Week 5 Reading Responses

Data Compression - Wikipedia

-Data compression uses fewer bits to encode information
--The sender and receiver of the information must be able to understand the code in order for it to be read
--data compression helps reduce the size/space needed used by the information

-Two types of compression
--lossless - guided by "statistical redundancy"
--lossy - guided by the real ways in which people process data

-Data compression may result in the loss of some quality but will maintain the data


'Data Compression Basics'

I thought the beginning of this article was easier to understand and to take notes on compared to the Wikipedia article. It focused more on using language that even a nontechnical person could understand.

-compression takes information and replaces it with some sort of representation of the information that requires less space.

The run length encoding section explains in easy to understand languages how the encoding works and replaces the runs. I still don't completely understand the "special marker" part though.

The article advances into difficult technical language (at least for me anyway) with the Lempel-Ziv compressor family section of the article. It was also difficult some sections of the video compression section but the pictures and graphs throughout did provide a little clarity.

Imagining Pittsburgh: Creating a shared gateway to digital image collection of the Pittsburgh region


This article featured the creation of an online accessible library of a photograph collection. The collection is a joint venture between the University's Archives Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, the Historical Society of Western PA, and the University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library. There will be many ways for people to search through the collection: by keyword, by related collections/subject, by time and theme, etc. It was also interesting to hear that the project encountered several problems in regards to the disagreements between the different institutions involved in this project. However, this is something to be expected and all of the institutions seemed to be able to deal with these issues for the sake of the project.

They had to come up with a common language/vocabulary to categorize the photographs. All the institutions had to use common metadata in order to make the entire digital library consistent and easy to use.

Youtube and Libraries: It could be a beautiful relationship

This article discussed how to utilize youtube to promote a library. Basically, the article consisted of step by step instructions of how to create a youtube account, promote library programming, online tutorials, etc. I think that using youtube to post library videos, in particular using it to post tutorials, is a great idea.