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!
Tim, Like you I hadn't considered open software as valuable to libraries either. And, yes, the dumbing down of the 2nd article help me to finally understand all that confusion associated with connecting to the internet each time I changed service providers. Luckily, today, my computer pretty much just connects by itself! Don't you think it would be fun to work for Google? Problem is, I don't have much of a clue about what goes on behind the scenes of the internet. Perhaps they could hire me as a "tester" to test a program's ease of use.
ReplyDeleteWhile I too think libraries using OSS is a good idea, I kind of got the impression from reading the article that the author thought it was misguided and wanted to discourage the use of it.
ReplyDeleteI too loved the domain name example and the World of Google. I think most of the dimness found in Austrailia and S. America on that globe may have been due to the time of day and the ruralness of much of the continents. I'm more suprised by the amount of activity going on in the US at night.