Week 8 - Reading Notes

OAI for Beginners - I greatly enjoyed reading about the history of how OAI developed. I especially appreciated the clear definitions between Data Providers and Service Providers, and the pictures which illustrated the functions and interrelationship between these two types of Providers. However, because OAI depends heavily on HTTP, and because I have not yet learned HTTP, there were some parts of this tutorial which I did not understand.

Muddiest Point:  Because we are already learning HTML, XML, DTDs, and XML Schema in library school, why don't we also learn some basic HTTP? If such important metadata standards rely on HTTP, then we should learn this in library school.

The Truth About Federated Searching - This article held some very valuable insights for me. First, Hane reminds the reader that federated search engines must demonstrate to the library that they can search the library's databases using the library's own authentication, both locally and remotely. Second, I was surprised to learn that federated searching cannot improve on a native database's search capabilities. A federated search engine can only use the capabilities of the native database.

Muddiest Point:  PittCat subscribes to Summon. Has Summon demonstrated its value by effectively employing authentication and the capabilities of Pitt's subscribed databases?

Z39.50 Information Retrieval Standard - For the most part, I enjoyed how this article explained history. I appreciated knowing the origins of Z39.50, even knowing that NISO was once the Z39 committee of ANSI.

However, the article also assumed a lot of background knowledge of TP/IP, protocols upon which Z39.50 seems to be based. Again, like in the OAI for Beginners article, we at Pitt's ISchool probably do not have an adequate background in TP/IP. We should. I believe Pitt should teach this to us. I will most likely go learn it on my own via Lynda, but I think that Pitt should teach TP/IP to us if an important standard employs these protocols.

I was disappointed that this article did not use helpful diagrams, as the OAI article had. Therefore, many of the complex relationships between server and client were a little hard to visualize.

Lossau - Search Engine Technology and Digital Libraries - This article correctly points out that a library's vision should not be focused on its own collection, but should be broader. A library should focus on building search services targeting virtual collections of material even within the deep web. However, this strikes home the importance of interoperable accepted standards across all types of digital objects and their repositories.