Sept. 16 Required Readings: Multimedia Representation and Storage

Data Compression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression 

• Data compression is encoding information using fewer bits than what's in the original representation to reduce the size of the data file
• Lossless- removing statistical redundancy
• Lossy- unnecessary information is removed
• Ultimately: data compression saves space but does not always save time- and many times the quality of the data is reduced

     This article gave me the basic understanding of what data compression is. I now understand what is happening with a ZIP file. It also shed some light of compression of different kinds of data like audio and video. It seems that one needs to really consider what to compress and what not to compress if quality is a matter of importance to the particular data in question.


Data compression basics (long documents, but covers all basics and beyond): http://dvd-hq.info/data_compression_1.php  

     The above article reaffirmed the issue of choosing between quality and saving space. And a lot of it went over my head, especially when it started explaining different sort of algorithms for different kinds of data. What I did understand was really interesting. The main points that I took away include:

• Data compression allows users to store more in the same space and allows them to transfer data in less time or using less bandwidth
• Lossless compression recovers information identical to the original data (before compression)
• Lossy does not recover identical data because bits are removed
• Some compression does not always make the data smaller (the example when using RLE) so consideration needs to take place on how to compress different data
• There are different algorithms to save space for different data sequences, but quality can be lost in all of them

Edward A. Galloway, “Imaging Pittsburgh: Creating a shared gateway to digital image collections of the Pittsburgh region” First Monday 9:5 2004 http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1141/1061 

     "Imaging Pittsburgh" was a really interesting account of how the University created online access to 20 different photographic collections spread across the University Archives Service Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Historical Society of Western Pa. The University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library was awarded the National Leadership from IMLS to fund this project and what a lot of the account focused on and what I found most interesting was challenges to orchestrating the project. A lot of it seemed to stem from conflict of different organizational between the institutions- especially when it came setting a universal metadata scheme for the project when every institution had their own metadata scheme. It was interesting how the leaders of the project found a way to work with the different institutions and create a cohesive plan of execution.


Paula L. Webb, YouTube and libraries: It could be a beautiful relationship C&RL News, June 2007 Vol. 68, No. 6 http://crln.acrl.org/content/68/6/354.full.pdf 

     This article was a super cool read about how to use YouTube to the advantage of libraries. I think it's a cool idea because YouTube is free for the library to use and free for the patron to access. I liked how the article focused on college libraries and how to get students more familiar with the library and find out where the library is. YouTube is perfect for students because it is a very familiar platform and would probably be preferred over Libguides. It's also great because students can still have access to the videos after they graduate. It could also be a lot of fun for the librarians and staff to create videos and if they do it right, it could make the library a more efficient and familiar tool at patrons disposal.