Blog Comments- Week 9 XML

I commented on Veronica's blog here:

http://infinitetechnology.blogspot.com/2009/10/reading-notes-for-week-9-or-10.html

and Rachel's blog here:

http://knivesnmatches.blogspot.com/2009/11/readings-for-1110.html

Muddiest Point

No muddiest point from last week's class- though I'm sure I'll have plenty from next week's :)

Week 9 Readings- XML

1) Introduction to XML

2) A Survey of XML Standards

3) Extending Your Markup: an XML Tutorial

4) W3Schools XML Schema Tutorial

To be honest, I was somewhat confused about what exactly XML is and what it's used for even after reading all of the articles and tutorials. From what I understood, XML is somewhat similar to HTML except that you can use it for anything, as opposed to just using it for documents. Or, it's an easier way to describe hierarchical data, and in a form that is machine/human readable. I got very confused by all the acronyms the articles threw out- what I got of DTD is that it's an important element of XML because it tells you what format to expect and it can validate that it's in the proper form. SGML, I did not understand exactly what it was except that it was a precursor to XML and HTMl, etc. I thought all the articles and tutorials were thorough, but I don't feel like I had enough background knowledge to fully understand them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I felt like XML is supposed to be simple but seems to often be misused (as the articles kept stressing the differences between XML and "PROPER" XML), possibly because it is so strict. I'm looking forward to next week's lecture to learn more about what XML is and how it can be used.

Assignment 5: Koha

For my Koha topic, I chose to compile a list of books related to the topic of Victorian literature, one of my favorite literary genres. The link to my assignment is:

http://upitt04-staff.kwc.kohalibrary.com/cgi-bin/koha/virtualshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=31

Week 8 Comments-

This week I commented on Ken and Rachel's blogs,

here- http://ken-tsukuda.blogspot.com/2009/10/unit-8-html-and-web-authoring-software.html

and here- http://knivesnmatches.blogspot.com/2009/10/readings-for-1027.html

Muddiest Point Week 8

I didn't have a Muddiest Point from last week's lecture (on 10-20).

Week 8 Reading Notes

Reading Notes Week 8
1) W3schools HTML Tutorial-
I thought this tutorial on HTML was really well written. They covered the most basic ideas, as well as some more complex codes, and it was all very in depth and easy to understand. I haven't had any reason to use HTMl/web design since some classes I took back in high school, so it was a great refresher given that I have forgotten just about everything I've learned since then. Also, since everything is constantly changing, it was nice that they discussed many of the changing 'rules' of HTML that are different than when I learned the basics back in the day. I also really liked the Tryit Editor because for me, and many others I'm sure, hands on learning and messing around with the different codes are the easiest way to learn something like this.

2) HTML Cheatsheet
-I thought this cheatsheet was really handy, although it was probably not written for extreme beginners. It's really nice to have a list of all the basic codes in one place, but it didn't really explain how to use them as in depth as the other tutorial did. However, for just a resource you could bookmark or print out to have on hand once you've learned a little bit of the background knowledge, I think this would be great.

3) W3 School Cascading Style Sheet Tutorial
-Like their HTML tutorial, I think this tutorial on CSS is again very well written, easy to understand, and thorough. I haven't really used CSS before with the exception of an old blog I worked on that allowed you to use style-sheets, so I have much less experience with this than HTML (and pretty minimal experience with that as well.) However, once again, I felt like this website does a great job explaining the basics and the Tryit Editor is extremely helpful for this as well.

I bookmarked all 3 of these websites to refer back to in the future, because I think that as libraries continue to embrace technology to reach their communities in innovative ways, some basic web design skills will be very helpful for any librarian to have.

4) Beyond HTML: Developing and re-imagining library web guides in a content management system
-Content management (CM) can be defined as the process of collecting, managing and publishing content
-In a CMS, the content is disconnected from the layout and design elements of the page
-The article gives the example of GSU's librarians' attempts to create a website with research guides for their assigned subject areas, and the many problems that arose from not having any sort of guidelines or standards; the article goes on to describe how they rectified this situation by hiring a single web development librarian and implementing the use of a Content Management System
-covers how a CMS functions, its benefits and advantages, various options for implementing a CMS in your library, how to design templates for students and librarians, the findings from the GSU study, and future implications
-After reading this article, it's very easy to understand why and how a CMS could be useful and essential to the function of a library's digital content. The standards implemented by a CMS appear to make a huge difference to this. The example from GSU was very illustrative of how a CMS benefits both the librarians and their patrons, as it enables ease of both design and access to all the information the library wishes to publish in an online format. As librarians, this is likely something we will see in the future more and more in our careers as we continue the shift to a digital information environment, so I felt that this article was very beneficial.