LIS 170
Introduction to Archives and Records Management
School of Library and Information Studies
Please refer to the information below to grasp the context and comply to the remaining requirements for this sem.
1. My house in Marikina was submerged for three days since Sept 26, '09 destroying most records of our class except your graded recitation, attendance and midterms.
2. By virtue of the Concept of Archival Evidence stipulated by Brien Brothmann, I hereby declare all of you EXEMPTED FROM THE FINAL EXAM of LIS 170.
3. I lost all your MIdterm BlueBooks, but I have a record of your scores and my comments.
4. Your final grade will depend on the abovementioned recorded data plus the remaining requirements (Oral Defense and Demo of Dspace versus Knowledgetree and Final Paper).
5. All of you Text me 0917 967 1803 ASAP! Identify yourself thru text. STate your post-flood condition and immediate need for relief if any.
6. Meet up on Oct 7, 530pm, unless classes are suspended due to calamity or what.
Thanks.
Mel
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 29, 2008
Reflections about our Moments in Makiling
When classmates were deliberating where to conduct the field trip, there were some suggestions to take us out of Luzon for a different kind of exposure. Unfortunately, it was not possible, not because of budget constraints, but due to the fact that most modern libraries in the country are still found in Metro Manila. Some "modern" and technology-liberal repositories are even located at the peripheries of the nation's capital, namely the IRRI Library and units of the UP Open University and UPLB.
It was advantageous to us Manileños because of its considerable proximity, for the ease of conducting such a trip, but it speaks of a tacit and sad fact: Modern Collections are still centralized in Luzon, if not Manila only and its peripheries.
This rings me about a recent lecture about the "digital divide". The Filipino People can be liberal with the use of Information Technology, but access to its latest forms can depend on your place in the pyramidal economic strata. Let us not complicate things yet. Think of the fundamentals: Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Why would the country's policymakers invest taxpesos on Computers in the middle of an imminent rice shortage or food crisis?
But I say, this brings us to the never-ending debate on what should come first: food or education? Let's face it, we apply the latest technology in our Libraries to aid the spread of information, facilitate user imagination and ensure an enhanced learning experience. Congressman Joson of Nueva Ecija confronts this by saying: "How can you effectively teach students if they dont have food in their bellies?"
The Congressman has a point, which makes me see this food-education debate as a chicken and egg thing. Think of this: how can society learn how to cultivate the land and harvest alot of food if we dont educate them first?
I may seem to blabber far from the issue of librarianship and information technology, but I believe the policy debate mentioned above is very relevant to my coursework. The spread and use of IT, as well as the survival of the profession depends on this.
To state my advocacy, I still believe in the tenets contained in the Official Recommendations done by the Taft Commission when they evaluated this country by the turn of the 1900's. Among their legendary recommendations were the creation of a national government, local governments, a stable bureaucracy, and most important of all: universal primary education. William Howard Taft et al. were the architects of the Philippine public educational system, mandating all locals to study K12 as a matter of national priority "to lift them out of the dark ages brought by Spanish Rule".
This is why we have Librarianship in the Philippines, because of the benevolent policies of the American Occupation. As an offshoot of curiosity in librarianship, now we have the liberal use of Information Technology. But 60 years after the American Regime, technology is still centralized in Luzon, or only Manila perhaps, along with the modern schools and universities.
It's good we're now spreading the IT to the major cities across the country thru Business Process Outsourcing, and Libraries in other regions must follow suit to modernize.
It was advantageous to us Manileños because of its considerable proximity, for the ease of conducting such a trip, but it speaks of a tacit and sad fact: Modern Collections are still centralized in Luzon, if not Manila only and its peripheries.
This rings me about a recent lecture about the "digital divide". The Filipino People can be liberal with the use of Information Technology, but access to its latest forms can depend on your place in the pyramidal economic strata. Let us not complicate things yet. Think of the fundamentals: Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Why would the country's policymakers invest taxpesos on Computers in the middle of an imminent rice shortage or food crisis?
But I say, this brings us to the never-ending debate on what should come first: food or education? Let's face it, we apply the latest technology in our Libraries to aid the spread of information, facilitate user imagination and ensure an enhanced learning experience. Congressman Joson of Nueva Ecija confronts this by saying: "How can you effectively teach students if they dont have food in their bellies?"
The Congressman has a point, which makes me see this food-education debate as a chicken and egg thing. Think of this: how can society learn how to cultivate the land and harvest alot of food if we dont educate them first?
