Comments on other's blogs

http://mfarina.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-8-readingviewing-notes-m-farina.html?showComment=1288228724142#c1436088190664947954
and

http://gemma2600.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-8-readings.html?showComment=1288228957682#c357048657070331247

Readings for November 1

Okay, I loved the HTML tutorial.  It was cool to see what all of those things with <word> really mean!  And I had fun actually playing around with stuff.  Do I think I could do this on my own?  With an unlimited amount of time and patience, yes. 

The cheatsheet was also very useful.  I think that these 2 resources, if used together, would maybe (hopefully) be of great use if I had to do something like this for a library.

With the CSS stuff, yeah...I'd need someone like Jiepu or Dr. He to walk me through it.  I don't find CSS as intuitive or user-friendly as the HTML stuff. 

The article about CMS and Georgia State was interesting, especially the part contrasting the open source option with the in-house option.  After reading this, I know that I would never make a good web development librarian.  Forget what I said in the 2nd paragraph.  :-)  However, I have a lot of respect for people who can do this stuff.

Muddiest Point, October 27th

I was a little confused about persistent URLs, specifically with the http://www.purl.org/ site by OCLC.  Do people have to let OCLC know that their URL has changed?  Is it required that people do this (register with OCLC) or is it just a good idea?  If it's not mandatory, about how many websites do this?  Thanks!

Comments for Week of October 25th

http://acovel.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-7-reading-notes.html?showComment=1287783236641#c8212472601878653719

and

http://saralis2600.blogspot.com/2010/10/reading-comments-for-1025.html?showComment=1287783475059#c1229294856721857283

Readings for October 25th

The Andrew Pace article "Dismantling Integrated Library Systems" brought up some interesting points.  I'd never really given much thought to how the old ILS wouldn't be ready to change with the advent of new technology and the explosive growth of the internet.  I really liked the point about open source software being so valuable to libraries.  I'd never really considered libraries as being one of the groups who would really be checking out open source software, so that was a real eye opener.

Jeff Tyson's article "How Internet Infrastructure Works" was yet another piece that made me aware of things I'd never considered.  I had no idea there was an Internet Society that oversees the Internet.  Likewise, I'd never heard of Point of Presence or Network Access Points before.  I loved the Domain Name Server example.  It was REALLY easy to understand.  The article was "dumbed down" just enough so that I felt really comfortable reading it.

The TED video with Sergey Brin and Larry Page was great.  How much did I love the cool rising dots on the spinning globe, showing Google's queries?  LOTS.  I was kind of surprised at the lack of queries coming from South America and Australia, though. Sure, there are fewer people there...but still.  I'd heard of the Google Foundation before, but it was still nice to hear about the kind of things its doing.  I was REALLY impressed with the innovation and fun culture (okay, so they SAY it's a fun culture) at Google.  I think letting employees engage in their own research interests for 20% of their time is a great idea! 

Assignment #4

Here is the URL for my CiteULike library:  http://www.citeulike.org/user/guybrariantim

I think this was REALLY useful!

Muddiest Point from FastTrack Weekend

When would someone want to use peer-to-peer networks?  I know that an example was given of Library Thing for something similar to p2p, but I'm still not clear when exactly using p2p would be most desirable. 

URLs for the Jing Assignment.

http://www.screencast.com/users/guybrariantim/folders/Jing/media/2ead353e-516f-4caa-9efc-04ea68ae71fa

(Note:  I don't have a microphone, so there is no audio.)  This is a demonstration on how to use the web page from the Barco Law Library database in order to do legal research.  I go through the various links found on the website. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54104639@N04/5062326448/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54104639@N04/5062324066/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54104639@N04/5061718409/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54104639@N04/5062330612/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54104639@N04/5061722059/

Comments on Michele F.'s Muddiest point and Gemma's reading.

http://mfarina.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-5s-muddiest-point-jing.html?showComment=1286417357193#c9070487627883977313

and

http://gemma2600.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-6-readings.html?showComment=1286417703115#c5336390848720411363

Reading for FastTrack Weekend

I thought that Karen Coyle's article was SO interesting!  Really.  I liked the way she explained RFIDs and how they are similar to, yet different from, bar codes.  Very nice and simple explanations!  I almost choked when she admitted that RFID tags can be circumvented, though.  Ha!  I found her idea that check-out functions might be turned over to patrons and virtually eliminating the circulation staff to be a chilling thought.  She pointed out (correctly, I might add) that for most patrons, the circulation staff is the face of the library and the only human contact those patrons might have in the building.  She's right--we cannot afford to overlook this technology and need to be prepared...one way or another.

The YouTube clip was quick, easy, and painless.  I thought he did a great job of explaining the LAN and PAN and MAN.  I had no idea there were such things like a PAN or MAN.  Wow.  I knew about LANs, of course. 

The Wikipedia article about Local Area Networks did a great job of explaining what exactly they are (I wasn't 100% sure before I saw the YouTube video and read the article). 

The Wikipedia article about the Computer Network was chock-full of new terms for me, yet they were all easy enough to understand.  I liked the part about the wired technologies and the wireless technologies.  I thought it did a good job of explaining each type.  And I really appreciated the explanations for the various type sof networks.  Who knew there were so many???  Okay, maybe everyone else already knew.  I did not.  As far as the basic hardware components, I'll add that to the list of things I never thought about before.  I had no clue what a repeater or a bridge really was.  Likewise, while I'd heard the terms switches and routers before, I wasn't quite sure what their functions were.  It was a very informative article.

Muddiest point for 10/04 class

I was a little confused by the entity discussion in class.  I wrote that entities are "anything about which data are to be collected and stored" and that an "entity can be anything, even abstract." 

But do entities HAVE to be abstract?  Is that a prerequisite?  This might not even matter, but it seemed like the lecture indicated at times that yes, entities are indeed abstract.

Thanks!