Readings and lecture for the week of 10/5/10

After watching the 10/5 lecture on XML and doing the readings, I thought that some concepts about XML that were confusing were now a little bit more illuminated. The lecture was generally easy to understand and quite informative. I tend to learn more by doing than by observing, though, so I think that once I start on Assignment 3, I'll really "get it" then.

Additionally, I'm also taking Metadata now and we're discussing and reading about XML in great detail there, too, so I think that this will help me with Assignment 3 and with understanding XML better as well.

Since we don't have a lecture this coming week, I look forward to seeing everyone on Saturday 10/16 in Pittsburgh for FastTrack weekend!

Reflections on Assignments 1 and 2

When I originally completed and attempted to submit assignments 1 and 2, I didn't realize that I had to hit "send" in the Digital Dropbox instead of just adding them. Thus, I was wondering why I hadn't received my grade and the TA informed that it wasn't visible for that reason. After resubmitting them properly, I finally received my grade for Assignment 1 and was glad that the error was overlooked and forgiven.

Assignment 2 - part one

Here is the link to my flickr folder.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87025663@N00/sets/72157625104724484/with/5056071338/

These are just five random photos that were taken this past summer. In case anyone's wondering, the street sign and the photo of the Dia Museum were both taken in Beacon, NY this past June. The photos of the band Flower and the singer/songwriter Don McGlashan were taken this past July in Brooklyn, NY. Last but not least, the photo of our cat Lola was taken in July right here in Philadelphia since she's on our kitchen table (a favorite spot of hers).

Metadata readings and lecture

I found this past week's lecture very interesting because I'm also currently taking LIS 2407, which is (as the instructor noted) the brand new Metadata class that's now being offered. In that class, we've already learned about Dublin Core, MARC and MODS, so the lecture and the associated readings were a bit of a refresher for me. Part of me wishes that I would've taken this course beforehand just to get a better handle on Metadata and on XML, which we'll be learning about both in this course and in Metadata next week, but the overlap is helpful as concepts are reiterated and reinforced.

Muddiest Point for Week 4

I am still unclear on the post structure. From what I heard last week when a student in class asked this question to one of Dr. He's PhD students, I understand that we have to comment on the readings before the lectures. I know the readings should be done before the lectures on Tuesdays, but these blog posts have to be in by each Saturday before each lecture. So should I be commenting on the readings assigned for the week of 9/28 or 9/21?

Week 4 readings and some comments on Week 3

I didn't post on here last week due to there being no readings for that week while we worked on setting up and testing out Greenstone and DSpace. Thus, I wasn't sure if we were still supposed to post on here or not. Though I initially had troubling setting up Greenstone, I was finally able to get it to work and find it relatively easy to use. I think that for the project, my group will end up using it instead of DSpace due to what was said in this past week's lecture.

Now onto this week's readings. I thought that there was a little bit of a disconnect between this week's lecture and the readings. For example, identifiers were only mentioned at the end of the lecture, while most of it was taken up by talking about digitization issues in general. There was, however, a lot of talk about DOI, so perhaps I'm wrong about this.

Readings for Week 2

Of the required readings for week 2, the one that stood out the most was the Arms reading (Chapter 2). The link that was posted in the "Lectures" section didn't work, so I looked in "Books" and found it there. Here is a direct link to it for those who may have not been able to find it and happen to be reading this.

Anyway, this reading reminded me of things we had to read in LIS 2000 and in other courses about the history of the internet. Although most of the information in this article should be common knowledge to most MLIS students at this point, it was still a nice refresher.

On the other hand, because it dates back to the late '90s, it felt arcane, as did the Arms/Blanchi/Overly and Payette/Blanchi/Lagoze/Overly articles as well. It made me wonder when we'll get to read more recent literature on the subject of Digital Libraries. I also felt that these readings were difficult to understand, too full of technical jargon and ultimately a bit frustrating.

I received the Lesk book in the mail today from Amazon and I see that it's from 2005, though, so I look forward to reading it.