department of information studies andy dawson lis1510 library and archives automation issues systems...

Andy Dawson

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION STUDIES

LIS1510 Library and Archives Automation Issues

Systems management, digitisation and optical systems

Andy DawsonAndy Dawson

Department of Information Studies, UCLDepartment of Information Studies, UCL (University of Malta 2010)


Andy Dawson

What we will be covering today

• The need to manage systems

• Role of management

• Ongoing support

• Development & maintenance

• Inhouse vs outhouse skills

• Security and viruses


Andy Dawson

What we will be covering today

• Why digitise

• The digitisation process

• Graphics formats

• Indexing and retrieval

• OCR

• Management of digitally-based systems


Andy Dawson

Why manage?

• Fundamentally just like any other management task - about– planning– monitoring– control

• System criticality• Particular problems of a distributed environment• Importance of good record-keeping• Importance of good communications


Andy Dawson

Administration

• System management roles– What’s in a name?– System management– Network management– What’s a systems librarian?

• Variation with size• Required with small systems? • How intrusive?


Andy Dawson

Tasks

• Depend on scope

• System planning

• User control, disk allocations, weeding / maintenance, date-based removal/deletion

• Backups

• Prevention/maintenance– hardware, software, system


Andy Dawson

Backups

• value of central backups

• strategies for backup

• backup logs

• offsite storage

• methods– tape, removables, Mirrors, RAID


Andy Dawson

Other management tasks and considerations• Permissable downtime

• System criticality– risk assessment– backup systems? – manual alternatives?

• Day’s data?

• Power cuts?

• Cost/possibility of DATA recovery/loss


Andy Dawson

etc etc etc

• (In)Consistency of workstation setup– Customising environments, troublehooting

• Software licences – site, per terminal, concurrent user

• Upgrades

• Dissemination of rules

• And not least…MANAGING THE USERS THEMSELVES!


Andy Dawson

Monitoring useage

• “Big brother is watching you”• Realtime monitoring• Logging

– counting accesses– reviewing activities– full keystroke/data capture– space required

• Site blocking, privacy, education


Andy Dawson

User Support

• Helpdesks• Manpower• Expertise• Problem logs & support systems

– System logs/diaries– The importance of

GOOD RECORDS OF SYSTEM OPERATIONS


Andy Dawson

User Support

• Message of the day

• Broadcast messaging– Forced logouts/shutdowns

• External access

• Training– Formal training– Online resources & self-help


Andy Dawson

Maintenance

• Lasts as long as the system lasts!

• Continuing development of the system– corrective– perfective– adaptive

• Software vs Hardware maintenance…

• …and Liveware maintenance?


Andy Dawson

Maintenance – Inhouse vs External• Contract vs in-house support

– pros and cons

• Levels of service– response time

– repair parameters

– swap-outs

– cost levels

– machine types

• On-site spares


Andy Dawson

Security

• Against what?– Unauthorised access– Unauthorised use– Accidental damage– Malicious damage


Andy Dawson

External and internal access control

• Login control

• Access control

• Terminal restrictions– User to terminal– Activity to terminal

• Time restrictions

• Lockouts & alarms.


Andy Dawson

Information structure

• How will the information be accessed?

• Back to basic design:– Workgroups– Systems Analysis– Workflows

• Design of structure - with security in mind.


Andy Dawson

Access permissions

• The System Supervisor

• Backdoor entry

• User groups/classes

• Equivalences


Andy Dawson

Rights

• Hierarchies of rights

• Rights profiles – Personal rights– Group rights– Directory rights– File rights

• Flags and attributes


Andy Dawson

Anti-Virus procedures

• What is a virus?

• Anti-virus programs

• Approaches to protection

• The human problem

• The three-step guide


Andy Dawson

Coffee break!


Andy Dawson

Why digitise?

• To improve access to information– Multiple users– Better/different access forms

• To preserve precious/fragile materials– Access copies rather than originals– Allow more/better use than with original

• To increase storage capacity/reduce cost– Archival/single copy storage– BUT only where original is not intrinsically important!


