Week 5- Reading Response

Imaging Pittsburgh

I found this article to be extremely, extremely interesting and will actually be passing it on to my branch’s Historical Society (they are in year two of a projected ten-year digitization project). I really like that there are already collaborative efforts out there to unify similar collections and make access easier for the end-user. Really easier, not just theoretically. I think this report is so clear that even without specific details, it gives a loose guide to the main challenges and requirements of such an effort. That being said, there are a few things that caught my eye.

(page 3) Around figures 2 and 3, the author says “other diverse and competing views of the city include…” and then describes a collection of utilitarian photos (street conditions, paving, curbs, etc) contrasted with a general collection that demonstrates the “artistic nature and value of similar sites.” My question is: competing? Why not complementary? Why not display them side by side and maybe provide a really interesting and fully developed perception of the city? To have pre-demolition photos of that caught Lower Hill in its prime as background up next to photos designed to make Lower Hill look good might really show the neighborhood in a truer/fuller light. At any rate, they are not competing to be the authoritative view, they are complementing each other to provide something more than the individual pieces.

When the author refers to the lack of communication outside group meetings in the Challenges and Accomplishments section on page 4, he says that while he does not know, he believes that it results from a combination of “everyone knowing exactly what to do and doing just that or they are so busy doing other jobs that they don’t have time to communicate.” Unbelievably to me, they don’t communicate despite the fact that when the groups met, “ideas were exchanged that caused each institution to reconsider its method and incorporate new (and often better) ideas” (page 6). I just want to note that while everyone says that email and technology make collaborating and communicating easier, but the fact is that when you have actual work to do, email is nothing but a giant pain in the neck, regardless of what benefit and work-help you might gain from using it. When you have a meeting on a certain day and time, you plan your work schedule around it, but when you just have to email someone, tell me you, too, don’t put it off and spend as little time as possible thinking about it when you write it. I hate meetings, but unless you are constrained by geography, there is nothing better than face to face, or at the very least telephone. It’s actual give-and-take, heat-of-the-moment communication—email is no better than a letter, just faster.

On the same reference, the idea that it is taking so very long for libraries to start aggressively and actively sharing experiences and practices is ridiculous. Many believe that you can’t apply the Kuhnian model of normal science to LIS, but I think this is the one part of our field where it’s necessary. Imagine if we had years of scientific method-ly recorded information about various different service approaches and collections offered? Imagine if libraries published their efforts on a level similar to research scientists? Imagine if the publish or perish mantra held true and head librarians across the country were creatively applying new technologies to traditional goals in order to write papers? I think it could be very good (as long as it wasn’t as extreme as in academia). Yes normal science is derivative and unproductive for scientific progress purposes, but because we are not quite after the same thing, derivative research in library services could be more generally applied.



ACRL article on YouTube and Libraries

I wonder how much YouTube paid Ms. Webb to write this? Actually, it’s quite an effective piece of advertising aimed at the mid-career librarian who does not use the internet or socialize with those who do. The only surprising thing is that it’s in an ALA publication at all, unless you consider it friendly, no-pressure, professional development?



Data Compression from Wikipedia

Astonishingly easy to understand because it’s so very clearly written. I am all about the lossless data—it just offends me to think that anything would be lost. As for the limits of human sensory perception: I can’t feel it when a mosquito bites me (usually), but I have a full blown sensory reaction to the event. I know that’s a bad analogy, but I kind of think that great art operates on a level beyond our total understanding, and if you remove color or sound tones and effects simply because they are not measurably perceived by the human senses, you could wind up removing whatever it was that made the art great.