I may seem to blabber far from the issue of librarianship and information technology, but I believe the policy debate mentioned above is very relevant to my coursework. The spread and use of IT, as well as the survival of the profession depends on this.
To state my advocacy, I still believe in the tenets contained in the Official Recommendations done by the Taft Commission when they evaluated this country by the turn of the 1900's. Among their legendary recommendations were the creation of a national government, local governments, a stable bureaucracy, and most important of all: universal primary education. William Howard Taft et al. were the architects of the Philippine public educational system, mandating all locals to study K12 as a matter of national priority "to lift them out of the dark ages brought by Spanish Rule".
This is why we have Librarianship in the Philippines, because of the benevolent policies of the American Occupation. As an offshoot of curiosity in librarianship, now we have the liberal use of Information Technology. But 60 years after the American Regime, technology is still centralized in Luzon, or only Manila perhaps, along with the modern schools and universities.
It's good we're now spreading the IT to the major cities across the country thru Business Process Outsourcing, and Libraries in other regions must follow suit to modernize.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Data Mining and DBMS
The field of data mining shares ancestry from multiple generalist subjects, mainly: computer science, librarianship, linguistics etc. On the practical sense, the idea of data mining is often relevant to the research ventures of computer theorists, who may define it as "analytical and systematic retrieval of bits of data to produce information"... for a number of applications (libraries and decision support systems).
Curiously, data mining is closely intertwined with both knowledge discovery (mechanism of formulating newly packaged info out of the systems' data) and artificial intelligence (when no human interference is present in the manipulation of data). Whatever and however the computer system does with the data to generate new information all by itself, its processes are always rooted on the design of its information architecture and algorithms.
The following article explores data mining algorithms in the context of "neighborhood paths", where the computer is "taught" or optimized to take the shortest and efficient way to mine data and generate useful information. The following are salient features of the study:
Article URL: http://www.springerlink.com/content/n5687066m7388n78/fulltext.pdf
First, there is a premise of problematic algorithms that steer the data away from the "starting object". This is because the obejct of study is an SDBS (Spatial Database System) much attributed to Geographical Information Systems. It seems that GIS and SDBS's have perennial problems on algorithms that make data lose their way through a "neighborhood" or a spatial entity. We somewhat get a misguided result out of data lost in the street.
Second, the study introduces "database primitives" which according to the authors are based on neighborhood relations between data. This is closely concerned about the flaw of relational databases when they produce redundancies due to the absence of identifiable uniqueness such as primary keys. In the context of spatial databases, the "neighborhood" is expected to have unique elements as database objects. This is interesting because it is based on the geographic uniqueness assumption that no two corner places on a map are exactly the same, and algorithms should be all about teaching the computer how to recognize these uniquenesses.
Third, so as to contribute to the theory of relational databases, the study proposes the use of algorithm construction based on topological relations, spatial clustering, characterization etc. I find these really mindblowing!
Generally, there's more to the study of databases than mere tables and relationships. The issue that often emerges is about techniques of clustering and cassification, good design to achieve retrieval effeciency and knowledge discovery. By the time all books are turned to bytes, librarians will no longer be concerned with shelving bound knowledge, but in the generation of useful information.
Curiously, data mining is closely intertwined with both knowledge discovery (mechanism of formulating newly packaged info out of the systems' data) and artificial intelligence (when no human interference is present in the manipulation of data). Whatever and however the computer system does with the data to generate new information all by itself, its processes are always rooted on the design of its information architecture and algorithms.
The following article explores data mining algorithms in the context of "neighborhood paths", where the computer is "taught" or optimized to take the shortest and efficient way to mine data and generate useful information. The following are salient features of the study:
Article URL: http://www.springerlink.com/content/n5687066m7388n78/fulltext.pdf
First, there is a premise of problematic algorithms that steer the data away from the "starting object". This is because the obejct of study is an SDBS (Spatial Database System) much attributed to Geographical Information Systems. It seems that GIS and SDBS's have perennial problems on algorithms that make data lose their way through a "neighborhood" or a spatial entity. We somewhat get a misguided result out of data lost in the street.
Second, the study introduces "database primitives" which according to the authors are based on neighborhood relations between data. This is closely concerned about the flaw of relational databases when they produce redundancies due to the absence of identifiable uniqueness such as primary keys. In the context of spatial databases, the "neighborhood" is expected to have unique elements as database objects. This is interesting because it is based on the geographic uniqueness assumption that no two corner places on a map are exactly the same, and algorithms should be all about teaching the computer how to recognize these uniquenesses.
