Scout Report: Week ending January 20, 1995

January 20, 1995

Note: This issue originally and incorrectly stated that it was published on January 20th, 1994.

The Scout Report is a weekly publication provided by the Info Scout and InterNIC Information Services to provide a sampling of the best of newly announced Internet resources. See the end of each report for additional information and complete access methods through gopher, WWW, and mailing lists for both plain text and HTML versions. Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

Highlights In This Week's Report:

World Wide Web

  • The Child Abuse Handbook is provided by the Frontenac County Board Of Education, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The 1995 edition is now available in hardcopy, and a "Short Guide" is online. This handbook is designed to provide concise information to help education staff respond to suspected child abuse, and to disclosures by the victims.
  • The Committee on East Asian Libraries maintains a page directed to the needs of librarians who must deal with the growing volume of Asian electronic information and should be useful for anyone interested in East Asia or in Asian studies. The site includes pointers to specific resources, such as the largest internet site for Chinese software, and links grouped by area: Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, North Korea, and the Asia/Pacific Basin.
  • The Kansai Area Earthquake Information Resources page is maintained by Sony. Links are grouped by English/Japanese or Japanese only, such as the lists of the deceased. Includes pointers to relevant USENET Newsgroups, and lists of mirrors and other servers. Note the requests not to abuse the links in italics, since they are serving the affected area directly as a lifeline.
  • More earthquake info can be found on Ruka's Home Page. Ruka is a Japanese Studies assistant at the East Asian Collection of the Knight Library of the University of Oregon. A good collection of English-only Japanese information including the Shima Media Network, providing non-official earthquake reports and a map of the area around Kobe indicating where railways are cut, expressways are destroyed, and fires are burning. Ruka's page also provides links to Disaster Information Centers and addresses to send cash and material donations.
  • The School of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Oklahoma offers information on research in the areas of bioengineering, polymers science and engineering, environmental engineering, and energy studies. Examples include the Engineering Virtual Library and the Chemical Engineering Virtual Library, related government research labs, discipline-specific groupings of Chemical Engineering online resources, and selected corporate Web pages.
  • Youth Music/Youth Culture page has been assembled by students at Drake University studying music and its affect on culture. A good variety of links show the way beyond performers to on-line magazines, academic sites for music/culture, listings organized by type of music, song lyrics, audio clips, and Usenet newsgroups.

Gopher

  • Massachusetts Library and Information Network provides access to library catalogs, periodicals with indexes, and state and federal information.
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) Police Gopher contains information about the annual crime on campus, the police blotter, the student right-to-know and campus security act, statistics, and links to other police gophers.
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The National Service Learning Clearinghouse for K-12 gopher server is part of a 3-year federal grant from the Corporation for National Service, which houses the old ACTION and VISTA programs, the new AmeriCorps program, and Learn and Serve America, the K-12 education portion of national service. The National Information Center gopher provides access to online searching of resources, programs, and organizations.
  • The Net-Happenings Archive at MIDnet is a great way to take full advantage of the InterNIC net-happenings mailing list, moderated by Gleason Sackman. Numerous directories allow easy browsing of postings to the mailing list that have arrived today and postings sent over the past few months. It also contains mechanisms for searching by title and by text. [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
  • The New York State Assembly maintains a vt-100 telnet-based Legislative Information System on the Internet. You can read the full text of a bill, check its status in the legislative process, and even browse the sponsor's Memorandum in Support. You can also review Assembly committee and floor calendars, find out when and where public hearings are being held, and explore the state constitution and laws of New York State.
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher site has been replaced by web site.]
    http://assembly.state.ny.us/
  • University of Puget Sound Biodiversity Gopher is maintained by the Slater Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound. Information about the natural history collections housed in the museum and other information relevant to biodiversity are listed, including an extensive Biodiversity and Biological Collection at Cornell.
    [Note: Originally reviewed as a gopher site; gopher may no longer be available.]
    http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/UPSbiodiversity.html

Email

  • New list: VIRTED - Uses of VIRTUAL REALITY in Education is an open, unmoderated discussion list for teachers, students and anyone else interested in the uses of virtual reality in education and learning. The goal of the list is to explore the use and potential uses of virtual reality environments in both traditional and alternative educational settings, the effects of virtual reality environments upon the learning process, and the efficacy of using virtual reality as an educational delivery system. Review of research, publications and observations related to EDUCATIONAL uses of virtual reality are welcome and encouraged. The mission is to shed light on this new avenue of education and learning which takes place in both text based environments as well as graphic environments.
    send mail to: LISTSERV@SJUVM
    Or: LISTSERV@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU
    in the body of the message type:
    SUB VIRTED Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name
    • Net-Lawyers is a new mailing list for lawyers, law professors, law students, and others interested in discussing how to use legal resources on the Internet to advance the development, practice, and study of law.
      send mail to: listproc@lawlib.wuacc.edu
      in the body of the message type:
      subscribe net-lawyers YourFirstName YourLastName
      http://www.webcom.com/~lewrose/about/netlaw.html

