From: Mustafa Akgul (akgul@Bilkent.EDU.TR)
Date: Mon 16 Jun 2003 - 20:47:34 EEST
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:22:21 -0700
From: CITES Moderator <citeschk@LIBRARY.BERKELEY.EDU>
Subject: Current Cites, June 2003
To: PACS-P@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Current Cites
Volume 14, no. 6, June 2003
Edited by [2]Roy Tennant
The Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94720
ISSN: 1060-2356 -
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2003/cc03.14.6.html
Contributors: [3]Charles W. Bailey, Jr., [4]Margaret Gross, [5]Terry
Huwe, [6]Shirl Kennedy, [7]Leo Robert Klein, Jim Ronningen
Battelle, John. "[8]Putting Online Ads in Context" [9]Business
2.0 4(5) (June 2003): 82.
(http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,49475,00.html). - Has
the Web media world finally stumbled onto a paid advertising model
that actually works? According to John Battelle, [10]Overture is on
the verge of rolling out a new service -- "contextual advertising"
-- that strategically places advertising links adjacent to relevant
content on websites. No flashing [11]banners, no "[12]skyscrapers,"
no [13]obnoxious animations that take over your screen. Sound
familar? It should. We've been seeing this type of advertising on
[14]Google for awhile now; Google, Battelle points out, "makes a
mint from selling paid links on its own site, where it keeps all
the revenue." Google also sells its paid results to [15]AOL,
[16]Amazon.com, [17]Disney and other sites. According to Battelle,
this is an advertising model that could work on smaller niche sites
as well. For example, a site targeted to knitting aficionados could
generate some income by displaying advertising links for yarn
companies, sellers of crafts books, etc. Rather than annoying the
people who browse your website, advertising like this could
actually be useful. - [18]SK
Friedman, Raymond A., and Steven C. Currall. "[19]E-Mail
Escalation: Dispute Exacerbating Elements of Electronic
Communication" [20]Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt
University
(http://www.mba.vanderbilt.edu/ray.friedman/pdf/emailescalation.pdf
). - Although this is a scholarly paper studded with footnotes and
accompanied by an extensive bibliography, its message is fairly
blunt: E-mail pretty much sucks as a communications medium when
trying to resolve a dispute. Those of us who have been using
electronic mail since dinosaurs roamed the earth will not be
surprised at this finding. We've all seen misunderstandings spiral
out of control on mailing lists and possibly in our personal
electronic communications. When powerful cues such as tone of voice
and immediate response are missing from a verbal exchange, it's all
too easy to take something the wrong way. Which is why, for
example, satire can be dangerous in e-mail. Friedman and Currall
define the properties of e-mail and describe what constitutes
"conflict escalation." Because e-mail is a "low feedback"
communications medium, parties to a conflict are not getting the
information they need about their adversaries' reactions. And this
void can make a bad situation worse. The authors conclude that
"e-mail is not the preferred way to manage disputes -- there are
too many risks. If there is an option to walk down the hallway or
make a phone call, that is generally preferred." However, these
options are not always available. If e-mail must be used in
situations like this, participants to a dispute must be more
"self-aware." These tips are offered: don't be so quick to
interpret something as an insult; monitor your reactions for
"enhanced aggressiveness"; think through what you've written and
parse it for possible misinterpretations before hitting the send
key; keep in mind the actual relationship you have with the
recipient of your message -- i.e., that's a live person on the
other end; don't overreact to anything you read; aim for a large
number of interactions that include a single argument rather than
"bundling large numbers of arguments together," which may overwhelm
the other person. - [21]SK
Lipow, Anne Grodzins. The Virtual Reference Librarian's Handbook
New York, NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 2003. - Virtual
reference, that is to say, "live reference" over the Internet, has
been a hot topic at many conferences this past year. Anne Grodzins
Lipow evaluates the challenges and opportunities in her typcially
pragmatic fashion, so this a good book for practitioners with
little time to spare. The book is organized to provide readers with
everything they need to get started, ranging from checklists to
strategic considerations. Its particular strength is in helping
readers to examine their own institutional environments
realistically, and craft programs that can succeed within the
limitations imposed upon them. The final chapter, covering
marketing and promotion, is especially strong, and challenges
information professionals to follow through on this vital (but
rarely taught) function. Lipow makes the point that we all know we
"should" promote services, but all too often we relegate marketing
and promotion to a one-shot effort that is not sustained. Reference
providers will find not only good tools and checklists in this
volume, but also a surfeit of challenging and innovative
perspectives on strategic planning. - [22]TH
Mihalega, Anna Maria, and Edward A Galloway. ""Your Collection Is
Online and the Honeymoon's Over: NOW WHAT?" " [23]Computers in
Libraries 23(6) (June 2003): 26. - Healthy reminder that part of
the maintenance of any digitization project is dealing with the
public. This is particularly true with projects on historical
subjects such as the one mentioned here on [24]Historic Pittsburgh.
The authors discuss the kind of email traffic they receive and how
it is handled. This kind of attention on the part of the public,
particularly from genealogy enthusiasts, can be exacting in
unexpected ways such as when census data went up on their site with
less than 100% accuracy. How the team dealt with this and other
challenges addresses an important point for all institutions,
namely, the extent of our responsibility to the public for the
material we make available online. - [25]LRK
Samuelson, Pamela. "[26]Mapping the Digital Public Domain: Threats
and Opportunities" [27]Law and Contemporary Problems 66(1 and 2)
(Winter/Spring 2003): 147-171.
