Class Notes for Week 2
Welcome to LIS489, Technical Foundations of Information Science
Last week
Last week we had a chance to meet each others and discuss your interests with computer technology
in LIS.
The readings for last week are the same for week 2 - and they’re a lot but they’re also fundamental.
We can classify the readings into several groups:
the reason for computing in information work in general (the concept of public access; IFLA’s public
library information environment/service readings, as examples of professional journals)
challenges to traditional perspectives in LIS given computer technology, and optional readings on the
ethics of information.
As noted in class and on the class homepage:
About the class
•Read the materials before hand. It’s worth taking notes and asking questions!
•Use the resources: the lab, the class chat site, library and online resources, and yourself.
•If you have a question or wonder why we’re doing something - ask.
•Sometimes tech fails; someone we humans make mistakes.
•Come to class having the materials before we meet; then we’ll discuss and demonstrate the
main points in class. This way you’ll emphasize the most important issues and can ask questions.
Assignments
The assignments are noted in the class handouts (online). Note that for a written assignment
(white paper, term paper, etc.) I’m glad to read your work ahead of time and will provide exhaustive
copy- and content-related comments. This way there’s no surprise - you know what to address to ensure the best grade.
Readings
For last time, you had readings, as noted above, above access, web practices, professional
journals, and a series of lectures in a multimedia format that introduce a lot of fundamental computer
issues. [Lecture 1a-1e; Lecture 3.1-3.3].
Activities/Hands-on
The first assignment requires downloading from the server a zipped set of files and then adjusting them slightly (tailoring them to your name, updating the copyright, metadata, title, and creative
commons tags), and uploading them on your Simmons webspace. This is where all your assignments
are to be posted for review.
Form the assignments readings doc (AssignmentsDocReadings.pdf), your first assignment
(your student template webpage) is due online before noon, Monday, January 21.
This week (week 2)
Today we use the assignment doc to discuss the main points of standards, objects, tagging,
architecture (both web and client/server).
We discuss, too, your experiences working through HTML through the Web Style Guide and
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Class Notes for Week 2
W3Schools sites.
Review the tags you’ve learned.
What questions do you have?
Note the sections of the document in your assignments text.
Here’s a link to two demo html5 pages. You should be comfortable enough with the fundamental
HTML 4 tags (from the W3schools site, our other class readings, the TOR, and the Web Styles Guide).
Similarly, you should at this point be familiar with the idea of tags, attributes & elements, the idea of
“overwriting” the original tagging by the attributes and cascading style sheets.
Client/Server and the general model of computing:
recall we looked at input, output, and error.
can you replicate the elements of the client/server model as demonstrated in our readings?
Compare what you know about html4 with these demo html5 pages. It’s worth looking at the pages’
source. http://web.simmons.edu/~benoit/lis489/html5/demo1.html and http://web.simmons.edu/
~benoit/lis489/html5/demo2.html
Questions?
filename: /Users/gbenoit/Documents/LIS489-TechIntro/readings/classNotes2.rtf
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