    Weekend Scouting

    • GearGrinder: Information about all mountain bike races in Colorado, such as the Iron Horse Classic, Rage in the Sage, Melee in the Mines, and the Monarch Mountain Challenge. Includes a calendar of races, course descriptions, contacts, team rosters, results and pictures. Extensive information about the Colorado Off-Road Point Series.
      [Note: Site title has changed since the original Scout Report review. Site formerly referred to in the Scout Report as "Colorado Mountain Bike Racing."]
    • Jazz: The 1950's - Records and Photography. A readable and interesting page includes links to "TIME" magazine articles from the 1950's, the "Stars of Jazz" TV series, nightclubs, a list of books that focus on the West Coast Jazz movement, an index of musicians, and more. Hosted by University of California, Irvine.

    About the Scout Report

    The Scout Report is a weekly publication offered by InterNIC Information Services to the Internet community as a fast, convenient way to stay informed about network activities. Its purpose is to combine in one place the highlights of new (and newly-discovered) online resources and other announcements seen on the Internet during the preceding week.

    A wide range of topics are included in the Report with an emphasis on resources thought to be of interest to the InterNIC's primary audience, the research and education community. Each resource has been verified for substantial content and accessibility within a day of the release of the Report.

    The Scout Report is provided in multiple formats -- electronic mail, gopher, World Wide Web, and HTML. The gopher and World Wide Web versions of the Report include links to all listed resources. The Report is released every weekend.

    In addition to the ascii version, the Scout Report is distributed in HTML format via a separate mailing list. This allows sites to easily add the Scout Report to their local WorldWideWeb servers each week, providing fast access for local users. Subscription information for the scout-report-html mailing list is included below. Note that permission statements appear on both versions of the Scout Report, and we ask that these be included in any re-posting or re-distributing of the report. Thank you!

    If you haven't yet subscribed or told your friends and colleagues, now is the time. Spread the news by word-of-net. Join thousands of your colleagues already using the Scout Report as a painless tool for tracking what's new on the 'Net!

    Comments and contributions to the Scout Report are encouraged and can be sent to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

    -- InterNIC Info Scout (sm)

    Scout Report Access Methods

    • To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each weekend, join the scout-report mailing list which is used only to distribute the Scout Report once a week

      Send mail to majordomo@is.internic.net in the body of the message, type:

      subscribe scout-report
      to unsubscribe to the list, repeat this procedure substituting the word "unsubscribe" for subscribe.
      • To receive the Scout Report in HTML format for local posting, subscribe to the scout-report-html mailing list, used exclusively to distribute the Scout Report in HTML format once a week.

        Send mail to majordomo@is.in ternic.net in the body of the message, type:

        subscribe scout-report-html

        Resource Addressing Conventions

        After each resource in the Scout Report one or more network addresses are listed. In all cases a convention is used for listing the network address of each resource. It is assumed that users recognize the type of address and know how to use it. However, for those users unfamiliar with the Internet we provide here the order in which addresses are listed (by network tool) and instructions for accessing additional information in the InterNIC InfoGuide about each network tool. A brief explanation of one tool, WWW is included below.

        The four network tools referenced most often in the Scout Report are World Wide Web, gopher, email, and FTP. Occasionally WAIS and Telnet addresses are also listed.

        After each resource at least one address is listed, and sometimes more. This is because some resources are available through multiple network tools. The network tool addresses are always listed in the same order after each resource:

        • World Wide Web (WWW)
        • Gopher
        • FTP
        • Email
        • Telnet
        • WAIS

        A WWW address is called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and always begins with a string of characters followed by a colon and two forward slashes. For example:

        http://www.internic.net/
        gopher://gibbs.oit.unc.edu:70/11/research.d/grants.d
        ftp://ftp.digex.net/pub/access/hecker/internet/slip-ppp.txt

        To access the resource through the WWW, you will need a WWW client installed on your host computer. Clients are available for all major computer platforms, including Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. To use a WWW client on your computer, you will need a TCP/IP connection to the Internet, either through a dedicated line connection or a SLIP/PPP connection. See the InfoGuide for additional information about the World Wide Web and for sites which archive WWW clients. For more information about SLIP/PPP, which can be used over a dial-up connection, see the document listed in the NetBytes section above.

        gopher://is.internic.net/11/infoguide/using-internet/basic-resources/email/

        Gopher to: is.internic.net
        Choose: Information Services/Using the Internet/

        Send email to mailserv@is.internic.net
        and in the body of the message type:

        send INDEX
        Copyright 1994 General Atomics.

        Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice, this permission notice, and the two paragraphs below are preserved on all copies.

        The InterNIC provides information about the Internet and the resources on the Internet to the US research and education community under the National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement No. NCR-9218749. The Government has certain rights in this material.

        Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, General Atomics, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

        scout@is.internic.net
        guide@is.internic.net