Cool diss related links

Ahhh, it's nice to have such helpful friends.
Since we're so close and talk about our research, what we're working on, directions exploring, headaches, etc it always seems like we're sending each other tidbits and info and links that might help.

Got a few lately I wanted to put in one place here to remember lately... hopefully. Many thanks to Mambo for several of these.

From a group of teachers in Rhode Island working on integrating digital and archival primary source materials into the history curriculum [aha! soooo topical!], here's something called the Tirocchi Dressmaker's Project. Nice curriculum guide, intro on 'constructing history', links to educational standards and more. A good example of showing how to use digitized historical materials, rather than just throwing them out there on the web. "Here's some photos, here's a diary, oh look, here's a newspaper front page". NO... that's not gonna work folks. Demonstrate how to use the materials effectively. Sheesh...
[I'm joking a bit there... teachers work very hard to integrate what they find into the curriculum and don't just show items to kids and say 'here, learn'. But too often the people putting the materials online don't help the teachers out any. Let's work together here people!]

IMLS Digital Cultural Heritage Community Project -- digitization of materials from Illinois for integration into social science curriculum. IMLS support made wide collaboration possible and they built materials to support stated standards. Article and research are not new, from 2001 in First Monday -- but still very worth reading, and looking for other work that might cite this project, or similar ones. Here's a link to part of the project.

An article whose reference I found buried in my email folder-- apparently a link I mailed myself months ago from a search done in a database (why I didn't print it, or save it to my computer I have no f--n idea!! aargh!).
"Using technology to teach historical understanding" Robert P Stephens, Jane L Lehr, Daniel B Thorp, E Thomas Ewing, David Hicks. Social Education. Arlington:Apr 2005. Vol. 69, Iss. 3, p. 151-154 ; mentions the 'Digital History Reader'

History, Digitized (and Abridged) -- a recent article from the NY Times. Talks about how some museums, archives and libraries aren't/can't/won't move to more of their items to the digital realm and wondering whether these important items and artifacts are being left behind in a way-- that parts of our cultural history are very vulnerable. This is especially true as more and more people prefer to do all their information seeking through electronic means-- ignoring anything non-digital (even if it might be the best resource to answer a particular need).

This is part of the more widely written about issue of the perception that 'everything is online', or 'if it's worth knowing it must be available online'. Ummm, no...sorry, just not true. Not now, maybe not ever. Sure there are fantastic efforts underway in many disciplines to make information available electronically, and to help users transform that data and information into real knowledge-- but not even Google's vaunted efforts (among many) can not, and will not, make it "all" available online.

Based on some other research I'm doing right now, things I'm reading, I may be writing more aboutarchives, digital libraries, history, digital preservation and this potential loss of our historical, cultural and intellectual output. The NY Times article is a nice summary piece-- some good stats here too.

Tech news, media and hints of censorship-- a short round-up

Wired News: Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries

"A suite of photo-authentication tools under development by Adobe Systems could make it possible to match a digital photo to the camera that shot it, and to detect some improper manipulation of images ... But the advent of Photoshop and its variety of tools has made it easier for photographers to tinker with images after they're captured. By the same token, the internet has allowed skeptical bloggers around the world to analyze photos in depth, and expose chicanery. ... hopes to develop a plug-in that will detect if a photo has been changed at all since it was taken."

Fascinating stuff!! Great tech explanations here and about why this is so important now, gives a few examples of recent episodes of questionable photos. And while we're on the subject of photos, here's a link to recent news that Microsoft is aiming to take on JPEG as the photo file standard. Is there any area Microsoft doesn't want to own??!! H/T to Slashdot for this one.

"Microsoft Corp. will soon submit to an international standards organization a new photo format that offers higher-quality images with better compression, the company said today.The format, HD Photo -- recently renamed from Windows Media Photo -- is taking aim at the JPEG format, a 15-year-old technology widely used in digital cameras and image applications."

While I'm not necessarily a big fan of the SI 'swimsuit issue', I am a huge fan of fairness, equality and saying no to censorhip in all its forms. With that said, here's a link to a story that SI is refusing to send its biggest selling issue to libraries that hold subscriptions. Not cool. Here's more commentary on that from the library community.
"In an unannounced policy change that already has librarians fuming, Sports Illustrated (SI) decided this year to withhold copies of its risque annual swimsuit issue from classrooms and libraries."

For anyone out there who thinks that the whole digital book, or Google scanning project (or ones similar) thing are in any way a sexy, techie endeavour... I've got news for you...it's not. It's lonely, probably boring, definitely dark, and not very intellectual or high-skill. Perhaps necessary, but not thrilling in any way. Check out the links from the great folks at Resource Shelf in the Comments section. Gary Price is a guru of the highest order.