(http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?66+Law+&+Contemp.+Probs.+147
+(WinterSpring+2003)). - In this article, noted legal scholar
Pamela Samuelson presents a "map" of the public domain, provides an
in-depth examination of threats to it in the digital environment
(e.g., the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the
Collections of Information Anti-Piracy Act, the Copyright Term
Extension Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the
Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act), and discusses ways
to foster the "digital commons." The analysis of threats is the
largest and most interesting section of the article, and it weighs
the relative threat level of the laws and bills and points out that
the they do not stand alone--there are "potential synergies"
between them that further endanger the public domain. In the
paper's conclusion, the author highlights the importance of
appropriate action by Congress, state legislatures, and the courts
to preserve the public domain; indicates that the public can always
"just say no to licensing and to technically protected content";
and emphasizes that public domain and fair use advocates need a
"positive agenda" that "should be grounded on the realization that
information is not only or mainly a commodity; it is also a
critically important resource and input to learning, culture,
competition, innovation, and democratic discourse." (This article
is part of a special issue on the public domain that includes
twelve other articles.) - [28]CB
Smith, Abby. [29]New-Model Scholarship: How Will It Survive?
Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources,
March 2003.
(http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub114/contents.html). -
Web-based scholarly resources and related digital objects comprise
the 'new-model' referred to in the title, and the 'survival' is of
the long-term, archival variety. Such resources created by faculty
and students have generally been shaped by the immediate goals for
the particular project, and frequently the planning necessary for
future preservation in a digital archive has been overlooked. In
this report Abby Smith, director of programs at the Council on
Library and Information Resources, examines current problems in
digital stewardship. She describes the genesis of three projects
(MIT's [30]History of Recent Science and Technology, George Mason
University's [31]Center for History and New Media, and the
University of Virginia's [32]Institute for Advanced Technology in
the Humanities) as case studies, contrasting those factors which
facilitate or discourage their incorporation and accessibility in
an archive. After a discussion of the issues to be addressed in
deciding what to preserve and how to do it, she looks at
organizations which are engaging in such preservation, including
universities, publishers and government agencies. This thorough
report is worth reviewing by those already involved in digital
libraries and very valuable for those just getting started. With
bibliography and website references. - JR
Thirunarayanan, M.O.. "[33]From Thinkers to Clickers: The World
Wide Web and the Transformation of the Essence of Being Human"
[34]Ubiquity: an ACM IT Magazine and Forum 4(11) (May 13-19,
2003) (http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/m_thirunarayanan_8.html).
- The premise of this short article is that people are becoming
robotic clickers rather than thinking beings. Information is
instantly available on the world wide web, only a click away. When
books had to be read in order to arrive at answers, the slowness of
the task led people to think their way through problems. Often
solutions were found just by thinking out the problem. Now clicking
preempts thinking The vastness of the web, distracting ads, broken
links, and other distractions lead to endless and mindless
clicking. "...hyperclick hysteria sets in, and people lose their
bearings in cyberspace..." The author concludes his thesis on this
sorry state of affairs by redefining human beings. He paraphrases
Rene Descartes: "I click therefore I am" - [35]MG
Zeldman, Jeffrey. Designing With Web Standards Indianapolis: New
Riders, 2003. - Believe it or not, this is actually a good time to
be involved in web development. Not financially, that's a disaster,
but because of the point we're at in our understanding of what
needs to be done and how we ought to go about doing it. Information
architecture, usability, user-centered design and all the countless
more specialized variations of the same are now standard to the
development process. They lend a certain accountability to our
design. What's more, they tend to mesh better with the visual and
programming end of things (theoretically at least) and this more
balanced approach is a welcomed alternative to all the grousing
about each other's excesses in days gone by. This growing maturity
is also reflected in the nuts and bolts of actually building a site
which this book by Zeldman chiefly addresses. Time was when you
pretty much had to hack your way to building a site. Either there
were no standards or the standards (such as they were) were poorly
implemented. This forced designers to design not to a single rule
but to the countless vagaries of various browsers and browser
versions. Such a predicament couldn't last forever. Eventually
Zeldman and a number of other web designers and developers got
together and formed the Web Standards Project (WaSP) that
worked/cajoled browser makers to come out with more
standards-friendly products. But that was only the first part. The
second part was to show web designers and developers what actually
could be accomplished using the tools so painfully won over. This
crucial bit of advocacy was done not only through Zeldman's own
site or the affiliated Alistapart.com but everywhere from glish.com
to the [36]interesting work of Chris Casciano. It's really a story
of designers and developers picking themselves up by their
bootstraps and moving an industry populated by the likes of
Microsoft and AOL/Netscape towards more acceptable practices. It's
a process that anyone having anything to do with web design and
development can take pride in. It's also a process that's anywhere
but complete. Zeldman's book is a survey of where we stand today. -
[37]LRK
_________________________________________________________________
Current Cites - ISSN: 1060-2356
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References
Visible links
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27. http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/lcp/index.htm
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38. mailto:listserv@library.berkeley.edu
