Search

The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks. In the United States, the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) serves as the Internet "backbone" (a very high speed network that connects key regions across the country). The NSFNet will likely evolve into the National Research and Education Network (NREN) as defined in the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. For the Internet to exist, there must be connections between computers and agreements on how they are to communicate. These connections, which can consist of any of a variety of communication media or methods, are usually established within areas or regions by the particular networking organization with authority or economic interest in that area. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) currently defines how Internet computers, from personal computers to mainframes, are to communicate. Electronic mail (e-mail) can be used by two Internet users to exchange messages with each other, distribute messages to a list of subscribers, support electronic discussions, or distribute electronic journals (e-journals). The Telnet facility for remote login enables computer users to establish connections with bibliographic databases, campus information systems of various universities, full-text databases, data files, and other online services. The File Transfer Protocol enables the user to transfer virtually any kind of file that can be stored on a computer from one Internet-connected computer to another. Tools such as Gopher, WAIS, and World Wide Web make information on the network easier to locate and use. Although the use of NSFNet has been limited to non-profit research and educational uses, dialogues have recently begun about commercialization and privatization of the its infrastructure. (10 references) (BBM)

Presents the 2002 economic predictions for information industry. Thoughts of Stephen Abram, Vice President of Corporate Development for Micromedia, Ltd./IHS Canada on technological innovations; President of Arnold Information Technology, Stephen E. Arnold, on the importance of information retrieval methods; Matt Dunie, President of Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, on how to recover from the dot-com fallout; Others.

The following is an editorial by Roy Tennant, Manager, eScholarship Web & Services Design, California Digital Library. I recently took library catalogs to task for being the wrong solution for the right problem--general information discovery. But I believe that federated or cross-database search tools now available on the market are the correct solution for unifying access to a variety of information resources. These tools can search not only library catalogs but also commercial abstracting and indexing databases, web search engines, and a variety of other databases, while often merging and de-duplicating (a.k.a. de-duping) results. The market is still in an early stage of development, with products varying quite a bit in features, stability, and ease of implementation. While some libraries may be perfectly happy doing a minimum amount of configuration to the" out of the box" interfaces of these products, a significant number of libraries will not.

Discusses institutional repositories that accept deposits of scholarly papers at universities. Benefits of repositories; Web-based systems; Software systems, such as ePrints from the University of Southampton in Great Britain and DSpace, developed through a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries and Hewlett-Packard; Implementation models, including distributed and semidistributed models; Open Archives Initiative Harvesting Protocol; Economic models; Subject terminologies; Publication and removal.

The article discusses the danger of predicting future technological trends. The author points out that many people were expecting "teletext" to revolutionize information retrieval, however the system become obsolete with the advent of the Internet. Making predictions based on narrow assumptions is a common but dangerous practice, and the author offers advice on avoiding pitfalls.

This article focuses on the flow of information for digital content. A description of the program 1001 that allows Macintosh computer users to preview newly uploaded photographs to the Flickr website. Search engines for blogs are also discussed. It is stated that librarians have a role in trapping this information flow.

The article reflects on ways that libraries could be improved in the future. It suggests that new easy-to-use information searching tools that are as compelling as Google and Yahoo! should be developed for use in libraries. The author believes that the American Library Association needs to evolve to meet the needs of its members. It also suggests that collaborative efforts are needed to solve problems that many libraries face.

The article reports on the Open Content Alliance, a service that makes the full text of out of copyright materials open to the public online. The search engine is still suffering from technical difficulties. Libraries pay 10 cents per page to the service to have their books scanned with nondestructive scanning equipment. The author lauds the openness of the collaboration, in contrast with the closed agreements made with Google for a similar service, Google Library.

The article offers information on how to search digital libraries and use search engines. Web search engines such as Google and Yahoo try their best to recommend some items over others, and now libraries are trying to do this for their holdings. The classic Google-style ranking algorithm takes into account not only the popularity of a particular web page but also the popularity of the web sites that point to it. Libraries can do something similar if they make use of circulation data, and OCLC is experimenting with just that. The Research Libraries Group uses commercial software from Recommind and a finely tuned algorithm to rank search results. Meanwhile, we at the California Digital Library (CDL) are experimenting with different techniques for ranking and recommending within library catalogs.

Evaluates Google Scholar, a Google service for searching scholarly information. Report that Google Scholar searches Web-based content including open access material; Discussion of the rank order of search results on Google Scholar; Cooperation between Google Scholar and libraries; Failure of the Scholar interface to sort results by publication date; Opinion that Google Scholar will not replace the need for library-based metasearch services.

This article discusses digital libraries and information storage. Standard consumer disk storage can now be had for less than a dollar a gigabyte, and the cost continues to fall. While the price drops, available storage sizes increase. Storage options are not limited to hard drives. Further out on the horizon are more amazing storage technologies, such as holographic devices that use light instead of the magnetic charges of current hard drives. Virtually every electronic device comes with more or less data storage-and frequently with the ability to accept storage cards to increase storage. MP3 players such as Apple's iPod often have large capacities (e.g., 40 GB) that can store just about anything. The main lesson of massive and inexpensive disk storage is that disk storage is no longer a credible barrier to anything.

The article discusses the problems with digital libraries. As an experiment, go to a number of library catalogs in your region and attempt to limit your search to items available online and in full text. With many catalogs, there is no apparent way to limit a search to online resources. Going from library catalog to library catalog is a particularly frustrating experience, since almost every library feels the need to state the option differently. Labels I have encountered in a quick survey include E-books, Electronic Resources, Web Resources, Internet, Online/Computer Resources, Computer File, Online Resources, Electronic Resources (web), and Internet Resources. Many systems do not display a link to an item until the "full record" is displayed, thereby requiring the user to do about twice as much clicking than if a link had been on the initial results screen.

Presents innovations that can be used at libraries. Description of library bookmarklets, a small JavaScript program; Features of the xISBN service form OCLC; Function of the OpenURL resolver page from the British Office of Library Networking.

Keeping up has never been easy, although we can probably be forgiven if we think it is harder today. From print magazines to journals, from electronic discussion lists to Web logs, there seem to be more sources of information than ever. The idea of a current awareness service is nothing new. What is new is that Web-based technologies have made it easier to discover and subscribe to these services and to create and manage them. These technologies are increasingly used for other functions, such as automatically updating Web sites. The linchpin technology is RSS, variously described as "RDF Site Summary" (referring to the Resource Description Framework), "Rich Site Summary," and "Really Simple Syndication." But RSS, as used on most sites, has nothing to do with RDF. It is a very simple XML syntax for describing a "channel" or "feed" of information that consists of "items" (e.g., news items) with titles and URLs. Feeds are typically read through an "aggregator," which allows the information to be presented in a variety of ways. Feeds can be either Web-based or special client software. Client software is available for all platforms, and Peter Scott's Web page "RSS Readers" lists the options. Where it gets really interesting is using RSS to update web sites automatically. Jonathan Eisenzopf, in "Making Headlines with RSS," offers a Perl module for both maintaining and using (as in a web site) RSS feeds (XML::RSS, dependent upon XML::Parser).

Offers the author's thoughts on technology and libraries. Suggestions on how to better serve library patrons with print and online cataloging; Co-branding as a way to offer local services while a user is viewing remote resources; Reference to papers on the Web pertaining to information searches.