The Muddiest Point - Week 11

I have no Muddiest Point

Unit 11 Readings

Social Aspects of Digital Libraries: Final Report

I really appreciated how this final report got to the core values of partisanship between the technical and social aspects of digital libraries. Digital libraries will need to coalesce these two different approaches if they are to become truly invaluable research and preservation tools. 

I thought the research into how the users assumptions and prejudices matter just as much as their needs when they are judging a user interfaced was an interesting way to dig deeper into what users are expecting. And the idea that reliable and useful methods may lose value simply because they do not address these factors. 

The Infinite Library

I wonder what the author's view of the Google Books project is now that it's exploded into such a mess of lawsuits and drama? 

Personally, I think there are both advantages and disadvantages to allowing Google's project to take place. One the one hand, Google was right when it said "At Google we’re good at doing things at scale.” Google has less governmental and institutional beauracracy to wade through. They'd don't have to justify the budget to a cash strapped library board, state, congress, whatever. And digitization on this scale would have been a huge undertaking, both financially and in man hours. It's very unlikely any library in the US would have ever been able to accomplish anything like what Google proposed. 

Of course, putting the future of preservation and digitaization into the hands of a company who could put the kabash on the entire project at anytime, despite the wants or needs of the public, is a bit terrifying. And that isn't even touching on the copyright issues that many authors and publishers had with the project (I personally think both sides of that argument had a point.)

And while writing, this happened http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/14/google-books-ruling-is-a-huge-victory-for-online-innovation/

A Viewpoint Analysis of the Digital Library

Unlike much of the internet, digital libraries have focused more on what the developers thought was necessary and less about the users needs. This article discussed converging the two. 

The Muddiest Point - Week 10

I do not have a muddiest point this week