Andy Dawson

Obtaining digital images

• Conversion of existing images into digital form– scanning, digitising, rekeying/redrawing

• Direct creation of digital images– Digital cameras and video recorders– Illustration or desktop publishing software

• Don’t forget the “original” source…


Andy Dawson

The digitisation process

• What is a digital image?– A series of dots (pixels) in rows and columns –

“raster” graphics (bitmap)– Also, sometimes, vector graphics - used by CAD

and some graphic art software

• A digital image is literally a “picture”

• It possesses certain parameters set at its creation (resolution)


Andy Dawson

Resolution• The “quality” of an image• Size expressed in pixels• 72 dpi is quite normal for screen• Higher resolution monitors show more pixels• Typical PC resolutions

– 600 x 800 – low-end – 1024 x 768 - mainstream– 1600 x 1200 or higher – becoming more common

• Printers usually output 300-1200dpi • Scanning resolutions can go up to 9600dpi


Andy Dawson

Depth resolution – colour range

• Each pixel in the image needs colour information• Held in a number of bits per pixel of related data

storage• Affects colour or greyscale

– 1-bit - black or white– 8-bit - 256 colours– 16-bit – 64,000 colours– 24-bit -16.7 million colours


Andy Dawson

Image File Sizes

• Can be very large if 24-bit colour and high resolution

• Compression techniques therefore the norm

• Compression can affect final image quality– “Lossy” and “lossless” compression

• Compression is related to format


Andy Dawson

Graphics/Image File Formats

• Many different ones, some proprietary– Bmp - plain bitmap, as used by Windows– Gif - graphics image format– Jpeg - Joint Photographic Expert Group– Png - scaleable web-based format – Tiff - usual output from scanners– And many more!

• Gif & Jpeg are the most widely used


Andy Dawson

Gifs

• Suitable for flat colour images, line artwork, logos • Also used for web backgrounds, buttons, bars etc• Max is 8-bit 256 colours • Good compression for large blocks of the same colour• “Special” gif formats also available:

– Transparent– Interlaced– Animated


Andy Dawson

Jpegs

• Suitable for photos and anything with colour grading

• Lossy compression but not readily perceived by naked eye

• Fills in with approximated colours

• Can choose level of compression


Andy Dawson

Indexing and retrieval

• Retrieval requires “searchability”• Not inherent in images, therefore:

– Need to “identify” content– Difficulties of doing this automatically– In any practical system, requires “traditional”

cataloguing and indexing– BUT this is slow and expensive!

• However, scanned text can be processed into machine readable text by OCR


Andy Dawson

Optical Character Recognition

• How does OCR work?– Character matching– Shape recognition– Word recognition– Grammatical/syntactic analysis


Andy Dawson

Optical Character Recognition

• Benefits of OCR• Problems with OCR

– Accuracy (real vs theoretical)– Effect of:

• Quality of originals• Consistency of originals• Content• Layout

– Cost of checking/correction vs alternatives


Andy Dawson

Management of digitally-based systems

• Most issues similar to any other system!

• But some obvious peculiarities:

• Legal/copyright issues

• Choice of format

• Importance of adequate retrieval system

• Dangers of technical obsolescence


Andy Dawson

Legal issues

• What can be digitised?

• Who owns the rights?

• Digital manipulation of images — are the issues fully resolved?

• Evidential value and originality


Andy Dawson

Format selection

• What format to use?– Scanners will give an option to save as TIFF, or

may try to optimise format based on ‘evidence’– Cameras will save as JPEG

• How will the image be retrieved?

• How will the image be utilised?

• What resolution to use?


Andy Dawson

Retrievability and obsolescence

• Importance of proper indexing for retrieval• Lack of browsability in electronic files• Dangers of obsolescence

– Hardware– Software– Formats

• Importance of backup/rewriting• If you can’t find it or use it, you might as well not

have it!


Andy Dawson

That’s all folks…

• Any questions?

• Tomorrow: IT Lab

• Introduction to the Internet!

department of information studies andy dawson lis1510 library and archives automation issues systems...

Documents

system slide

education slide

raid slide

management tasks

based systems

systems librarian

small systems

liveware maintenance