The Scout Report

June 20, 1997

A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin

A Project of the InterNIC

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators, the InterNIC's primary audience. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML). Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.

Internet Scout Wins 3-year NSF Grant Continuation
It's now official--the National Science Foundation has extended the Internet Scout Project for three years with a $3 million grant, allowing us to continue to help educators and students "surf smarter, not longer." From our base in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and with ongoing support from the InterNIC, the Scout project will be able to expand into new areas as well as continue to provide our existing services. The new NSF funding not only ensures continued publication of the Scout Report, Net-happenings, the KIDS Report, and the Scout Toolkit, but also the establishment of new services such as subject-specific Scout Reports for science and engineering, social science, and business and economics. Watch for announcements of these new services in coming months. As the higher education community moves into the Internet2 and the Next Generation Internet initiatives, the Internet Scout Project will be actively involved in researching and developing new ways to locate valuable and credible information on the Internet. [SC]
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Scout Report Signpost
http://www.signpost.org/signpost/index.html
The Scout Report is now over three years old, and the collection of highly selective resources we've developed is three years strong! To give our readers improved access to this valuable archive we have developed an entirely new interface called the Scout Report Signpost. Signpost offers multiple methods of browsing (by subject) or searching the annotations that have appeared in the Scout Report. It provides browsing by Library of Congress Classification or Subject Headings and searching via both a Quick Search (full-text) and Advanced Search (fielded) interface, which use natural language querying. The Internet Scout cataloging group has applied both established and emerging standards such as AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) and the Dublin Core, a schema for resource description. At this time approximately 425 annotations have been fully cataloged and are available for browsing or for searching through the Advanced Search utility. The Quick Search utility offers access to the entire 2200-annotation archive. Work will continue until all archived annotations are catalogued. Try out Signpost--and be sure to let us know what you think. [ATW]
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International Database Population Pyramids--US Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbpyr.html
The Census Bureau's IDB database (discussed in the May 16, 1997 issue of the Scout Report) has added a graphical enhancement that turns raw numbers into meaningful trends almost instantly. Population Pyramids allows users to view population pyramids (horizontal bar graphs going in opposite directions for male and female populations) for over 200 countries. Graphs are available for summary years (1997, and projections for 2025 and 2050), or any selected year or group of years between as early as 1950 and as late as 2050 (availability depends on the country). But the real eye-opener is the "dynamic output" function that rapidly replaces one year's pyramid with the next for the whole time series, allowing researchers to see a "movie" of the trend of the population pyramid. For many countries, this resource will be more valuable as a tool of population projection than population history, and users should note that raw number scales are used. [JS]
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Elsevier Trends Journals Technical Tips Online
http://www.biomednet.com/db/tto
Technical Tips Online is an outgrowth of the technical tips section of Elsevier's Trends in Genetics. Freely available (after registration), its collection of peer-reviewed articles is designed to be "a unique molecular biology techniques resource." Articles can be browsed by eight categories including Polymerase Chain Reaction, Tissue Culture, Electrophoresis, and Cloning & Sequencing. Searching by full text, keyword, author, and category is also available, with hyperlinked inverted author and keyword indexes provided. Readers may comment on articles and these comments are made available at the site. There is also a section on press releases for new products. [JS]
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Worldwide Books Exhibition Catalogs and Other Books on Art
http://www.worldwide.com/
Worldwide Books provides this searchable and browsable database of over "35,000 titles on art, architecture and photography systematically selected by Worldwide Books over the past three decades for [its] library clients," including "international museum and gallery catalogues published from the 1960s to the present," (about 30,000) and "American trade and university press art books published since 1992" (about 3,000). Two search interfaces allow for specific searching or for creating specialized lists of items based on a combination of eight different variables including geography, chronology, country of publication (for catalogs only), medium, and style. Browsing is available via an alphabetic artist index of over 6,000 names. Although the database is designed to aid in the purchase of books from Worldwide (which carries about 18,000 of the titles in stock), its flexible and powerful search options make it a marvelous bibliographic database. [JS]
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Library Journal Digital
http://www.ljdigital.com/
Founded in 1876, Library Journal has brought a new "look & feel" to its digital version. Items in this e-zine include LJ's Hot Picks, News (divided into This Week, People and Calendar), View, Infotech (which covers industry news), Multimedia (covering the web, CD-ROMs, audiobooks and video), BestSellers and Job Search. This site contains a fair amount of coverage and is well organized; at no point will the reader feel lost. Missing from this site is Library Hotline, which in the printed version often provides the best tidbits. [JS]
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Science Education Gateway--SII
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/segway/
For access to lesson plans and resources from some of the best science museums in the US, teachers can enter the Science Education Gateway. Dubbed "the public user interface of the Science Information Infrastructure," the Science Education Gateway is a collection of links to lesson plans and K-12 educational resources in the physical sciences. The site is provided by five web museums, including the Exploratorium (discussed in the February 21, 1997 issue of the Scout Report), the Lawrence Hall of Science, and the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (Smithsonian Institution). Topics covered include Space Science, Light, Cycles, Sun & Earth, Weather, and Solar System. Each section contains briefly annotated lesson plan links (including grade levels and source), a "grab bag" of related resources, and lesson plan templates. [JS]
