Week 6 Reading Notes

How Internet Infrastructure Works (Tyson, J)

• Somehow I am surprised that the Internet is monitored and maintained by a non-profit group (Internet Society). With (American) capitalism and emerging potential legislature, it’s just hard to believe that it isn’t controlled by either a corporation or government entity.
• I’ve often gotten routers and modems confused, and I felt like this article did a great job of explaining the difference: your computer uses the modem to connect to the Internet, while the router controls your Internet information flow.
• If there are almost 4.3 billion possible IP address combinations, what happens when the demand surpasses the supply? Or are scientists already planning and preparing for that?

Dismantling Integrated Library Systems (Pace, A)

• I feel like the rental car metaphor is a poor one. Yes, a four-door sedan will get you anywhere, but maybe that’s not what you want (maybe you want something more snazzy). Or maybe it’s not what you need—what you actually need is a truck that hauls stuff. That’s the beauty with ILS competition and new open source ILS and the web—it provides libraries with the options they want and need.
• Completing a completely new ILS is NOT unrealistic—it’s happened, and it’s happened successfully. Georgia PINES Libraries created Evergreen from scratch, and it’s proved to be one of the most successful and popular open source ILS.
• Both open source software and open access journals have shown that better does NOT have to cost more.

TED Talks: Sergey Brin and Larry Page on Google

• Africa doesn’t light up at all on the image of people using Google around the world—need to work on providing power and the Internet (equalizing or imperial colonialism?).
• Wanting to make the world a better place through the Google Foundation and Google Grants—how do they choose what non-profits and charities to support?
• Very interesting that Brin and Page both attended Montessori school—this type of education isn’t necessarily thought of as creating hugely successful corporate leaders.

A Few Thoughts on the Google Books Library Project (Smith, C)

• I agree that Google Books will make information more widely accessible via the Internet, but the scans aren’t always of the highest quality.
• Also, as we’ve learned by using OCR, when an item is scanned, it doesn’t necessarily create the best digital document/item.