October 13th Reading Notes

"How stuff works"
- Nobody really owns the Internet. It is a collection of networks.
- Grown from four host computer systems to millions.
- When you connect to your ISP, you become part of their network. The ISP may then connect to a larger network.
- Point of Presence: a place for local users to access the company's network.
- The routers determine where to send information from one computer to another.
- Routers are specialized computers that send your messages.
- Two jobs of routers: 1. Ensures that information doesn't go where it's not needed. 2. It makes sure that information does make it to the intended destination.
- National Science Foundation created the first high-speed backbone in 1987 called NSFNET.
- Backbones are fiber optic trunk line and has multiple lines to increase the capacity.
- IP Address: Internet Protocol, which is the language that computers use to communicate over the Internet.
- Four numbers in an IP address called octets.
- URL: Uniform Resource Locator

Dismantling Integrated Library Systems
- "GIS has been successful in offering public libraries tightly integrated core functionality in its Polaris product."
- Automation vendors have their own motivations: new revenue streams.
- ILS maintenance fees are relatively cheap.
- Library vendors have two choices. 1. They can continue to maintain large systems that use proprietary methods of interoperability and promise tight integration fo services for their customers. 2. They can choose to dismantle their modules in such a way that librarians can reintegrate their systems through web services and standards.
- May be necessary for librarians and vendors to dismantle the ILS in order to rebuild it.