Third, so as to contribute to the theory of relational databases, the study proposes the use of algorithm construction based on topological relations, spatial clustering, characterization etc. I find these really mindblowing!
Generally, there's more to the study of databases than mere tables and relationships. The issue that often emerges is about techniques of clustering and cassification, good design to achieve retrieval effeciency and knowledge discovery. By the time all books are turned to bytes, librarians will no longer be concerned with shelving bound knowledge, but in the generation of useful information.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Rage Against the System
The field of IT management can primarily be viewed as the best source of frameworks for adopting a process of evaluating a library system, or in our case, an "Integrated Library System". The concept of the integrated library recently made the librarianship profession live side-by-side with the network administrators when interlibrary resource loaning went digital instead of the old physical document delivery. As a result, the concept of "systems" in librarianship merged with the "information systems" track of computer science. Library theorists and observers saw this as an impending digital colonization of librarianship instead of a marriage of concepts. Many old schoolers fear that librarianship will be superseded by pure code and algorithm, such that the puristic study of information systems mean the death of retrieval tehniques and processes. Deputy University Librarian at the University of Exeter Martin Myhill explores this issue of too much intrusion by computer science into the field, and argues that once a library system goes digitized into an "integrated computer system", hybrid mechanisms must be in place to preserve the practice of delivering quality information to clients. Three important things will give us enlightenment:
Article: Snakes and Ladders: towards a post-maturity evaluation index of Integrated Library System ownership / MARTIN MYHILL, Deputy University Librarian at the
URL: eric.exeter.ac.uk/exeter/bitstream/10036/
First, these hybrid mechanisms call for a well-rounded and consultative development of an evaluation process into what he called a "toolkit system evaluation". Myhill states the contents of this toolkit includes "best practice analysis, benchmarking, self-assessment checklists, consideration of management statistics, and key indicators such as achieving targets in the service level agreements" (Myhill, 2006?). Does this sound like the Operations Research in Industrial Engineering? Maybe so, or even parallel to what Six Sigma preaches, which opens the door for another fertile speculation in Library Management.
Second, Myhill cites Van House in recognizing the "multiplicity of library effectiveness", which makes a traditional evaluation process difficult due to uncontrollable variables. This goes to show that there is no single library system service that serves as a general indicator of its success, or failure. Their analysis is apt for the postmodern age when both Myhill and Van House ponders that ILS effectiveness is a "multidimensional construct" vis-a-vis the system's lifecycle. Each phase of the cycle is treated as distinct contexts and given a value or a mark, building some kind of a point system.
Third, the scalar point system used in Myhill's toolkit seeks to eliminate the high probability of subjectivity and partiality which is rampant in quantitative evaluations. Each phase in the system's lifecycle from procurement and deployment to development and replacement is deconstructed even more down to specific sub-phases and given/deducted with points.
His paper is said to work towards a post-maturity evaluation system, recognizing the inevitability of systems growing old and outdated. If the old interlibrary resource-sharing system wishes to survive amidst computer science onslaught, it must morph and be evaluated in its hybrid form.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
You have an Online Dilemma?
During the late nineties, highschoolers saw the dawn of a new era. Grappling with the Herculean load of accomplishing ten written assignments for ten subjects each day, a student in the secondary level encountered a miracle that will surely change the way they submit assignments: the internet.
All of us can remember this. The era of Netscape was exciting. A highschooler can experiment with this thing called "browsing", while hoping you get what the teacher wants. And how about "search engines"? You can thank the God of Computers for delivering us Yahoo. Typing a keyword in a textbox was a WoW moment! You get some degree of relevance to what you want.
And the biggest blessing of all: downloading! Forget going to the school library with all the old books, and the DDC you can't understand. Now here comes your computer that is now able to save webpages in a jiffy to your 3.5 floppy. Forget reading them! Submitting the printed webpages and impressing your teacher sounds more important.
Five years later, it seems highschool teachers could'nt care more about the internet-borne assigments. I went to UP along with the batch of "downloaders". But I was surprised by the way some of my classmates delivered reports in GE classes. Their slides were copy-pasted, even their speeches were copy pasted from web content. I remember my Professors calling us the "copy-paste" generation. We were subsequently banned from using any online source.
I write about this, not to appear powerless to the dawn of a new web researching phenomena, but my attitude towards online sourcing is one of jittery acceptance. Change is inevitable. It is necessary to survive by adapting to new methods. But if we are concerned if this web-researching thing brings positive change to our kids, we should constantly monitor their learning curve. Do they learn from copy-pasting and downloading? Maybe yes, on how to navigate through a dizzy online interface. But do they learn about the topic at hand? Slightly, maybe zero. All they care about is speedy submission. Not the content, but just the form.
