"Dewey Meets Turing" was an interesting article, which presented a lot of information that I either didn't know or hadn't even considered. I liked the interplay between what the computer scientists expected and the expectations of librarians. I never really considered that the World Wide Web would have been a complicating factor in this mix. I liked the point that while technology has altered the library profession, the author felt there were a lot of promising features in this new horizon. I especially liked the part about the increased opportunity for librarians to work in conjunction with scholarly writers. I like the idea of being partners with scholars and helping them in sharing their works with the world.
The Mischo article about Digital Libraries and their challenges was a nice history lesson. I guess I hadn't realized that there were so many universities which played a part in the whole Digital Libraries Initiative. I also hadn't really thought about just how far things have come in such a short period of time. The author cites the fact that as of the writing of the article, over 80,000 unique full-text journal articles were online. That's really amazing!
The final article about institutional repositories by Clifford A. Lynch was also really informative. I appreciated the emphasis on how this needed to be a group effort among librarians, IT people, records and archives managers, faculty, and the policymakers and officials at the university. I think this is something that is often overlooked. It's a pretty big effort involving a LOT of people! I think that Lynch maybe errs on the side of assuming that faculty aren't tech savvy at all. I think that a lot of newer faculty members would be quite comfortable with working in this medium. Yes, librarians would be a big asset, but I don't think that ALL academic scholars would be as clueless as Lynch suggests.
I think the article is little bit outdated (2003) as well as the representation of faculty as inexperienced with technology is overstated (I agree with your observations). I also agree that author raised important points and valid concerns associated with the establishment of IR. However, in my view, few questions left unanswered which are vital for IR success on the digital information market.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the connection and assistance that librarians can give to scholarly writers. I think this issue is more revelant now than ever. The article was written in 2005, so like the comment above, I thought it was a little behind the times.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the first article; I also appreciated the relationship between the computer scientists and librarians. Coming from a library background, it was nice to get an understanding of the others' view.
ReplyDeleteMany of our readings have been slightly outdated, but I can understand the reasoning in including them in the course. I was also interested in the love-hate relationship between computer science and library science. At least that's how I perceived it.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of the need for a group effort among librarians, IT staff, etc is exactly the kind of thing we talk about every week in the School Library Management class. Collaboration is the KEY to many successful outcomes.
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