Assignment 5 - Koha

http://upitt01-staff.kwc.kohalibrary.com/cgi-bin/koha/virtualshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=68

My username is JCG28 and the name of my virtual shelf is JGundy - Works of Edith Wharton.

Week 8

W3 Schools HTML Tutorial
- HTML stands for: Hyper Text Markup Language
- What is markup language? It is a set of markup tags, and markup tags describe web pages.
- HTML documents are more commonly known as web pages. We use browsers to read HTML documents.
- HTML editors, such as Dreamweaver, are used to edit HTML.
- HTML elements include the following parts: a start tag, the element content, and an end tag.

I’m actually planning to take a course at work on how to use Dreamweaver. I’m really interested to see what it teaches me, and maybe after I learn how to use it I will practice a little at home. I have the entire Adobe Creative Suite, but only ever use Photoshop since I don’t know how the use the other applications!

W3 School Cascading Style Sheet Tutorial
Just a few of the things I learned while reading this tutorial:
CSS-Cascading Style Sheets
CSS defines how HTML elements are to be displayed.
- There are three ways to insert a style sheet: external, internal, and inline style. An external style sheet is preferred when the style is applied to numerous pages. An internal style sheet should be used when a single document has a unique style. An inline style should be used infrequently and with caution.
- CSS background properties include: background, background-attachment, background-color, background-image, background-position, and background-repeat.
- The difference between a serif font and a sans-serif font (Times New Roman is the former and Arial is an example of the latter.)
- A CSS box model is a box that wraps around HTML elements, which consists of margins, borders, padding, and content.

I like that these tutorials give readers the opportunity to try each exercise throughout the lesson with the ‘try it yourself’ button.

HTML Cheatsheet
HTML is like a foreign language to me. This will be a great help if I ever need to enter HTML tags for a website.

Beyond HTML: Developing and re-imagining library web guides in a content management system
This article shows what a good partnership between web and library professionals can produce. I like how they made it possible for information to be added to the webpage by librarians without an intricate knowledge of web developing. This way the librarian can concentrate on content without getting stuck along the way with trivial website difficulties that the web designer was trained to handle. This is a collaboration that can benefit all types of libraries. Depending on the size and budget of the library, the web designer could be contracted out when needed (for smaller budgets) or could be hired by the library for a full-time partnership (for larger budgets).

Muddiest Point Week 7

Google clearly has the majority of users of all the search engines. I’m not sure if this was addressed or not, but do you foresee this to ever become a detrimental monopoly for users (for example, such as implementing a payment for search services)?

Links to Week 7 Comments

http://acovel.blogspot.com/2010/10/week-7-reading-notes.html

http://mfarina.blogspot.com/2010/10/1023-notes-for-readingsviewings-week-7.html

Week 7

How Internet Infrastructure Works
By Jeff Tyson
Wow the short video at the beginning of this article is enough to make anyone worry about internet privacy and safety! I don’t use public WiFi frequently, but I will be very careful when I do. I like how this article is organized and the illustrations were helpful in understanding the topics addressed. I’m still amazed at how the internet works.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google Machine
Some interesting tidbits I didn’t know about Google. The world view that opened the video was neat to see, and it was shocking to see how very few light beams were coming out of countries such as Africa. Hopefully someday that will change and connectivity will be readily available everywhere.

Dismantling Integrated Library Systems
By Andrew K. Pace
From reading this article, I got the idea that the library systems are not working well when taken apart from each other. It would not be beneficial to begin anew with a brand new ILS and would be even more expensive as well. New ways to integrate systems need to be developed so that the ILS system can operate with commercial modules.

Muddiest Point Week 6

I have no muddiest point this week.

Zotero - Assignment 4

http://www.citeulike.org/user/christiana218

Comments Week 6

http://mfarina.blogspot.com/2010/10/jing-assignment.html

http://maj66.blogspot.com/2010/10/rfid.html

Muddiest Point Week 5

In reference to Data Redundancy, aren’t there programs that would alert the user if a person is entered into the system multiple times? Then the user who is entering the information would be notified of the possible error…I could be wrong, though, or misunderstanding this point.

Jing - Assignment 3

Link to Jing video:
http://www.screencast.com/t/aeUR0amwTa

Links to Flickr screen shots:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53590238@N08/5062942773/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53590238@N08/5063553142/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53590238@N08/5063553260/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53590238@N08/5063553392/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53590238@N08/5062943483/in/photostream/

Week 6

Local Area Network, Wikipedia
LAN is a term with which I am familiar, but can definitely learn more about. Wikipedia defines a local area network as a computer network that connects computers and devices in a limited geographical area (for example a home or school). The need for LANs was recognized in the 1960s and has developed greatly since then. Most of us are probably familiar with the examples Ethernet and Internet Protocol (aka TCP/IP) from hooking up internet in our homes.

Computer Network, Wikipedia
Computer networks are also a familiar term, since many of us use these daily at work. Without computer networks, it would be difficult to connect employees at a large company or firm and things would not get done as efficiently. However, when a network fails, we all know what a catastrophe that can be, since nothing can get done. :-)

Common Types of Computer Networks, YouTube
I liked this video because it offered a short, concise overview and explanation of some of the acronyms that I had come across and wondered exactly what they were. Now I know what all those abbreviations on my internet router mean.

Management of RFID in Libraries
This was a fascinating topic for me to read about. I think there are many wonderful things, as the author points out, that RFID can do for libraries, but I also understand that there are privacy issues to address as well. I agree with the idea of having both a traditional circulation desk and a self-checkout center…it kind of goes along with the way supermarkets offer a self-checkout yet still have a few checkouts manned by employees. It will be interesting to see where this new technology takes libraries.

Week 5

Setting the Stage (Anne J. Gilliland)
This article gave a great definition of metadata and how it is used by various disciplines. I have generated metadata myself when writing archival descriptions, but I never think to myself, oh I am generating metadata about these records! So this put it into better perspective for me, and how it is very directly related to my profession. I also like how the author addressed user-created metadata and the pros and cons associated.

An Overview of the Dublin Core Date Model (Eric J. Miller)
What I understood was that the Dublin Core Data Model is set up to establish overarching descriptors for electronic materials. This endeavor is new to me, but it seems as though it is still in the earlier stages and has some further development in progress. This should make searching for resources easier for those in academia or library and archives researchers.

Database, Wikipedia Article
I never knew that a database consists of three levels, external, conceptual, and internal. The most interesting part of this article for me was the section on security and locking. These are useful things to know, and I would assume that these could apply to other online texts as well, such as webpages or blogs?

Comments Week 5

Here are links to my comments from Week 5:

http://archivist-amy-in-training.blogspot.com/2010/09/assignment-3.html

http://bds46.blogspot.com/2010/09/reading-notes-week-5.html