11. References and Resources

References

[1] Google (2009), Blogger [Online]
Available at http://www.blogger.com/ (Accessed: 25 September 2009)

[2] BloggerHelp (2008), How to create a blog with Blogger, YouTube [Online]
Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnploFsS_tY (Accessed: 25 September 2009)

[3] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 2: Digital Representation and Organisation, Meta-Data/ Markup, City University

[4] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 2: Digital Representation and Organisation, Meta-Data/ Markup, City University, page 2

[5] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 3: The Internet and the World Wide Web, City University, page 1

[6] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 3: The Internet and the World Wide Web, City University

[7] MacFarlane, A. (2009) Exercise for Session 03 - The Internet and the World Wide Web, City University

[8] Coffee Cup Software, Inc (2009), Free HTML Editor [Online]

Available at: http://www.coffeecup.com/free-editor/ (Accessed: 11 October 2009)

[9] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 4: Graphical Information, City University

[10] City University Law School (2007), Lawbore the law student's guide [Online]

Available at: http://lawbore.net/ (Accessed: 25 October 2009)

[11] Web3D Consortium (Undated), What is X3D? [Online]

Available at: http://www.web3d.org/about/overview/ (Accessed: 25 October 2009)

[12] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 5: The eXtensible Mark-up Language, City University, page 1

[13] TEI: Text Encoding Initiative (undated), Home page [Online]
Available at: http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml (Accessed: 26 October 2009)

[14] TEI: Text Encoding Initiative (undated), Introducing the Guidelines [Online]
Available at: http://www.tei-c.org/Support/Learn/intro.xml (Accessed: 26 October 2009)

[15] TEI: Text Encoding Initiative (undated), Projects using the TEI [Online]
Available at: http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/Projects/index.xml (Accessed: 26 October 2009)

[16] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 5: The eXtensible Mark-up Language, City University

[17] W3C (2009), Cascading Style Sheets Home Page [Online]
Available at: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/ (Accessed: 15 November 2009)

[18] W3C (2009), CSS Specifications [Online]
Available at: http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/#specs (Accessed: 15 November 2009)

[19] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 6: The Document Object Model and the presentation and styling of information, City University

[20] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Krause, A.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 7: Structuring and querying information stored in databases, City University

[21] Art Branch Inc. (2004), SQL Tutorial - Learn SQL [Online]
Available at: http://www.sql-tutorial.net/ (Accessed: 16 November 2009)

[22] Zenera (2005), Search Cat, Flickr [Online]
Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenera/6734519/ (Accessed: 29 November 2009)

[23] Rosenfeld, L. and Morville, P. (2006), Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd Edition), O'Reilly, page 149

[24] MacFarlane, A., Raper, J. and Dykes, J. (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 8: Information Retrieval, City University

[25] Google (2009), Google UK [Online]
Available at: http://www.google.co.uk/ (Accessed: 29 November 2009)

[26] Yahoo! UK Ltd (2009), Flickr [Online]
Available at: http://www.flickr.com/ (Accessed: 29 November 2009)

[27] Butterworth, R. (based on original work by Dykes, J.) (2009), Lecture notes for Lecture 9: A very gentle introduction to programming, City University

[28] Wired.com (2008), WebMonkey JavaScript pages [Online]
Available at: http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/tag/javascript (Accessed: 1 December 2009)

[29] Wired.com (2008), JavaScript Tutorial, Lesson 2, Example of a Simple If-then Statement
Available at: http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/JavaScript_Tutorial_-_Lesson_2#Example_of_a_Simple_if-then_Statement
(Accessed: 1 December 2009)

[30] MacFarlane, A. (2009) Exercise for Session 09 - Applications Development, City University

[31] The Information Architecture Institute (2008), Learning IA > Resources[Online]
Available at: http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/resources/what_is_ia.php (Accessed: 14 December 2009)

[32] Rosenfeld, L. and Morville, P. (2006) Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd Edition), O'Reilly, page xii

[33] Butterworth, R. (based on original work for Dykes, J.) (2009) Lecture notes for Lecture 10: Information Architecture, City University

