October 6th Reading Notes

Computer Network
- A collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communications channels that allow sharing of resources and information.
- Communication protocols define the rules and data formats for exchanging information.
- Today, computer networks are the core of modern communication.
- Computer networks can facilitate communications: Using a network people can communicate efficiently and easily.
- Communications protocol defines the formats and rules for exchanging information via a network.
- Many different types of networks including LAN, PAN.
- Networks are typically managed by organizations which own them. Depending on the owner's point of view, determines whether it is an intranet or extranet.
- Internet has no single owner and is a special case of a network.
- Network security consists of the provisions and policies adopted by the network administrator to prevent and monitor unauthorized access.

Local Area Network 
- Computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, or computer lab.
- Characteristics of LANs: higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic area, and lack of a need for leased telecommunication lines.
- Increasing demand and use of computers in universities and research labs in the late 1960s provided the need for high-speed interconnections between computer system.
- LANs may have connections with other LANs via leased lines, leased services, or by tunneling across the Internet via virtual private network technologies.

Management of RFID in Libraries
- Radio frequency identifier: Consists of a computer chip and an antenna, often printed on paper or some other flexible medium.
- RFID tag does not have to be visible to be read.
- Because of privacy issues some librarians aren't sure if RFIDs should be used.
- RFID systems can read multiple tags at once, allowing you to check out a stack of books with a single transaction.

Assignment Two

Here is my link for my Jing video: http://screencast.com/t/pDFC1qu8v1Oi

It is a mini-tutorial on how to use dipity.com, a free service that allows users to make timelines online.

Below are the links to five photos on flickr.com.  They were taken from dipity.com using the Jing software.  The photos run through a sequencial order and have a brief description that walks through the user through a five-step process to make a timeline using dipity.com.

Photo one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67555322@N07/6179615956/in/photostream

Photo two: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67555322@N07/6179615984/in/photostream

Photo three: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67555322@N07/6179616026/in/photostream

Photo four: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67555322@N07/6179089427/in/photostream

Photo five: http://www.flickr.com/photos/67555322@N07/6179089493/in/photostream

Muddiest point - September 22nd

What is the biggest difference between excel and access?  What are the downfalls to each program?

Reading Notes 9-29

Anne J. Gilliland - Introduction to Metadata, pathways to Digital Information
- Metadata - sum of what one can say about any information object.
- Content relates to what the object contains or is about and is intrinsic to an information object.
- Context indicates the who, what, why, where and how aspects.
- Structure relates to the formal set of associations within or among individual information objects.
- An Internet resource provider might use metadata to refer to information that is encoded in HTML.
- The Dublin Core Metadata element Set identifies a relatively small, generic set of metadata elements that can be used by any community, expert, or nonexpert to describe and search across a wide variety of information resources.
- A primary function of metadata is the description and ordering of original objects or items in a repository or collection.
- Metadata does not have to be digital. Can be recorded in formats like card catalogs, vertical files, and file labels.
- Metadata allows repositories to track the many layers of rights, licensing, and reproduction information that exist for original items as well as for their related information objects and the multiple versions of those information objects.

An Overview of the Dublin Core Data Model
- Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an international effort designed to foster consensus across disciplines for the discovery-oriented description of diverse resources in an electronic environment.
- A formalized data model is required to support the DCMI functional requirement for a modular, extensible, metatdata architecture.
- Many disciplines additionally use classification schemes, controlled vocabularies or thesauri to describe the content or resources.

EndNote X5: Introduction
- EndNote is a leading bibliographic software product on the market.
- You can use EndNote to import citations from saved literature searches.

Assignment One

For Assignment One I chose to put several of my favorite photographs that I have taken online.  I have always wanted to put these photos online so I would be able to share them with people and this was a good opportunity to do so.

To view the photos click here: http://www.flickr.com//photos/67555322@N07/show/

Muddiest point - September 15th

I do not have a muddiest point for this class period.

Reading Notes 9-22

Database 
- An organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form.
- Refers to both the way its users view it and to the logical and physical materialization of its data, content, in files, computer memory, and computer data storage.
- The database concept has evolved since the 1960s to ease increasing difficulties in designing, building, and maintaining complex information systems.
- Relational model (1970), insisted that applications should search for data by content, rather than by following links.
   - This appears to be a key development in the history of databases because it gives the users a more effective way in searching for the information they want.
- A database management system is a system that allows to build and maintain databases, as well as to utilize their data and retrieve information from it. Can be categorized according to the database models that they support.

Entity relationship model
- Database modeling method used to produce a type of conceptual schema or semantic data model of a system.
- A relationship captures how two or more entities are related to one another.
- First stage of an information system designs uses to describe information needs or the type of information that is to be stored in a database.
- An entity may be defined as a thing which is recognized as being capable of an independent existence and which can be uniquely identified.

Database normalization process
- 3 normal forms: 1. No repeating elements or groups of elements. 2. No partial dependencies on a concatenated key. 3. No dependencies on non-key attributes.
- Some documents can be transformed into databases to organize information more effectively.
   - This is a good example to show how information can be transformed into a database without being lost in order to provide.
- NF1 addresses two issues: 1. A row of data cannot contain repeating groups of similar data (atomicity) and 2. Each row of data must have a unique identifier (Primary Key).