Guide to the professional literature

Citation

(1998), "Guide to the professional literature", Asian Libraries, Vol. 7 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1998.17307iae.001

Guide to the professional literature

Co-ordinated by Margaret Butterworth

Articles about libraries and information management in Asia and the Pacific region are not plentiful in the mainstream literature. This column is designed to alert you to some of the most interesting journal literature specific to the region, as well as more general articles relevant to information professionals working in Asia and the Pacific.

Arnold, J. M. and Jayne, E.A., "Dangling by a slender thread: the lessons and implications of teaching the World Wide Web to freshmen", Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol. 24 No. 1, January 1998, pp. 43-52.

Based on the authors' experience of teaching library skills to first-year undergraduates, this article discusses the challenges, problems and implications of teaching the Web. Their approach was to focus on resources unique to the Web. They argue that the Web needs to be taught within the context of the information-seeking process, and as just one of many information sources. Most important, the authors wanted to provide an evaluative framework in their approach to teaching the Web. Trying to teach students how to evaluate sources when doing library-based research is one of the biggest challenges for instruction librarians. In some ways the nature of the Web, with its largely free-flowing content, gives library instructors a unique opportunity to introduce critical thinking skills and evaluative tools.

Fox, E.A. and Marchionini, G., "Toward a worldwide digital library", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 41 No. 4, April 1998.

The Communications of the ACM has devoted an issue to the topic of digital libraries. "This special section is a snapshot of the current state of digital library development around the world". There are articles on technical, informational and social interoperability across national boundaries. The special section is divided into five categories:

1. 1.

   interoperability;

2. 2.

   special types of digital libraries;

3. 3.

   multilingual support;

4. 4.

   national efforts; and

5. 5.

   supporting technologies.

Griffin, S., "Taking the initiative for digital libraries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 16 No. 1, February 1998, pp. 24-7.

http://info.learned.co.uk/li/publications/tel/contents.htm

In this interview with Stephen Griffin, of NSF's Digital Library Initiative, he acknowledges that the meaning of digital library continues to evolve as technology advances and believes that a more open definition enables a larger set of perspectives to influence the discourse, research and practices. Griffin uses the concepts of electronic access versus intellectual access to help think about digital libraries, describing electronic access as access to the raw electronic data, and intellectual access as access to deeper knowledge and meaning contained in digital collections. Griffin believes that, by providing intellectual access through intelligent systems, digital libraries have the potential to give users what they actually want. He proposes that digital libraries will lead to a reconsideration of the library as an institution and, in the long term, offer an entirely new model through which people can interact with information.

Hanson, T., "The access catalogue gateway to resources, Ariadne, Vol. 15, May 1998.

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue15/main/

Hanson proposes a new kind of user access paradigm that subsumes the library catalogue of print materials beneath an over-arching access catalogue. This would provide integrated access to the complete breadth of information resources, from which the user could delve into the one they feel is most appropriate. Although brief, this piece clearly indicates the significance of this next step in user access.

Herther, N.K., "CD-ROM to DVD-ROM: moving optical storage along a bumpy road into the new century", Database, Vol. 21 No. 2, April/May 1998, pp. 26-36.

While CD-ROMs can store about 650MB of data or music, DVD discs can store between 4.7 and 17 gigabytes ­ enough for more than a full-length MPEG-2 compressed motion picture. If successful, DVD will eventually replace videotapes, laserdiscs, CD-audio, CD-ROMs and other video game formats. After interviewing more than 35 industry participants and experts, Herther concludes that this will depend on the resolution of remaining standards issues, Win98 support for DVD, the number of available DVD titles and backward compatibility with current CDs. She also provides a brief history of the CD-ROM industry, a helpful summary of the various CD and DVD formats (including recordable) and an extensive list of Web resources for additional background information.

Jensen, A., "Taking local resources global: the NCSTRL experience at UC Berkeley Library", Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Vol. 18, Spring 1998.

http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/98-spring/article1.html

Reports on a library project to take over the management of a repository of computer science technical reports from a computer science department that had participated in a digital library project called NCSTRL. This is a good example of the kind of digital library function that should become the focus of many academic libraries in the very near future ­ providing long-term, structured and usable access to useful information.