Additional resources consulted

For Session 1 blog: MacFarlane, A., Jones, S., Butterworth, R. and Dykes, J. (2009), Lecture notes for Lecture 1: Blogs, City University

For Session 2 blog: ASCII Code.com (2007), ASCII Code - The extended ASCII table (website demonstrating binary to ASCII)
Available at: http://www.ascii-code.com/ (Accessed: 5 October 2009)

For Session 4 blog: Web3D Consortium (Undated), X3D Scenarios and Case Studies: Real World Applications - Real World Solutions
Available at: http://www.web3d.org/casestudies/ (Accessed: 25 October 2009)

For creating background colour to the CSS style sheet on my home page, (http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abgy254/) and background colour to my JavaScript program (http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abgy254/JavaScript.html):
Brajusta Publishing, Inc. (2002), Web-Source 216 Web Safe Colors Hexadecimal RGB Values
Available at: http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm
(Accessed: 21 December 2009)

URLs

URL for my blog http://hilaryvieitez.blogspot.com/

URL for my webspace http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abgy254/

URL for my JavaScript application http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~abgy254/JavaScript.html

10. Information Architectures

Our last lecture brought together the technologies covered previously, showing how these relate to 'Information Architecture'.

The first two bullet points from the Information Architecture Institute's definition of Information Architecture explain the term neatly:

"- The structural design of shared information environments.
- The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability[31]."

Good Information Architecture brings benefits - Rosenfeld and Morville comment that it "makes users less alienated and suppressed by technology. It simultaneously increases human satisfaction and your company's profits [32]."

The different website creation components which we learnt about previously play a part in successful Information Architecture, e.g. HTML (to create web pages and hyperlinks), XML (to add metadata), graphics (so our websites are aesthetically pleasing), databases (so our websites can draw on ordered data sources), search engines (for searching our sites) and JavaScript (to enable interaction).

These technologies have an increasing impact on Information Science. Digital libraries and library websites/ portals need to be well-structured and organised so that users can find out about the library's services and resources.

With good Information Architecture, we can ensure that our websites meet user needs. Needs vary depending on the particular information resource, but in our lecture we learnt about some issues for consideration: organisation schemes (which vary according to whether our information resources fall into neat categories or not); effective labelling (to aid indexing); the use of thesauri and controlled vocabularies (to help users with their searches); navigation and search engines (to assist browsing and searching); and opportunities for personalization and customization of websites [33].

I believe that information scientists should embrace the digital revolution and put more content online, using the technologies available to us, in order to create increasingly personalized websites that engage users and help satisfy their information needs.

9. Client side programming

We learnt in our lecture that computer information can be processed client side or server side; which one is best depends on the amount of information to be delivered and what is to be done with it [27].

I used JavaScript - which we learnt was a computer language used in client side programming [27] - to create a program providing personalized links to web pages according to user input.

I started with an HTML document which I structured by creating a head and title and by specifying the script language as JavaScript.

When writing my program, I needed to use the most appropriate of JavaScript's fundamental concepts as set out in the lecture notes [27] - variables, input and output, arrays, sequence, selection, iteration and procedures.

I consulted WebMonkey's JavaScript tutorials [28] (specifically their "If-then Statement" example[29]), then subsequently devised a series of prompts, to which users provide text-based answers, leading them to appropriate BBC website pages.

I then created - with the module leader's assistance - a second program allowing users to enter numerical answers rather than text. Normally the prompt function treats numbers as text strings; instead I used the ParseInt function so these numbers are converted to integers [30].

The program works as follows:

I get the input of variables from users through prompts.

The users' input translates into further prompts - these differ according to the answers given. (I did this by creating if-then statements.)

Once they answer the last question, output is generated through a document.write command which generates the appropriate URL for the user's interest. (I achieved the web links by inserting the relevant URLs with an "a href" tag.)

Your JavaScript program won't work if there are mistakes. I therefore built up my program gradually, and tested it regularly to identify and fix errors.