Week 4 notes 9/21/10 Multimedia Representation and Storage
“Imagining Pittsburgh” was a very interesting article, made even more meaningful by the fact that it’s about the city I now call home. The details about the project, digitizing a collection of images which tell the story of a city over time, demonstrate the enormous amount of work involved in digitally preserving a collection. The three major participants covered a lot of ground in realizing this cultural heritage project.
One thing that jumped out at me is the number of times the author uses the word, “challenge,” as it appears they faced many! The Imaging Pittsburgh project exhibits the massive expenses of money, resources, and time involved in digitization. How realistic is it to do this with an average library’s collection?
The “You Tube and Libraries” article points out the benefits of publishing to the You Tube site. As far as libraries are concerned, I’m not convinced this is the most appropriate venue. Sure I’ve watched videos on You Tube, but nothing that I’ve taken too seriously. So, with my limited exposure to You Tube, I don’t feel it’s professional or serious enough to be The Place to educate university students to use their local library. However, putting my idealistic self aside for a moment, and being more realistic...if You Tube IS a site taken seriously by undergraduate students, then why not give it a try? The whole idea is for them to become proficient library users, right? Whatever it takes…..
The articles on Data Compression left my head spinning! (And I’ve even developed an algorithm to calculate the speed of the spin.) I have a difficult time grasping the very technical ideas of data compression. This really isn’t too much of a surprise to me, because I was never able to figure out how to decompress files that people sent to me! I either had to email back and forth several times until they could send me another file format, or simply give up all hope of ever opening the mysteriously compressed file! Although I do not understand the specifics, I do see the need for data compression. I’m very happy to know that there are programs working in the background, which I am not required to understand or manipulate, that take care of decompressing videos on my computer. I’ve also realized that I do compress data when I save pictures in JPEG, for example.
I’d also like to mention some of my favorite new vocabulary for the week: lossy, lossless, RLE, squeezing algorithm and data deduplication. My favorite phrase of the week from our required reading is, “The Flying Spaghetti Monster is real.”
Michele Farina
Michele,I agree with you that YouTube may not necessarily be seen as a professional source to get information. It certainly is not the first place I turn to for information unless I want to see a music video. However, its use is very widespread amongst young adults and older. I think capitalizing on its popularity can only benefit libraries because, like you said, "whatever it takes...".:-)
ReplyDeleteYour comments about the data compression readings made me laugh out loud! I felt the same way as I was reading them. I will never figure out all those algorithms, either, and I'm just happy there are people out there who do this sort of thing, and for which this "language" all comes so naturally. I, too, now see the reasons why we need compression. This is yet another component of technology that I have taken for granted forever.
ReplyDeleteMichele,
ReplyDeleteI liked how you picked up on the author's consistent use of the word "challenge." I think that the more people you get involved in something, the more challenging it always becomes. And that is not necessarily because any individual or organization is making things difficult; it is just that each one will have their own specific requirements and they will be seeking something different out of the end result. But, despite the challenges the organizations faced, they certainly conquered them to produce a fantastic end result!
Michele,
ReplyDeleteLike you, I noticed the challenges listed by the author in the article about Imaging Pittsburgh. It reminded me of some current group projects here in school--communications challenges (dead silence from some people when asking for feedback), different institutional cultures (archivists having a different focus than a children's librarian, for example), how to organize the information, etc. Looks like the real world might end up being just like an LIS group project after all!
Hey Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the "Imagining Pittsburgh" article. I found it extraordianry that a city like Pittsburgh could have the resources available, along with the help of the three major "partners," to work on a project that will benefit the overall cultural and historical significance of the city. You are also right in regards to the costs for each individual library. I think it would be very difficult to digitize whole collections, but maybe some wouldn't hurt?