Joanne S's List: IMT122 ReadingLists

• If you’ve used any of the popular Web 2.0 services over the past few years (e.g. Gmail, Wikipedia, Flickr or Twitter), you already have some experience with cloud computing
• Like water and electricity, a computing cloud is a communally-shared resource that you lease on a metered basis, paying for as little or as much as you need, when you need it
• As individuals and members of organizations, we’re already choosing between desktop applications and cloud applications when it comes to e-mail, RSS, file storage, word processing and other simple applications. Sooner or later we’ll have to make this choice for mission-critical enterprise applications too
• Libraries may soon be building and managing their own data centers.

• For more practical, technical explanations of cloud computing, check out

   
   
  • the Wikipedia article
   
  • the Anatomy of Cloud Computing
   
  • the MIT Technology Review Briefing on Cloud Computing.

• For a discussion of problems and concerns about the digital cloud, read:

   
   
  • How Secure is Cloud Computing?
   
  • Security in the Ether
   
  • Industry Challenges: The Standards Question

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• Cloud computing is internet-based computing whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand.
• Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet.
• There are a range of applications that can be delivered to users via cloud computing models, from email or content management to specialist applications for activities such as project management or human resources management to data storage.

  • Models include:
    Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
    Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
  Add Sticky Note
• A cloud can be private or public:
• As with any business related activity there are both risks and opportunities associated with using cloud computing services.
• potentially a number of business and information risks associated with using cloud computing services.
• noted that even if the cloud computing environment is managed wholly within NSW an appropriate risk assessment of the service and the provider should occur.
• level of risk that an organisation attributes to a proposed cloud computing arrangement will vary according to the content or subject matter of their records
• The content of the contract in these types of service arrangements is very important.

• What are others saying?

   

  Australia

   

  Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative (ADRI), Advice on managing the recordkeeping risks associated with cloud computing, July 2010, available at http://www.adri.gov.au

   

  Defence Signals Directorate (Commonwealth), Cloud computing security considerations, April 2011, available at http://www.dsd.gov.au/infosec/cloudsecurity.htm

   

  Department of Finance and Deregulation (Commonwealth), Cloud computing strategic direction paper: opportunities and applicability for use by the Australian Government, April 2011, available at http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/strategy-and-governance/docs/final_cloud_computing_strategy_version_1.pdf

• International

   

  Archives and Records Association UK and Ireland, Cloud computing toolkit: guidance for outsourcing information storage to the cloud, August 2010, available at http://www.archives.org.uk/images/documents/Cloud_Computing_Toolkit-2.pdf – this guidance contains a comprehensive overview of the range of cloud computing services available and the recordkeeping considerations that apply to each

   

  CIO Council and Chief Acquisition Officers Council (USA), Creating effective cloud computing contracts for the Federal Government: best practices for acquiring IT as a service, February 2012, available at http://www.cio.gov/cloudbestpractices.pdf – this is a comprehensive and useful document for those seeking to procure cloud computing services

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• Curtin University has moved its email and collaboration apps to Microsoft’s Cloud
• students can access Curtin anywhere, anytime and that was the rationale behind it
• Earlier this year, the university announced plans to migrate to a managed version of Blackboard, as well as firing up its new Vblock infrastructure from EMC, VMware and Cisco.

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• the achievements of these institutions have been realised against a backdrop of economic hardship and a substantial reduction in funding for cultural and research institutions around the world.
• information ecosystem is in a period of transition
• libraries have paid considerable attention to addressing issues of collection, preservation and access.
• developed and developing countries alike, more users are abandoning traditional digital and web access devices – desktops and laptops – for mobile devices
• number of people with smartphones is increasing
• proportion of users who never or infrequently use the desktop web, relying solely on mobile access, is growing
• users are demonstrating an increasing reliance on mobile devices for information seeking, for more meaningful and significant causes
• libraries are not keeping up with the demand for services that are integrated and consistent with the wider mobile experience
• libraries are moving towards mobile access, most commonly with the release of mobile websites and native apps.
• mobile’ has come to encompass an ever-expanding field of devices, platforms and content
• must move towards a model with comprehensive mobile access to online services
• • Pocketable (phones, wifi-enabled media players and gaming devices) or portable (tablets and eReaders)
   
