LISNews: Librarian News

Here\'s An Interesting Story on
virtual libraries from New Zealand.
The author says digital libraries are
computer-based systems that do the jobs good
librarians do in the real world – acquisition, extraction of
metadata, indexing, cataloguing and organising.

\"Digital Libraries hold the possibility that we
might regain perspective on the billions of pieces of
information in the web ocean. Witten believes his
Greenstone will help, expressing his hopes through a
Maori prayer, \"May peace and calmness surround you
and may the ocean of your travels be as smooth as the
polished greenstone.\" \"

Carrie writes \"This New York Times Story describes the problems associated with corporate users not organizing and deleting their mail.\"

I, for one, delete almost everything, and only save my sent messages. With all the lists we can subscribe to, it\'s hard to keep up sometimes!

\"\"There is an excitement to reading and replying, but filing takes cognitive effort without an immediate reward,\" he explained. \"So despite its being important in the long run to be organized, it is human nature to avoid it.\"

Charles Davis writes \"from
Ananova

Classical chart-toppers the Mediaeval Baebes have
unveiled a new digital version of one of the UK\'s most
important 15th century texts.
The Sherborne Missal, which is worth £15 million, is one of
the most important treasures from the late Middle Ages and
has been saved for the nation by the British Library.
Following a £1.45 million fund-raising drive, the British Library has successfully digitised part of the manuscript, making a large touch-screen version available to all visitors. \"

The L.A. Times reports that an artificial intelligence system called Cyc (short for "encyclopedia") will make its public debut later this summer. Cyc has been in development for 17 years, and it seems to be able to conduct reference interviews of sorts.

The full story also summarizes A.I. history. By the way, the developers have taught Cyc that killing is worse than lying, so we won\'t have a HAL on our hands.