Readings 2

Readings 2, Paper 1

Crane, G. (1998). The Perseus Project and Beyond: How Building a Digital Library Challenges the Humanities and Technology. D-Lib Magazine, 4(1).http://dx.doi.org/cnri.dlib/january98-crane

Publication information:

  1. It was published in 1998.
  2. He worked on the Perseus project in the Department of Classics at Tufts University.
  3. D-Lib Magazine is an online publication.
Take-Aways:
  • The Perseus Project is being used by random citizens to satisfy their curiosity and make them more educated.
  • Scholars do a bad job of getting their ideas to the general public.
  • In the Perseus Project, they spent most of their time working on ways to convert the data into a consistent format.  This made it easy to create new frontends.
  • He argues that new directions in humanities will come from young researchers.
  • He looks at some ways to expand the library.
Questions:
  • How could we add urls with links to sources and additional information to today's videos?
  • Did people really use the system?
  • The Persesus website is now at version 4.  How has it expanded since this was written?
  • He gives some examples of new ways things could be published online.  What are some more ways?

Readings 2, Paper 2

Fox, E. A., et al. (1997). Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations: An International Effort Unlocking University Resources. D-Lib Magazine, 3(8). http://dx.doi.org/cnri.dlib/september97-fox

Publication information:

  1. It was published in 1997.
  2. They are from Virginia Tech.
  3. D-Lib Magazine is an online publication.
Take-Aways:
  • They talk about the history of the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
  • They have tools that read data from several sources including Microsoft Word and LaTeX.
  • People want to restrict the dissemination of their research.
  • The non-technical aspects of a digital library are non-trivial.
Questions:
  • What can be done to deal with the non-technical challenges related to a digital library?
  • How can multiple digital libraries work together?
  • How has sharing documents changed since 1997?

Readings 2, Paper 3

    Greenstein, D., & Thorin, S. E. (2002). The Digital Library: A Biography (No. 109). Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources. http://www.clir.org/PUBS/reports/pub109/pub109.pdf

    Publication information:

    1. It was published in 2002.
    2. Daniel Greenstein was a librarian for the California Digital Library, and Suzanne Thorin is the dean of Libraries at Indiana University.
    3. It was published as a report by the Council on Library and Information Resources.
    Take-Aways:
    • They do case studies of 6 different digital libraries out of a set of 21 well-known libraries.
    • They look at how a young digital library will organize itself.
    • Competition with other libraries can hurt the cause.
    Questions:
    • Do these six libraries form a reasonable approximation of other libaries?
    • How do digital libraries change as they get older?