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Train the user or get better user interfaces?
An article in The Atlantic concludes that, "So maybe our greater emphasis shouldn't be on training users to work with bad search tools, but to improve the search tools."
- Google-Trained Minds Can't Deal with Terrible Research Database UI, By Alan Jacobs, The Atlantic, (Feb 27 2012).
The oxymoron of digital preservation
This story is making it around the interwebs/twitterverse today. Brainpicker, a wonderful blog, posted a story today about digital preservation in the film industry -- "The future for digital storage is constant migration.". While focusing on independent filmmakers and nonprofit archives, it's worthwhile to do a find-and-replace "film" with "government documents" and "filmmakers" with "government information (nee documents) librarians." Digital preservation takes collaboration and long-term vision. period!
"Most of the filmmakers surveyed...were not aware of the perishable nature of digital content or how short its unmanaged lifespan is." After the Motion Picture Academy's release last month of "The Digital Dilemma 2," a warning aimed at independent filmmakers and nonprofit archives, cinematographer John Bailey talks with one of the report's authors about the perils of data migration ("It’s not unreasonable to say that the term "digital preservation" is an oxymoron") and the need to educate filmmakers who are so "enamored with the perceived benefits of digital image capture and workflow" that they fail to realize preservation concerns start to appear almost immediately after their work is completed. Film professor David Bordwell covers the report in a detailed post about preserving "born-digital" films, sixth in his "Pandora's Digital Box" series about the worldwide conversion to digital projection, with lots of good links at the bottom.[HT to Brainpicker!] Continue reading
Achieving a collaborative FDLP future (#FDLP)
Note: This post is a longer response to a recent comments left on the LJ article written by Jim A. Jacobs and Melody Kelly.
Recently, Library Journal published a short article that Melody Kelly and I wrote (The Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation). In such a short opinion piece, we did not have the space to document our arguments and expand on our reasoning. Since the article was posted, it has received a few comments. So we are using this post to expand on our LJ piece a bit and re-post here our replies to those comments.
As we said in LJ, the discussions about shared regional depositories have morphed from a conversation into a confrontation. This was our main point. As Daniel Cornwall said here recently, just as GPO needs to work with FDLP, so all FDLP libraries should be working with GPO, not working against it. We are concerned that the tactics adopted by ARL and many of the association's prominent members are more confrontational than cooperative and that such tactics may harm GPO at a time when it needs our support.
Some of the issues involved are complex and confusing and we imagine that many non-FDLP librarians -- and even some in the FDLP community -- find it difficult to follow the sometimes arcane, legal details of the arguments on both sides. This is particularly true when attempts are made outside the current GPO rules to redefine the scope or procedures of an existing Regional.
Continue readingThe Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation. link and comments
The Future of the FDLP: From Conversation to Confrontation, By Jim Jacobs and Melody Kelly Library Journal "Backtalk" (Dec 13, 2011).
Recent discussions about the state of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the responsibilities of regional depository libraries have morphed from a conversation into a politicized confrontation. Sadly, this threatens to negatively affect not just depository libraries but all libraries and users who rely on a robust FDLP for long-term free access to government information....Continue reading
Providing better services by building digital collections
March 2, 2012 / Leave a comment
In an excellent article in the current issue of Library Hi Tech, Eric Morgan, the Digital Projects Librarian at the Hesburgh Libraries at the of the University of Notre Dame, provides examples of building services based on digital collections. As he says:
- Use and understand: the inclusion of services against texts in library catalogs and "discovery systems." by Eric Lease Morgan, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 30 Iss: 1, (2012) pp.35 - 59. [subscription required]
It goes without saying that no library can develop such innovative services without actually acquiring copies of the digital information and building its own digital collection. Pointing to resources that are controlled by others limits the services that libraries can provide. Continue reading →Continue Reading →