• Smart (internet enabled) or dumb/cellular
• Supplied (on-site device distribution) or privately owned
• Native apps
• Mobile websites

• In terms of content this includes:

   
• Applications (software designed for specific tasks
• Applications
• Podcasts (audio and video content
• Podcasts (audio and video content
• Other downloadable content (e.g. PDFs and ebooks
• the Library may look to harness the potential of these technologies to break away from the traditional broadcast-only website presence and move towards two-way conversations between the Library and its users, or conversations between the users themselves

• 3         Our mobile vision

   
• the key objectives stated in the Information Technology Strategic Plan 2012-2015 include Online Presence and supporting “the needs of our users for easy discovery of, access to, and engagement with our services, collections and other information resources in the digital environment”
• ensure equal access to our resources and services for all Australians.
• facilitate equal access to Library resources for everyone.
• Putting Library resources into the hands of users in their lounge rooms reflects a deeper understanding of the need to move beyond the desire to follow our users and instead reach out to them to “take them some place new
• mobile will only continue to grow and overtake desktop internet usage within 2-3 years
• building both infrastructure and a culture of engagement will pave the way to more efficiently and effectively meeting that need in the future

• 4         Strategic goals

   
• • Improve access to our collection and services for audiences, wherever they are, whether on-site or anywhere else in the world.
   
• • Improve access to our collection and services for audiences, wherever they are, whether on-site or anywhere else in the world.
   
• • Equip staff to champion and drive the development of mobile services to improve access and productivity.
   
• • Adopt an evidence-based approach to service development and delivery
   
• • Modernise the Library brand to reflect relevance, accessibility and innovation.
   
• • Create opportunities for learning
   
• • Facilitate connections, conversation and overall engagement with national collection material.
   
• Tactics
• • Establish and expand the infrastructure and back-end systems required to support mobile initiatives, products and services.
   
• • Build, consolidate and share expertise
   
• • Adopt standards and best practices for interoperable mobile content and cross-platform data management.
   
• • A focus on strategic, audience-driven activity with a utility function.
   
• • Seek out and engage new technologies to achieve marketing and communications goals.
   
• 6         Recommended activities
• Recommended
• activities provide a means to implement and ground the strategy with specific and measurable tasks

• 6.1      Governance and infrastructure

   
• Library’s IT Strategy Group will determine priorities
• formalising the Web Committee’s role as an advisory body
• Include requisite support for mobile content collection, preservation and access in the Digital Library Infrastructure Replacement Project (DLIR
• Information Technology Division to examine ongoing resourcing of development work, administrative models, and potential for partial cost-recovery
• Information Technology Division to examine ongoing resourcing
• Information Technology Division to examine ongoing resourcing
• Adopt emerging Commonwealth requirements and advice pertaining to managing devices and content
• Adopt emerging Commonwealth requirements and advice pertaining to managing devices and content
• Develop and review policy in support of the use of both enterprise devices and use of personal devices for work-related purposes. Identify
• Investigate infrastructure and resourcing requirements for digital recording and distribution
• Investigate infrastructure and resourcing requirements for digital recording and distribution to ensure the long-term sustainability of online broadcast activity
• Collections Management Division to keep a watching brief on any developments pertaining to the extension of Legal Deposit to include digital (and mobile) conten
• developing a statement of collecting intentions for the various categories of ebook titles within the context of revising the collecting policy for Australian electronic publications in general

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• the vast majority of libraries continue to rely on legacy proprietary systems
• libraries using open source integrated library systems indicates that the vast majority of libraries continue to rely on legacy proprietary systems
• there are at least a dozen active OSS projects based in or with their genesis in library organizations
• LibraryFind
• Blackligh
• xCatalog
• iVia,
• What makes OSS different from proprietary software is that it is free in every sense of the word: free as in “no cost,” free as in “unencumbered” and free as in “not locked up.”
• questioned whether OSS is overall less expensive than its proprietary counterparts and has called for libraries to look hard at cost factors
• OSS projects are thriving communities with leaders, followers, contributors, audiences and reputation systems.
• Like so many things librarians hold dear – information, books and library buildings themselves – OSS is open, available and visible for all to see
• OSS presents important opportunities for libraries
• This is the world we want to be in again. It will not always be easy, and there will be a few spectacular failures. But there will also be spectacular successes – and this time, they will happen in the open.

