Thursday, October 19, 2006
Tri-co tech retreat: morning sessions
We're reaching the end of the first half of the tri-co tech retreat. In the room are mostly librarians and a handful of IT people from the three schools. It's been an interesting morning so far and has me thinking about lots of different things.
John Anderies started us off with a discussion of Variations, a tool for cataloging and analyzing music that is also to be used as a pedagogical tool. I've heard him discuss this a number of times. I know little to nothing about music, but this looks like such a neat tool and had I had such a tool when I was in school, I might not have struggle with music theory as much as I did.
John went on to discuss ContentDM as it's used for special collections. That led to a larger discussion about image collections more generally and how they're used by various folks on campus. Scott Silverman segued into discussing tools such as Embark and ArtStor. A couple of issues arose out of this discussion. First, there was the cataloging issue. The need for metadata makes the incorporation of faculty's own image collections more difficult. This increasingly is problematic, in my mind, as tools such as Flickr and Picasa, do a good job of tagging and presenting images, especially when archival quality is not necessary. In fact, I know that Flickr is used quite frequently for both in-class presentations and out-of-class work with images. I wrote about this before and showed a couple of examples. I also raised the issue of the lack of connection between some of these resources and the more general library resources. The librarians informed me that some things were connected and that the subject portals are trying to create even more connections. As someone who often finds things serendipitously, I might not even know that I'm looking for an image, so I wouldn't go to ArtStor right off the bat.
We then shifted to discussing eBooks and the Google book project. There are serveral key issues for both of these topics. First, how willing are people to read a whole book online? We all noted that despite having ereserves, many people still print out articles. And then there's the issue of access. Currently, checking out an eBook requires you to have your own device--either a computer or ereader. That might create a digital divide. For both projects, copyright and collection are issues. What's available through these systems and who owns the copyright and how do you protect it?
We then listened to a presentation about UVA's Scholars' Lab. This has been a joint effort with the library and IT, providing support for such things as GIS and E-text and other e-scholarship. And right now, I'm listening to Betsey Reese discuss GIS. Lots of good information and discussion going around. Looking forward to the afternoon.
John Anderies started us off with a discussion of Variations, a tool for cataloging and analyzing music that is also to be used as a pedagogical tool. I've heard him discuss this a number of times. I know little to nothing about music, but this looks like such a neat tool and had I had such a tool when I was in school, I might not have struggle with music theory as much as I did.
John went on to discuss ContentDM as it's used for special collections. That led to a larger discussion about image collections more generally and how they're used by various folks on campus. Scott Silverman segued into discussing tools such as Embark and ArtStor. A couple of issues arose out of this discussion. First, there was the cataloging issue. The need for metadata makes the incorporation of faculty's own image collections more difficult. This increasingly is problematic, in my mind, as tools such as Flickr and Picasa, do a good job of tagging and presenting images, especially when archival quality is not necessary. In fact, I know that Flickr is used quite frequently for both in-class presentations and out-of-class work with images. I wrote about this before and showed a couple of examples. I also raised the issue of the lack of connection between some of these resources and the more general library resources. The librarians informed me that some things were connected and that the subject portals are trying to create even more connections. As someone who often finds things serendipitously, I might not even know that I'm looking for an image, so I wouldn't go to ArtStor right off the bat.
We then shifted to discussing eBooks and the Google book project. There are serveral key issues for both of these topics. First, how willing are people to read a whole book online? We all noted that despite having ereserves, many people still print out articles. And then there's the issue of access. Currently, checking out an eBook requires you to have your own device--either a computer or ereader. That might create a digital divide. For both projects, copyright and collection are issues. What's available through these systems and who owns the copyright and how do you protect it?
We then listened to a presentation about UVA's Scholars' Lab. This has been a joint effort with the library and IT, providing support for such things as GIS and E-text and other e-scholarship. And right now, I'm listening to Betsey Reese discuss GIS. Lots of good information and discussion going around. Looking forward to the afternoon.
