Comments on: Our hidden digital libraries

By: theorywatch » Blog Archive » Thinking about collections 12

theorywatch » Blog Archive » Thinking about collections 12 — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:02:35 +0000

[...] of Michigan library maven John Wilkin has some very interesting thoughts about “hidden” digital collections and making them more accessible via Google. Intriguing that we’ve so quickly come to this [...]

By: PabloG » Blog Archive » links for 2008-07-31 [delicious.com]

PabloG » Blog Archive » links for 2008-07-31 [delicious.com] — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:31:41 +0000

[...] John Wilkin’s blog » Our hidden digital libraries (tags: google webinvisible webdesign digitallibraries bibliothèques library DocumentNumerique crawler interface moteur searchengine) [...]

By: James Weinheimer

James Weinheimer — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:27:32 +0000

I don’t know if I completely agree with you that simplified text files are “good enough” (that may have to wait for practical tests) but I do agree that our materials must be in Google–for better or worse. Google has decided that they want XML sitemaps, and to be fair, it looks as if Google at least tried our way (OAI-PMH).

So, why don’t we give them their XML sitemaps? It seems to me easier than OAI-PMH, and we may find out that they, and you, are correct. If it doesn’t work, that could be interesting as well.

In either case, it would certainly be better than our materials being left out of Google searches.

By: Google and the academic Deep Web at WoW! Wouter on the Web

Google and the academic Deep Web at WoW! Wouter on the Web — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:18:15 +0000

[...] indexing of repositories? Hagendorn and Santell point the finger to Google indeed. However, John Wilkin, a colleague of them, doesn’t agree. Just as Lorcan Dempsey didn’t. And neither do [...]

By: jpwilkin

jpwilkin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:11:38 +0000

I should have noticed Roy Tennant’s piece on this, http://hangingtogether.org/?p=475 (A Map to Destinations Uncrawled). A great analysis of the problem and of strategies.

By: jpwilkin

jpwilkin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:05:27 +0000

You betcha. The difference is really about maintaining the objects (there’s much that you can do with them in formats that aren’t native to the Web) and flexibility (e.g., you can ‘express’ them in a variety of different ways). I’m sure there’s a large body of literature on this by now. I did a few pieces related to this in the early/mid-90’s, including a D-Lib article (”Just-in-time Conversion, Just-in-case Collections”) and a couple of things for the journal Public-Access Computer Systems Review (including, for example, “Using the World-Wide Web to Deliver Complex Electronic Documents: Implications for Libraries”).

By: ignorance

ignorance — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:39:51 +0000

Isn’t there a difference between *storing* digital library as HTML and representing it that way for users to find?

By: Matthew Theobald

Matthew Theobald — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:30:45 +0000

John,

You might investigate the ISEN initiative. We’re pretty quiet now, but building up a voice toward revealing the entire hidden, invisible and deep WWW.

-m@

By: Ryan Shaw

Ryan Shaw — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:50:46 +0000

“…too much trouble for the value of the content.”

This is precisely why we must avoid putting corporations in charge of our cultural heritage: despite claims to be “organizing the world’s information,” they really are only interested in organizing the subset of information that will bring them advertising revenues. Unless one believes that this subset is all that’s worth organizing, one ought to firmly reject the idea that Google and its ilk are anything more than advertising companies that provide useful tools. Adopt SEO techniques and manipulate them to draw traffic to our resources? Certainly. Trust them as stewards of those resources? Hell no.