Week 6 Notes

• ISP = Internet Service Provider
• POP = Point of Presence- place for local users to access the company's network, often through a phone number or dedicated line (I wonder how much it costs for a company to set up something like this. Also the picture is using a T3 line which is VERY expensive.)
• NAP = Network Access Points
• Maybe the concepts presented in this first article do not seem revolutionary or amazing to me because I was born in 1989.
• T1 lines are also expensive, but they are RIDICULOUSLY fast. It's like popping a six foot wide hole in the Hoover Dam. The amount of data that can be bounced back and forth over it is mind boggling. 
• IP Address = Internet Protocol- language computers use to communicate over the internet
• Re-tooling ILS will prove to be a profitable business ventures for some companies, but can libraries really afford the cost? Probably not. This is depressing.
• "Moreover, libraries no longer want to search myriad information silos but desire one-stop search and retrieval. They no longer serve 300–400 users in a controlled environment but thousands of users over the web." I do not think that we in the library world anticipated the internet boom, so it caught us unprepared.
• "Librarians are also motivated to seek solutions because of healthy competition with peers and disparate information resources." I feel like the term "healthy competition" is an understatement. Especially when some of us look like this while changing these systems for the better or coming up with solutions of our own. The competition makes us crazy!  

Courtesy Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

• We have to dismantle ILS to rebuild it? YOU DON'T SAY?

• The fact that there is internet in Antarctica is mind boggling. The environmental road bumps that they run into must be crazy.
• Does the Google Foundation still exist? I've never heard of it until now.
• Also, does Orkut still exist? I think they call it "Google plus" now.
• I have an alternative to Google Answers. It's called IPL2 and it's FREE.
• I understand the idea of making information more accessible through the Google Book Project, but what bothers me is that since these books are being digitized, there are less physical copies of these books and eventually, you will only be able to find them in a digitized format. One of my biggest fears is an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that destroys the servers and such where these files are being stored. If there is no existing physical copy of a book who's digital counterpart was lost in the EMP or other natural disaster, then it is lost forever. We could end up losing important deposits of knowledge this way. Maybe I am being paranoid, but I feel like my fears are justified.
• But from a historical stand point I like the idea of being able to preserve authors' works through digitization. I love being able to read a broadside from the 18th century without having to travel to archive where it is physically stored.