Finally... a portfolio

Dear Diary,

I am pleased to let you know that I have completed the portfolio. I sent it to my husband to help me review all my links while I was sleeping last night (we are 12 hours apart...). I realized how husbands could be really helpful here... I kind of affirm that from reading our fellow classmates' blog! It is a great relieve to receive an email from him this morning that all the links are working fine. He commented though I could have been more creative with my links, which I agree. I could have spent more time to make my links less conventional. Afterall, I love to play around with such stuff... but I recalled what Dr Alman said..."completion not perfection" and reckoned that what is important here is to fulfill the external style sheet requirement and move on... as there are still things waiting for me. But I will definitely come back to explore more!

Anyway, I will miss you for awhile. But you have showed me that blogging is not such a bad idea afterall. Halfway through the course, I forsake the idea of exposing you to family and friends since most of what I ranted to you about are really quite related to the course work and some of my thoughts may be a little too serious and obscure for people to appreciate my company. But you have definitely fulfilled your intent by showing what Tyan is up to and what she delved in this summer...

You did give me some inspiration and now it is time to consolidate my thinking.
Thanks for accompanying me through the term...

Tyan in Pittsburgh

Technology is supposed to increase efficiency...so what happened?

In LIS2000 or was it 2600, we discussed about how technology is supposed to increase efficiency i.e. cost of production or inputs is supposed to yield a higher output than previously when the technology does not exist. However, Dr Tomer commented about how libraries are now put through the wringer because libraries are instead spending more and more on manpower as technology advances.

That made me a little uncomfortable as I cannot quite reconcile with that. Not that I do not agree with Dr Tomer. In fact, yes logically, what Dr Tomer said is true - that technology is supposed to increase efficiency. Therefore, theoretically, manpower cost should go down when more technology is employed. However, what made me uncomfortable is because I seem to be acting and advocating just the opposite of that now! Let me explain - Our museums are putting up collections on the public domain. We are hiring dedicated people to clean-up the content systematically and make commentaries on these artefact that are suitable for online display. In fact, I am advocating the need to have dedicated people in the museums to do that. Chiefly because museum curators cannot be relied on to contribute in this aspect, because the traditional museum setup and professional framework do not reward curators for this new role museums are taking on. The new role of making their collections available online; the new role necessitated by the digital culture we are in today.

I would therefore opined that new roles and reward system need to be in place to encourage museums to make available their collections online.

Now, this seems to contradict what technology is supposed to do. Both arguments seem to make sense; therefore, are they indeed mutually exclusive of each other?

I am still wondering how to reconcile this...

"Literacy" will actually be killed by technology!

I am reading for the other class on a blog by a Futurist at the DaVinci Institute on technological trends and their implications on libraries' future development.

First, to digress a little, I was quite amused by the designation "Futurist". This corroborated what my husband commented on awhile ago that in a place like US, where the country is big, there are more opportunities and novel industries... like DaVinci Institute - "a futurist think tank"?! It is definitely something unheard of in small countries like back home where only pragmatism survives.

Here is a quote from the site I wish to highlight...

"Dr William Crossman, Founder/Director of the CompSpeak 2050 Institute for the Study of Talking Computers and Oral Cultures, predicts that as we say goodbye to keyboards we will begin the transition to a verbal society. He also predicts that by 2050 literacy will be dead."

What I thought was shocking is the prediction that "literacy will be dead". I thought literacy (reading and writing) is evergreen. But looks like I may be wrong. It is just another thing that will not be spared by technological advancement. We spoke about the impact of technology and digital media culture on the future generations in LIS2000 discussion board. The posit that such digital climate will alter thinking and brain functions may not be unfounded. Scarily, it may very well be true...

http://www.futuristspeaker.com/category/future-scenario/

On XML

I first heard of XML in year 2006 September when I was conversing with an information expert. I did not know what that was about but just branded it as something beyond me. I am glad I took this class and is now exposed to what all these internet related acronyms are.

I was talking to my husband a few days ago. He commented that importing of XML records to a new system can be quite a challenge. I guess he was referring to the top or external layers of the new system that govern the XML being different from the system of origin, thus the challenge? I've got to speak to him to find out more... it will be after I am done with all the pressing assignments.

Duplicate records - a common enemy?

When I was doing the Koha assignment importing MARC records into the system, I noticed something. There are usually more than one MARC record of the same book. The content of the fields can be very similar. I wonder if this is the same problem we experience in our maintenance of the collections database, where we have duplicate records of the same artefact in our database system. Theoretically, duplicate records are a taboo - They are not supposed to be there. There are rules in place, to ensure that the system is not misused and that there are no more than 1 record of each artefact in the system. However, as a result of perhaps ill-discipline, failure to mechanize all input processes or simply the innate inconsistency of humans to follow rules (such as to check for existing records before creating new ones), this is going to be a perennial problem even though we attempted on a one-time dedicated effort to clean out all duplicate records.

After conducting the Z39.50 searches for the Koha assignment and observing the same phenomenon, I felt a little more consoled that this problem of "duplicate records" we face does not seem to be unique to us. I wonder if there is a problem if libraries around the world choose to import a different set of MARC record for the same book during copy cataloging.

I will also be interested to know if there is a dedicated team or how big is the team at the Library of Congress or OCLC who maintains the MARC records database.

Postings on Blackboard has helped me a lot

Dear Diary,

I must admit that I have neglected you for awhile. I have some catching up to do here.

The past 2 weeks have been hectic. Taking 3 core classes is no joke especially when all the demands for all the classes came all at the same time. I am glad I make it through in one piece.

I just want to say that the class discussion board has been very useful in helping me tackle all the assignments so far. All the questions people post and all the generous supply of answers have made it easier for me do the assignments, which otherwise I will be struggling to understand.

I always find it amazing how people can tackle the problem and in addition, find time to contribute to help others... when I sometimes can barely cope to do the minimum that is required of us. This is also true of those who are frequent and magnanimous contributors I see on the museums listserv I subscribe to. I salute these people.

On SaaS

We have been talking about SaaS in class.

Here are my 2 cents worth. Not that these are any revolutionary ideas, but just to register a thought...
The biggest problem with SaaS and cloud is TRUST. It is true that lowering expenses may be a big benefit for users. But for big corporations, these are high-stakes information we are talking about e.g. financial data and information of clients. There need to be lot of security and high confidence to have them reside in a third party server somewhere out of their surveillance. On the other hand, for SMEs, the cost-savings may not be significant for them to risk compromising the integrity of their data. These seem to suggest that SaaS and cloud might not take-off, since neither the big boys nor the small players see benefits that outweigh the downside. However, with big names (such as Google and Amazon) putting their stake in this, the level of trust will increase, and cloud and SaaS will eventually be the command of the day. When cloud and SaaS becomes widely accepted and practiced, opportunities for smaller vendors will ensue.