Lim, E., "The Internet and its impact on libraries and national development in SE Asia", LASIE, March 1997, pp. 13-32.

This article is based on, and updates, a paper presented at the tenth Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians Conference, in Kuala Lumpur, in May 1996. It contains some useful statistics which show how the various countries in the region are progressing in the field of information and communication technologies, and the use of these technologies in scholarly communication, electronic publishing, online information, education, telemedicine and electronic commerce. The picture painted is a very general overview and shows the difficulty of discussing this huge region, which consists of widely different countries at varying stages of development, from high-tech Singapore to low-tech Brunei. Lim (University Librarian at Monash University) shifts from providing an analysis about the region to a treatise for the region, offering a bird's eye view of the situation in 1996.

Ma, W., "The near future trend: combining Web access and local CD networks", The Electronic Library, Vol. 16 No. 1, February 1998, pp. 49-54.

http://info.learned.co.uk/publications/tel/contents.htm

Ma asserts that librarians will continue to see a mix of CD-ROM-based and Internet-based resources in the near term. A mix will be optimal because the two media have different strengths. CD-ROM is best for specialised titles that are less used and large amounts of static data. Internet versions are better for sources with broader appeal and for databases that require frequent and timely updates. Drawing from Occidental College's experience, Ma concludes that the optimal mix should consider the entire community environment, not just the individual library.

Payette, S., "Persistent identifiers on the digital terrain", RLG DigiNews, Vol. 2 No. 2, 1997.

http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews22.html#Identifiers

To solve the problem of broken URLs we need a permanent address that can be resolved to the actual location of the desired information, as it moves from place to place. This paper introduces the topic and presents an overview of current solutions. The particular schemes profiled include: Persistent URLs (PURLs), Handles, and Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). Payette includes a strategy for implementing persistent identifiers for a given project, a brief discussion of implications, and some URLs to further information.

Proceedings of the 7th International World Wide Web Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 14-18 April 1998.

http://www7.conf.au/programme/fullprog.html

The International WWW Conference is the Web conference for academics and researchers. If you want to know where the Web may be heading, discover what technical possibilities there are, and sample some cutting-edge solutions to Web problems, these proceedings are worth a visit. While many of the papers are of limited interest, most librarians will find at least one or two of real value.

"To publish and perish", Policy Perspectives, Vol. 7 No. 4, March 1998.

http://www.irhe.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/pp-cat.pl

Discusses the problem academic libraries have in maintaining access to information when both volume and cost have increased dramatically. It offers a set of strategies that libraries, faculties and university administrations can undertake to "regain the initiative" in scholarly publishing. These strategies include:

1. 1.

   end the preoccupation with numbers (faculty tenure review should stress quality, not quantity);

2. 2.

   be intelligent consumers (research libraries must select wisely);

3. 3.

   understand property rights (faculty should be encouraged to retain at least some portion of copyright);

4. 4.

   invest in electronic forms of scholarly communication; and

5. 5.

   dissociate publication from faculty evaluation for the purposes of promotion and tenure.

Wagner, K.I., "Intellectual property: copyright implications for higher education", Journal of Academic Librarianship, Vol. 24 No. 1, January 1998, pp. 11-19.

The various constituencies in universities have differing perspectives on intellectual property issues. As producers of intellectual property, university presses and faculty are concerned with preserving copyright protection; as consumers of intellectual property, university libraries and faculty are more concerned with issues of "fair use'; there are also those constituencies, such as instructional design groups, which are both producers and consumers. Wagner argues that discussion among all the groups will help in the development of a national (US) policy on intellectual property rights that will be in the best interests of higher education. The emergence of a digital landscape also poses new challenges and opportunities and university presses, libraries and bookshops can take advantage of new technologies to further enhance the ability of higher education to achieve its mission. There is an extensive bibliography.