Aha!!

Ok... instead of waiting and coming back to that list of digital history suggested readings I just posted, I started scanning...just to see if I've read any.

Ha! And now I can righteously feel just the ever so teeniest bit smug...because I have read some.

Ok..."some" is the operative word here. I've read at least 5 of the titles.
[Linked, Sorting Things Out, Social Life of Info, Ambient Findability among them]
But c'mon, does knowing the names of at least 10 more authors count?? And really, where are the other really big players in information retrieval, information science, user studies, to go along with all those information architects, data miners, software geeks, AI lovers and code gurus?!? Can you really talk about 'digital history' without talking more about digital libraries, repositories, digital preservation, or the more 'history' side of things? Interesting to see how so many from different perspectives are playing in the same area, in barely overlapping circles.

Digital History Hacks

Digital History Hacks: "for a student interested in pursuing digital history. For graduate students, a more useful exercise is to compile a reading list of a hundred or so books for a general / comprehensive examination. Obviously, there are very few books that are specifically about digital history (never mind a canon) so any list has to cover the space where the field is emerging."

Oh brilliant...simply brilliant!! No, I really do mean that. I could nearly kiss this blogger's virtual feet. A fantastic list of things to read in the area of digital history, a major issue for me, and akin to my research area. So I say "a thousand times thank you".

Of course this is all subject to change once I actually read the whole damn list, and investigate each title more thoroughly. So this could all be jumping the gun....

...or it could be a major time-saver! hee hee!

Oh the timing of this is quite auspicious too, coming right before the Big Ol' Meeting with Majesty, LooseGoose and other Powers That Be tomorrow. Now I actually kinda feel smart... 'yuck, yuck'.

LISNews.org | This Week in LibraryBlogLand (December 17, 2006)

LISNews.org | This Week in LibraryBlogLand (December 17, 2006)

Some great links to other blogs and web posts on digital reference, search engines, blogrolls of those doing digital ref, more about library blogs (including a tag cloud analysis), news about Google's latest attempts to digitize the world (apparently journal back runs).

'Digital black hole' threatens your documents | Tech News on ZDNet

'Digital black hole' threatens your documents | Tech News on ZDNet: "The European Union is funding a project involving national libraries and digital preservation groups aimed at fighting off a looming 'digital black hole.'
The black hole in question is the potential future loss of data as file formats become obsolete and inaccessible."


I think I blogged on this earlier this year and have to go find that post for a cross link. Story here is about efforts in Europe to fight growing problem (at least they're aware of it!!) of digital documents not being accessible in the future.
I've said it once, I'll say it again...just because you save something digitally doesn't mean it's been PRESERVED. Doesn't mean it won't, or can't, disappear or otherwise become unusable.

Techdirt: Will Digital Archiving Difficulties Wipe Out Important Elements Of Our History?

Techdirt: Will Digital Archiving Difficulties Wipe Out Important Elements Of Our History?em>
Even if you can store the data perfectly forever, without the right applications, it's meaningless. Matt Sullivan writes in with yet another article on the topic, this time from Popular Mechanics, that suggests we could be facing a "digital ice age" as plenty of data from this era of history are lost to bad archiving capabilities.

(Original article noted above is from Dec, 2006 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.)

Well....yes. D'uh, I guess in a way. See, this issue apparently is now getting play in the slightly more popular press (I hedge and hate to take out the qualifier of "slightly" since PM is not exactly TIME or Newsweek in terms of its scope or readership...but is obviously vastly further reaching than all the academic stuff). And it's a known and researched topic in the archival, library and information science fields for quite some time. Apparently we've just been preaching to the choir and talking amongst ourselves until now. And even now, it's probably not someone from one of those disciplines doing the writing here. But he does reference some of the most famous examples of digital data obsolescence-- including the Navy's Aircraft Carrier, Nimitz.

Perhaps moral of this story/rant is to do research that has practical applications, work with practitioners on the research, and then get results published in both academic publications (cause I gotta go out and work on tenure someday, somehow) and more popular ones, outside my own field.

DigInit :: digital initiatives

DigInit :: digital initiatives: "So, I’ll be attending and presenting at Internet Librarian later this week which has got me thinking about the circles we, librarians, travel. It seems we’re awfully comfortable talking to each other and that’s a good thing in small doses. But, we have to ask ourselves, “Who is listening?”"

Intro to a piece from this blogger, who is very heavily into digital library work, especially the back-end, code side of things it would appear. Next bit goes on to quote several online pieces about "need for modern libraries", responses, call for change in the library world--at many levels. Not so much a new thread, but always intersting to see more takes on it, get more ideas on what to actually "DO" about it.