But actually, the internet really does have benefits that outweigh its shortcomings. In fact, this is what the e-learning movement is trying to resolve: how to speed up the flow of information from repository to end-user without sacrificing (or better yet, enhance) in-depth learning. Online media should be seen as a catalyst for cognitive abilities. It should aid users to surpass their learning habits by being informed as quick as the fiber optic cable delivers the information to their senses.
The private sector loves to use e-learning as their corporate social responsibility. In 2007, I was connected with a corporate foundation that brings internet literacy to public schools far from Metro Manila connectivity. The most laudable thing about this project is when they make a reading program connive with internet literacy. A study focusing on analyzing students' scores from a reading comprehension exam concluded that the internet helped children read and learn better.
How do you do that? The secret: teacher supervision in online searching/browsing and a solid integration of the internet in the curriculum. The key here is having a carefully refereed internet use among kids, so as not to forget the learning process amidst speedy data processing. This practice calls for the whole new field of Knowledge Management!
Comments are always welcome!
All of us can remember this. The era of Netscape was exciting. A highschooler can experiment with this thing called "browsing", while hoping you get what the teacher wants. And how about "search engines"? You can thank the God of Computers for delivering us Yahoo. Typing a keyword in a textbox was a WoW moment! You get some degree of relevance to what you want.
And the biggest blessing of all: downloading! Forget going to the school library with all the old books, and the DDC you can't understand. Now here comes your computer that is now able to save webpages in a jiffy to your 3.5 floppy. Forget reading them! Submitting the printed webpages and impressing your teacher sounds more important.
Five years later, it seems highschool teachers could'nt care more about the internet-borne assigments. I went to UP along with the batch of "downloaders". But I was surprised by the way some of my classmates delivered reports in GE classes. Their slides were copy-pasted, even their speeches were copy pasted from web content. I remember my Professors calling us the "copy-paste" generation. We were subsequently banned from using any online source.
I write about this, not to appear powerless to the dawn of a new web researching phenomena, but my attitude towards online sourcing is one of jittery acceptance. Change is inevitable. It is necessary to survive by adapting to new methods. But if we are concerned if this web-researching thing brings positive change to our kids, we should constantly monitor their learning curve. Do they learn from copy-pasting and downloading? Maybe yes, on how to navigate through a dizzy online interface. But do they learn about the topic at hand? Slightly, maybe zero. All they care about is speedy submission. Not the content, but just the form.
But actually, the internet really does have benefits that outweigh its shortcomings. In fact, this is what the e-learning movement is trying to resolve: how to speed up the flow of information from repository to end-user without sacrificing (or better yet, enhance) in-depth learning. Online media should be seen as a catalyst for cognitive abilities. It should aid users to surpass their learning habits by being informed as quick as the fiber optic cable delivers the information to their senses.
The private sector loves to use e-learning as their corporate social responsibility. In 2007, I was connected with a corporate foundation that brings internet literacy to public schools far from Metro Manila connectivity. The most laudable thing about this project is when they make a reading program connive with internet literacy. A study focusing on analyzing students' scores from a reading comprehension exam concluded that the internet helped children read and learn better.
How do you do that? The secret: teacher supervision in online searching/browsing and a solid integration of the internet in the curriculum. The key here is having a carefully refereed internet use among kids, so as not to forget the learning process amidst speedy data processing. This practice calls for the whole new field of Knowledge Management!
Comments are always welcome!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Resurreccion de un Tradicionalista
Critique on Resureccion's Search Strategies
It was only last Wednesday (July 16, 2008) when I heard that you can "digitize" after "downloading" web information. I was not the only one who gave an eyebrow: I was sitting with the whole of Ms. Esposo's LIS 260 class, all with clutched foreheads.
For the record, digitizing means turning analog format into bytes (wiki definition). There should be a premise of starting with a hard format to be turned into the digital softcopy. The process stands in contrast with information "born-digital", that is, records created using a digital platform and saving it as digital file. It basically started its lifecycle in the digital world. If it's not born digital, it may be written by hand or any hard medium on a hard platform, say paper. With Dr. Resureccion's statement of digitizing sources from the web, I cannot logically perceive any workflow involving the digitization of already digitized data. I am not sure if she got such an idea from her PhD studies.