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• Ten criteria must be met in order for a software distribution to be considered open source:
• Free redistribution
• the source code freely available to developers.
• The license must permit modifications
• Integrity of the author's source code
• No discrimination against persons or groups
• No discrimination against fields of endeavor
• same license must be passed on to others when the program is redistributed.
• License must not be specific to a product
• License must not restrict other software
• License must be technology-neutral
• list of the nine most widely used licenses is
• • Apache Software License 2.0 (www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html)
     
   
  • New BSD License (www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php)
     
   
  • GNU General Public License (GPL) (www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)
     
   
  • GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) (www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html)
     
   
  • MIT License (www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)
     
   
  • Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL) (www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html)
     
   
  • Common Development and Distribution License (www.sun.com/cddl/cddl.html)
     
   
  • Common Public License 1.0 (www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-cpl.html)
     
   
  •  Eclipse Public License (www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html)  [5].
• common misconception, alluded to above, is that since the source code is freely distributed without royalty or licensing fee, open source applications are free of cost.
• Free and open source software application users, on the other hand, must rely on development communities for support.
• The pervasiveness of the World Wide Web guarantees that nearly every information organization is using free or open source software to perform some function.

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• Web programmers often refer to this potent combination of JavaScript, XHR, CSS and several other web technologies as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).
• Phishing takes place when someone masquerades as someone else, often with a fake website, to trick you into sharing personal information.
• Today, our data is migrating beyond the boundaries of our personal computers. Instead, we’re moving our data online into “the cloud”
• TCP/IP provides the rules of communication that ensure interconnected devices understand each other so that they can send information back and forth
• bandwidth, what they’re really referring to is the amount of data that can be sent over your Internet connection per second.
• HTML provides the basic building blocks for the web
• Malware, on the other hand, is malicious software installed on your machine, usually without your knowledge
• A cookie is a small piece of text sent to your browser by a website you visit
• Web pages have also become more expressive with the introduction of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).
• browser security helps protect you from malware,   phishing, and other online attacks, while privacy features help keep   your browsing private

• Plug-ins were invented to work around the limitations of early HTML and deliver more

   

   

   

  interactive content. A plug-in is an additional piece of software that specializes in processing particular types of content

• HTML5, like the web itself, is in perpetual

   

   

   

  evolution, based on users’ needs and developers’ imaginations

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• profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere.
• Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium
• Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web.
• Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals.
• Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.
• eb is now more critical to free speech than any other medium

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• Several threats to the Web’s universality have arisen recently. Cable television companies that sell Internet connectivity are considering whether to limit their Internet users to downloading only the company’s mix of entertainment.
• Social-networking sites present a different kind of problem. Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and others typically provide value by capturing information as you enter it
• The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service—but only within their sites.
• The basic Web technologies that individuals and companies need to develop powerful services must be available for free, with no royalties.

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• Web Consortium’s royalty-free patent policy says that the companies, universities and individuals who contribute to the development of a standard must agree they will not charge royalties to anyone who may use the standard.
• Apple’s iTunes system, for example, identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of “http:” the addresses begin with “itunes:,” which is proprietary. You can access an “itunes:”
• martphone “apps” rather than Web apps is disturbing, because that material is off the Web.

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• The Web is an application that runs on the Internet
• Although internet and web designs are separate, a Web user is also an Internet user and therefore relies on an Internet that is free from interference.
• Technology for interference has become more powerful

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• Debate has risen again in the past year about whether government legislation is needed to protect net neutrality.
• Accessing the information within an Internet packet is equivalent to wiretapping a phone or opening postal mail.
• Totalitarian governments aren’t the only ones violating the network rights of their citizens.
• “No person or organization shall be deprived of the ability to connect to others without due process of law and the presumption of innocence.”

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• Linking to the Future
   As long as the web’s basic principles are upheld, its ongoing evolution is not in the hands of any one person or organization—neither mine nor anyone else’s. If we can preserve the principles, the Web promises some fantastic future capabilities.
• Locked within all these data is knowledge about how to cure diseases, foster business value and govern our world more effectively.
• We should examine legal, cultural and technical options that will preserve privacy without stifling beneficial data-sharing capabilities.
• The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.

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