The focus of this week is issues with access management, economic implications and access vs. ownership.
First I am going to address my thoughts on William Arms, "Implementing Policies for Access Management"
The goal of this reading was to address the problems with managing access to online information, a problem that affects many different applications. The paper then runs through a conceptual model and its implementation. Including a pilot project being run, using the model, the Library of Congress's National Digital Library Program.
I think that this paper did an excellent job of describing the model, its implementation and all of the fine details including the issues with user interface, etc. It was really an added benefit that the paper included actual illustrations and charts, it made the concept of the model much easier to wrap my head around.
I think this reading explained a lot in terms of the importance of establishing a successful program or way to manage information access.
Next, I examined Chapters 6 and 7 from the 1999 manuscript of Digital Libraries, by William Arms, (c) 2000 M.I.T. Press
Chapter 6: Economic and Legal Issues
Basically this chapter is addressing how with the rapid pace of change happening with digital libraries, legal and economic changes need to occur just as quickly. Everything needs to adapt at an equal pace. Arms points out that there is a need for "social customs for using information that are widely understood and generally followed." Arms then goes on to explain open access with information and open access with digital libraries, and economic considerations among other things. He also examines a case study about electronic journals which is a pioneer at retaining revenue from libraries and users.
Arms whole point of this chapter is to discuss some of the legal and economic ramifications when it comes to digital libraries and information. I think this article worked well in attempting to explain some of the the issues involved. I especially found the case study of electronic journals both relevant and informative to my work as a library student as well specifically a student building a digital library.
Chapter 7: Access management and security
This chapter examines the methods for controlling who has access to materials in digital libraries, and techniques of security in networked computing. This chapter also ties in with economic issues discussed. This chapter also examines topics such as security of digital libraries and also describes at length encryption. Once again, I really enjoyed Arms writing style. He consistently clearly explains detailed issues without intimidating the reader.
I really enjoyed the readings this week. I thought it was interesting to read about economic, legal, security and access issues. I really cannot say enough how refreshing it is to read Williams Arms writings. He has the rare ability of bringing complex information to a level that a person unexperienced in the field can still read and understand.
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