's blog

Jonah's blog

Muddiest point #2 (I'm really behind on these...)

I'm increasingly nervous that cataloging as we know it is a dying art--that our catalogers are being swallowed by metadata. Am I alone in thinking that knowing how to "crosswalk" data is becoming more important than knowing AACR2 and MARC?!?

Flickr assignment (#2)

This is my Flickr. I have a set made for this class (the LIS2600 set) but for some reason the thumbnails don't display in the set's photostream. For this reason, it's best to just look at the photostream, where the screen display and thumbnail versions live.

Assignment #1

I have to take issue with the basis of Clifford Lynch's argument in his paper Information Literacy and Information Technology Literacy: New Components in the Curriculum for a Digital Culture. His thesis is deeply in his presumption that users have a.)the know-how and b.) access to computers and technology. Tangentially, what about those who simply don't care if they're computer literate--are they just going to disappear? What of non-traditional users, of the elderly, those who don't use English as their first language; what of disabled users? Lynch hasn't allowed for them. His argument states that understanding technology will be essential for success in "all walks of life." While I recognize that computer literacy is desirable and important, I simply can't accept it as the end all be all that Lynch is making it out to be.


Jason Vaughan's look at Lied Library in his case study was thoughtful and descriptive (if not a little obvious). He provided a quite balanced look at both the challenge and the ease of running the technical aspects of a large academic library. Perhaps it's because this article is fairly dated, but I wasn't all that surprised by any of his points (in fact, several times, I caught myself rolling my eyeys and thinking "DUH"). Nonetheless, this article is likely a good starting point for those totally out of the loop in the digital library world.

Muddiest point 1

At this point, I'm mostly unsure of due dates for assignments. I guess I'm confused between assignment 1 & the creation of the blog itself. I think the reading assignments are due tonight and the blog is due on Tuesday? Not sure.