Monday, May 19, 2003

Some broad reflections and the state of my demo #

Presenting at conferences is a wonderful but exhausting way to network and communicate one's ideas.  I'm grateful for the opportunities to meet such varied groups of excellent folks from three different (but somewhat overlapping) communities.  This last month has also given me a renewed appreciation for writing -- both on weblogs but also in more reflective articles.  I found it difficult to write much and attend conferences at the same time.  I hope that what I lack in speed, I'll make up in depth and quality of reflection that come from not writing immediately. My demo I did make a lot of progress on my demo, however -- the opportunity to demo one's work in front of a live and knowledgeable audience is a grand spur to working hard!  However, my demo of the Scholar's Box currently lives only in the very specialized and hand-tweeked environment of my own notebook computer.  A high priority for me is to recast my code into an application that others will be able to use, even in a primitive form.  My demo currently lets a user (i.e., me) gather images from amazon.com, the California Digital Library, MIT's OpenCourseware project, and from METS objects; sequence and annotate the images; and then create an OpenOffice.org Presentation, a HTML album, a Manila album, an Ecco outline, and an Endnote bibliography out of the images and captions.  The purpose of the demo is to show what it might be like for a user to be able to mix and match images from disparate collections, add one's own interpretations, and then output the collection to other tools.  We're quite excited about the Scholar's Box -- and we obviously want others to be also.  Hence, expect me to write more and put some software out there for others to try soon. Some things that I want to write about I love lists.  I'm going to make one right now to help me figure out what I want to write/blog about over the next weeks (months?).  How talks at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference on nanotechnology, biological/swarm computing, and hardware-hacking have rekindled my interest in science and engineering (that went underground since I finished my Ph.D. in biophysics six years ago). the DODL (distributed open digital library) concept that David Seaman, the director of the Digital Library Federation, expounded for us in New York -- an idea I'm fully signed up on but which caused a fair amount of discomfort at the DLF meeting Projects that the IU are involved in:  a collaboration with the California Digital Library, a project on library/educational technology interoperability funded by the Mellon Foundation, our collaborations on campus.  I want to explain what we're doing and invite your feedback. Work that is happening at the IEEE looking at the standardization of the IMS-CP format. Natural history museums -- I'm going to a conference on natural history museum collections in a couple of weeks. Connecting to the edublogging community.  I've written before about how much I feel myself to be on the margins of that community and about how much I'd like to integrate my work more deeply into that community.  That's why I'll try to do these coming weeks. Intellectual property issues and advocacy/activism.  Jamie Boyle gave a most excellent keynote at the DLF last week, which challenged the digital library community to take our responsibilities seriously as advocates for free speech, fair use, and a sane policy on the public domain.  Digital rights management/authentication technologies.  I've been putting off looking at digital rights/restrictions management technologies as I've pursued the ideal case of dealing with "opencontent" materials.  I need to start experimenting with materials where rights are not so open.  What are some practical ways to let folks gather materials that they have rights for without making it so onerous for everyone?  The Scholar's Box -- what is it exactly, what we've written so far, what we plan to build, and the technology behind it.  I want to expose more of our thinking to the light and scrutiny of the community. Looking deeper into scholarly publishing.  One of the things that most excites me about our partnership with the CDL is the opportunity to study this area in some depth.  What libraries and museums mean in a digital age.  I spent part of my last afternoon in Manhattan hanging out at the New York Public Library and chatting with a knowledgeable librarian there.  This weekend, I browsed the new books shelves at the Berkeley Public Library.  The two libraries were a reminder of what I miss out when totally immersed in the digital library world.  It's easy to forget -- but why?  What are the best ways to blend the worlds of the physical collections and digital representations/collections?  I'd like to explore these issues. Getting back in touch with what's happening on campus:  ETS, SIMS.... What makes Chandler (the PIM) interesting and how I hope to eventually migrate all my Ecco outlines to Chandler -- if Chandler pans out.  Also, how Chandler might make a good platform for building the Scholar's Box Updating my blogroll to reflect the new weblogs that I'm tracking. [to be continued...]   Posted by Raymond Yee on 5/19/03; 9:24:41 AM from the Personal Notes dept. Discuss

Notelets for 2003/05/19 #

I returned to the Bay Area early Saturday morning (1 am to be precise) via a Jetblue flight from JFK to Oakland.  I've been so happy to be back home for a bit.  No major traveling for me until the beginning of July when I head off to Montreal for my sister's wedding.  I'm anxious to write down what I've observed and learned during this last month, bouncing from Berkeley, Santa Clara, Washington D.C., and most recently, New York City.  I'll start today. * I'm looking forward to what Chris will have to say on K-12 and learning objects.  He wrote on Friday: In reponse, I'm going to have to start writing about how I think K-12 and learning objects don't/won't mix, that there is really no such thing as a usable learning object, and the IU's work really is becoming about developing tools that interoperate with multiple library and museum digital resources to help users assemble usable teacher and student-centered packages of materials, a format that is an alternative to a learning object, or a better, usable, K-12 learning object. We can't merely object to learning objects- there's a good kernel of an idea: reusability.   [to be continued....]   Posted by Raymond Yee on 5/19/03; 8:26:37 AM from the Notelets dept. Discuss