These are not the only blabber I got from her dangerous mindset. Her whole speech was delivered in a tone attacking the web as a source to be treated with the least credibility. Although online encyclopedias like WIkipedia cannot be treated with shining respect in academic circles, the web now stands as a formidable source of the latest data on any field of study. Instead of attacking its weaknesses, Dr. Resurreccion should have presented it as a possible source and means of delivering current awareness, with the disclaimer that librarians should do their jobs by verifying the veracity of online information while using it, not ignoring its presence. Such an attack on the web is tantamount to attacking the use of information technology and the progressive attitude of Filipino Librarians.
Second, the whole seminar ran in a one-way stream of information, completely contradictory to the concept of Web 2.0. An open forum occurred but failed to invite user involvement into the pool of ideas by avoiding an answer to simple questions. Her misleading responses were evident when she talked of mere statistics when asked about evaluating a reading program. She could not grasp the concept on the first note by referring to only the quantitative responses from users, ignoring the possibility for qualitative feedback.
Third, the motive for money-making was obvious. There was a prearranged lecture series which does not contain the least of what participants expect: comprehensive information to aid their practice. We came to be enlightened about search strategies and were only given websites & traditional sources. We were expecting some tips on Boolean use, at least, but we were disappointed to find a refresher on citing sources. Walking home without anything new to learn, my classmates may have felt shortchanged. I havent visited the Ortigas Library and I'm no longer excited to see it.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with traditionalism or sticking with the old school. Society needs traditionalists to keep generations in line with common moral ground. But aspiring information professionals like us need to cope with change to survive. Professionals minimally expect the prospects for a brighter future in the workplace by learning about the latest trends in seminars. I got it from Resurreccion: "what is money if you can learn something". But it was something old, biased and anti-progressive. If one is concerned about the future of the information industry, you better not attend another seminar like this. And this seminar thing could have been a business afterall. 200bucks per head wasnt a bad profit for 2 hours of talking.
It was only last Wednesday (July 16, 2008) when I heard that you can "digitize" after "downloading" web information. I was not the only one who gave an eyebrow: I was sitting with the whole of Ms. Esposo's LIS 260 class, all with clutched foreheads.
For the record, digitizing means turning analog format into bytes (wiki definition). There should be a premise of starting with a hard format to be turned into the digital softcopy. The process stands in contrast with information "born-digital", that is, records created using a digital platform and saving it as digital file. It basically started its lifecycle in the digital world. If it's not born digital, it may be written by hand or any hard medium on a hard platform, say paper. With Dr. Resureccion's statement of digitizing sources from the web, I cannot logically perceive any workflow involving the digitization of already digitized data. I am not sure if she got such an idea from her PhD studies.
These are not the only blabber I got from her dangerous mindset. Her whole speech was delivered in a tone attacking the web as a source to be treated with the least credibility. Although online encyclopedias like WIkipedia cannot be treated with shining respect in academic circles, the web now stands as a formidable source of the latest data on any field of study. Instead of attacking its weaknesses, Dr. Resurreccion should have presented it as a possible source and means of delivering current awareness, with the disclaimer that librarians should do their jobs by verifying the veracity of online information while using it, not ignoring its presence. Such an attack on the web is tantamount to attacking the use of information technology and the progressive attitude of Filipino Librarians.
Second, the whole seminar ran in a one-way stream of information, completely contradictory to the concept of Web 2.0. An open forum occurred but failed to invite user involvement into the pool of ideas by avoiding an answer to simple questions. Her misleading responses were evident when she talked of mere statistics when asked about evaluating a reading program. She could not grasp the concept on the first note by referring to only the quantitative responses from users, ignoring the possibility for qualitative feedback.
Third, the motive for money-making was obvious. There was a prearranged lecture series which does not contain the least of what participants expect: comprehensive information to aid their practice. We came to be enlightened about search strategies and were only given websites & traditional sources. We were expecting some tips on Boolean use, at least, but we were disappointed to find a refresher on citing sources. Walking home without anything new to learn, my classmates may have felt shortchanged. I havent visited the Ortigas Library and I'm no longer excited to see it.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with traditionalism or sticking with the old school. Society needs traditionalists to keep generations in line with common moral ground. But aspiring information professionals like us need to cope with change to survive. Professionals minimally expect the prospects for a brighter future in the workplace by learning about the latest trends in seminars. I got it from Resurreccion: "what is money if you can learn something". But it was something old, biased and anti-progressive. If one is concerned about the future of the information industry, you better not attend another seminar like this. And this seminar thing could have been a business afterall. 200bucks per head wasnt a bad profit for 2 hours of talking.
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