Week 10

Dewey Meets Turing: Librarians, Computer Scientists, and the Digital Libraries Initiative
Andreas Paepcke

I enjoyed getting a view of both sides of the DLI and what each groups’ expectations were. Librarians’ recognized that in order to remain essential they would have to get involved in IT, while computer professionals relished the opportunity to be a part of something new and different from their daily routine. This was a positive collaboration with a fruitful outcome.

Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age
Clifford Lynch

This was also an interesting article. I thought Lynch’s claims were worth noting; hopefully staff will recognize his concerns and try to prevent them from happening in their own institutions. I agree with his observation that faculty are spread to thin in the ever-growing list of tasks that must be completed; and often the most important task (teaching their students) is put on a back burner because the institution demands them to publish, publish, publish for the sake of the university’s reputation. This is unfortunate and I hope that it does not continue at this rate into the future.

Digital Libraries: Challenges and Influential Work
William Mischo

I think we were all aware of this fact, but this article points out the ways in which resource access is rapidly expanding. For me, I can see the drastic changes that have taken place in how I researched as a high school student, through college, and now in graduate school. It is great that information is so easy to access, especially when I don’t have time to go to the library. We just have to know which sources to trust.