Reading Notes #2

Data Compression
While I have heard of data compression and have seen examples of it in my everyday "tech" life, I never understood exactly how it worked. Compression allows for smaller files, but it may reduce the quality of the end product (jpegs vs. tiff files for image) and sometimes it requires expensive software to decompress the files.  Lossy and lossless compression are a bit confusing. As it sounds, lossy compression sacrifices some of the information in the original file in order to compress it, and it's used in digital cameras among other applications. Lossless, on the other hand, retains all or most of the original information, but cannot be compressed as well as lossy compression. The longer article explaining how data compression works gets somewhat (ok, extremely!) technical and I cannot say I completely understand how the encoding works.

Imaging Pittsburgh
I was excited to read this article because it's written by my Pitt Partner supervisor at the Archives Service Center here at the University of Pittsburgh. Thanks for a grant from the Institute of Museum  and Library Services, over 7,000-10,000 images of Pittsburgh were digitized and made available online. Photographs of historic neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, its people, and its landmarks demonstrate the city's change over time and its diversity. Its digital format allows users to search and browse the collections, and to view images related by subject, date, or location with a few clicks of the mouse. Ed Galloway mentions that one of the biggest issues with the project, which at first sounds relatively straight-foward, was choosing which photographs to digitize. An interesting discovery, thanks to this grant and project, was that by using of subject headings for each photograph, it was possible to look at a collection from afar, and see which subjects were most common. This way, the nature of each collection became increasingly clearer and could communicate the importance of each collection to a patron. Another issue was the issue of copyright. It was decided to use a strategy in which the images could be used for personal/non-commercial use, but that the user should contact the institution that holds the originals for permissions and a link was also provided. Ethically-speaking, I think that this is a very conscientious decision.

Youtube and Libraries
This article provides easy-to-follow instructions for new users of Youtube to set up a profile. The author, Paula Webb, explains the advantages of using Youtube within libraries. Existing as free advertising, Youtube could allow small libraries or libraries with small budgets to publicize their location, collections, and events. Even larger institutions could utilize it. I liked the example of Williams College's freshman introduction to the library through Youtube, which gave a new hip and technologically savvy edge to a common information session. I think this article demonstrates how knowledge of information technology can help libraries reach patrons and connect them with the right information and facilitates access to, rather than makes obsolete, paper-based resources.