Java in libraries?

[Elisabeth Roche]

There is a very great project going on at upenn, The Interactive Textbook,
and a Java version is under development right now. You can see it at the
http:// url listed below.

If you would like to talk to the person in charge of this project talk to
Larry Gladney,
his email address:

larryg at upenn5.hep.upenn.edu
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/mathphys/Contents.html

Last year my mentor told me about Java and said his company, a Fortune 50,
was immediately rewriting all manuals and training documents and everything
else into Java.
Admittedly they had the bucks to do this, but it was the applets and
interactivity that made this "so hot".

As was mentioned before in this discussion thread, being able to offer
netscape 2.0+ and other browsers that will "read"/parse this language is
distinct from the equipment and software, people and skills necessary to
*create* the documents.

Is this discussion on Java and applets in html documents about librarians
*creating* these documents or offering the results through libraries?

elisabeth roche ace at opus1.com
http://www.opus1.com/~ace/index.html

Elisabeth Roche ace at opus1.com
At 08:42 AM 12/8/95 -0800, The Big Glee Bopper wrote:
>On Thu, 7 Dec 1995, Karen G. Schneider wrote:
>
>> Other technozealotry aside, a few weeks ago my editor at American Libraries
>> asked me what I wanted to do for February and I replied, let's do the
>> programming language, Java--it's new and hot, and it would be fun to have
>> AL be one of the first places to write about it!  To my complete
>> astonishment, and also to my distress, my editor loves the idea.
>> 
>> So is your library doing anything with Java?  How about you personally?  Do
>> you think it is cool?  Are you mystified by it? Do we need to know it?
>> Will it change the 'net?  Will it change us?  Can we afford its
>> implications?  Do you know of an easy book on Java?  Do you prefer
>> full-strength or decaf?
>
>I think if you write an article _on_ Java it will be the most unread, 
>uninteresting article written by either man or woman in all of recorded 
>history, but if you write an article about advanced interaction 
>capability it might actually be useful ... the problem is that you have 
>to not write about Java! Java is C++, flat and simple. 
>
>Would ALA write an article about C++? Not in this life time. Paralyzing
>prose on operator overloading? Polymorphism? Public:Private:Protected
>class designation? Environment variable? The Java Token set?
>Multithreading? Type Wrappers?  InputStream? AWT Class Library? Legacy
>code? 
>
>This is Java in its mind numbing detail. Java is neat and I like it from 
>a technical point of view but Java is _not_ html and at this point few of 
>ALAs readers are going to _do_ Java even with javac sitting in their 
>win95 environment. Java does not and probably never will run on anything 
>lower. The Mac version isn't out yet. How many folks have Sun 
>work stations by their side?
>
>The more interesting approach would be to step back from Java and go look 
>at a HyperCard stack, almost any stack and realize that Java will open up 
>the possibilities of HyperCard stack type of interaction on the net, but 
>it will be thru Java and not HyperTalk which is a much easier 
>object-oriented language to play with.
>
>You can do the standard article with here are the sites, here are the
>training modules, here are the usenet groups, here are the 4 books on
>Java, blah, blah, but that's just a sidebar in grey. The interesting
>issues are what these new interaction capabilities mean to folks primarily
>in libraries who are preparing to offer information services thru the
>internet. What does it mean to sites with hundreds of html pages. How do
>they plan for the future which is not in-hand but is _just_ down the road? 
>
>The article you need to read and understand is in New Media Nov 1995, vol 
>5 number 11 "Dynamic Media for the Web" which goes into Java, Live 
>Script, Blackbird, vmrl+, and shockwave, and to synthesize and back off a 
>bit and understand not Java but what the increased interaction means. 
>Java is _in_ the news these days and we all know that the primary purpose 
>of the news is not to tell us what to think, but to tell us what to 
>_think about_. We are all _thinking about_ Java for this reason. It's 
>like the magician who waves his/her right hand to attract our attention 
>away from where the action really is. 
>
>--Thom
>