Blog 4 Databases, Online Searching, and XML

LSC 555 Spring 2013                          Week 9:  Databases and Online Searching  Week 10: XML

Professor Kim                                     Linda Gwinn-Casey

Blog 4 Week 9  Part 1:  Federated Searching  and Databases-Keys to the Gated Community

            Is the ability to conduct federated searching across a library or digital environment really possible in the most comprehensive of ways today?  Envision a gated community and who has the rights to enter the gate.  If the security guard is off duty, an authorized resident must enter in a code on a keypad or swipe a card.  However, an unauthorized person may be able to use a crowbar to pry open the gates as well.  The former strategy is sanctioned, rule oriented, and seemless;  the latter is not, but the end result is that both strategies ended in access through the gates. Do we want scholarly information to remain proprietary for cardholders, or allow open access with a crowbar?

            In “How Scholarly is Google Scholar?  A Comparison to Library Databases”, authors Howland, Wright, Boughan, and Roberts succinctly identified the strength and weaknesses with regard to scholarly research using both (2009, p. 227).  The heart of the matter in this debate is about the “aboutness” of the information the user is seeking, who possesses the information, and who has access to it as well.  Information, time, and money are all prized commodities in our society today.  “Open source” refers to access that is freely available as in using Google Scholar, but databases are structured contractually and often involve contracts and monies, so the user has to have the key (usually in a form of a membership) to open the gate to these resources.  I surmise that the user would feel a sense of saving time by typing in keywords into a Google search box, which would yield a plethora of results; however, the real time saver would be to access the library database for access to more scholarly resources.

            In their study, the authors cited the merits of Google as relevancy ranking in a large universe of information and superiority in “retrieving appropriate citations” (Howland, Wright, Boughan, and Roberts, 2009, p.232).  The study showed that 76% of Google Scholar searches turned up library database results, in contrast of 47% of database searches that turned up Google Scholar results, justifying why many students use Google first for information gathering (Howland, et al., 2009, p.231-232).

            The authors stated that a database is “limited to its defined title list of content” (Howland, et al., 2009, p.231) and that librarians conduct searches using search queries, unlike users who use natural language (Howland, et al., 2009, p.233).

            How should we enter the gated community of information?  Think of Google Scholar as another tool in the toolbox.  As you reach into the toolbox, notice your library card. Use it to effortlessly open the gates to scholarly information and you will be all set!

Source:

Howland, J.L., Wright, T.C., Boughan, R.A., & Roberts, B.C. (2009). How scholarly is google scholar?  A comparison to library databases.  College & Research Libraries. 70(3), 227-234.

Copyright 2013

 

Blog 4  Week 10  Part 2:    XML- A Recipe for Success!

            Extensible Markup Language (XML) has been described as “design agnostic” by authors David Young in Phillip Madans in “XML:  Why Bother?” The main idea is that content and structure are linked in the digital world, but design is separate in XML; therefore, the same materials can easily be transposed into a wide array of formats.  Young and Madans encourage their readers to consider that “books” includes both digital and print worlds, and that information coded in XML provides more freedom of dissemination of that information because the design is a separate entity.  “When you start with XML, every format, print and digital, can be rendered simultaneously” (Young & Madans, 2009, p.252).

            In “Data Manipulation in an XML-Based Digital Image Library, author Naicheng  Chang illustrated XML as having three layers:  a data access tier (content), a web server tier (structure), and a presentation tier (design).    Chang posed that within an HTML page, XML data can be combined within HTML elements.  “In this sense, XML-enabled databases are likely to be the potential candidates to store and manage XML documents in digital libraries (Chang, 2004, p.71). 

            I liken the three layers to getting the ingredients to bake a favorite dessert:  pie.  The content is your favorite fruit filling (apple, of course!), the structure is in apple slices mixed with sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and a dash of salt added in to make a syrup, and lastly  the dough.  The dough can take many forms...you may want a pie, a crepe, a pastry, a pancake, waffle or cobbler.  It’s the same filling that is being used, but the finished baked good will differ just as the content of the material is the same, whether it appears in print or digital.

Sources:

Chang, N.  (2005). Data manipulation in an XML-based digital library.  School of Library, Archive and Information Studies,39(1),62-72.

Young, D. & Madans, P. (2009).  Xml:  Why bother?  Publishing Research Quarterly, 25(3), 147-153.