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Law-Related Listservs--Regent University Law Library
http://www.regent.edu/lawlib/lists/list-law.html
Regent University Law Library's Margaret L. Christiansen provides this no-nonsense resource of nearly 300 legal mailing lists and email newsletters. The list can be browsed by major topic (Practitioner, Law School, Areas of Practice, and Miscellaneous), with several subtopics under each, or alphabetically. Each entry may contain descriptions and identify list maintainers/moderators, as well as provide subscription information. General mailing list and netiquette background is also provided. [JS]
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Two GAO Reports on US Government Electronic Information Dissemination
GGD-97-86: Internet and Electronic Dial-Up Bulletin Boards: Information Reported by Federal Organizations [.pdf, 44 p.]
http://www.gao.gov/AIndexFY97/abstracts/gg97086.htm
GGD-97-86S: World Wide Web Sites: Reported by 42 Federal Organizations [.pdf, 183 p.]
http://www.gao.gov/cgi/bin/getrpt?GGD-97-86s
The US General Accounting Office has released two reports that should be very useful to researchers, journalists, policy makers, librarians, and anyone in the general public interested in accessing US government information electronically. Internet and Electronic Dial-Up Bulletin Boards concentrates on an accounting of federal BBS and Internet expenditures, but contains an eight page section listing names and BBS numbers of federal agencies. The supplement to the report, World Wide Web Sites, contains a detailed, Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) hyperlinked listing of about 4,300 web sites reported by 42 federal organizations. The sites are arranged by organization. Users can link from the table of contents to the site listings, and then click on URLs to link to the sites--if their version of the Acrobat Reader is WebLink enabled. Even though the rapid evolution of the web may already have made some of these sites obsolete (sites were collected between November 1996 and April 1997), many users will find this detailed compendium to be an invaluable resource. [JS]
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Watergate 25--Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/splash1a.htm
Less graphical entrance:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/front.htm
The Washington Post commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of its most famous story with a site featuring a timeline of the Watergate scandal that contains links to full text selections of original articles. It also offers short biographies of the twenty key players in the Nixon administration and the investigation, some speculations on the true identity of the still unidentified informer "Deep Throat," and selected memories from Post staffers. A summary of post-Watergate reforms details their lasting impact and provides links to stories on current political scandals. [MD]
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How Things Work--Physics in Everyday Life
http://Landau1.phys.Virginia.EDU/Education/Teaching/HowThingsWork/
If you've ever wondered how a neon light works, how food cooks, or why dust settles on the moving blades of a fan, this is an excellent place to find out. Professor Louis Bloomfield of the University of Virginia Physics Department urges users to "think of this site as a radio call-in program that's being held on the WWW instead of the radio." Users email questions about how things work and he answers them. A browsable and searchable list of answered questions is arranged (in nineteen major chapters, from The Laws of Motion to Resonance to Light) in accordance with a companion book HOW THINGS WORK: The Physics of Everyday Life. Note that at times the question box may be full. [JS]
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AfricaNews Online
http://www.africanews.org/
AfricaNews Online, provided by Africa News Service, is a good place to start for those interested in current events in Africa. It is anchored by dispatches from the Panafrican News Agency (PANA), but also includes stories from other African sources such as All Africa Press Service, the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian, and the Post of Zambia, among others. PANA has its own section on the site, consisting of daily headlines, sports news, and weekly economic, science, environmental and health news. As might be expected from news service dispatches, most stories are short and informational rather than detailed or analytical. [JS]
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WNBA.com--Women's NBA
http://www.wnba.com/
The Women's National Basketball Association tips off its inaugural season on June 21, 1997 and offers interested Internauts a chance to learn about the league on the WNBA site. The site is highlighted by pages for each of the eight teams, including schedules, rosters with player information, arena and ticket information, and a "theater" section with QuickTime and .avi movies of selected players in action. The main page also contains information about the league, including its executives, and a complete rulebook. The 28-game schedule runs through August and broadcast information is listed in the schedule. [JS]
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Two Search Resources
Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
"Just the Answers Please: Choosing a Web Search Service"--Searcher Magazine
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/may/story3.htm
Danny Sullivan of Calafia Consulting provides Search Engine Watch, a resource designed to provide information to two distinct groups of users: web professionals (commercial webmasters, site designers and promoters), and web searchers. The Webmaster's Guide to Search Engines contains information on search engine design, ranking, and tips on how to make sure your site receives a high relevance rating. Search Engine Facts and Fun contains information on the major search services and links to selected search engine tutorials and ratings articles, among other features. "Just the Answers Please" is a detailed comparison of six web search engines written by Susan Feldman of Datasearch that appeared in the May 1997 issue of Searcher Magazine. At its heart are evaluated results of seven sample searches on topics such as comparative reviews of new cars, Europe's Internet access infrastructure, company home pages, and tennis elbow. Feldman provides tips and techniques as well as a detailed search engine feature sheet. [JS]
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AOLpress--A WYSIWYG HTML editor
http://www.aolpress.com/press/
AOLpress, provided by America Online Inc., is a free WYSIWYG HTML editor for Macintosh, Windows 3.1/95/NT, and Unix. AOLpress is a very effective and easy-to-use editing tool; editing can be done in WYSIWYG mode or HTML mode. A MiniWeb feature, which functions as a simple site manager, is also included. Existing HTML files can be easily imported into MiniWeb relatively accurately using a process called "Webizing." The editor also supports auto-creation of tables, frames, lists, and various other page attributes with the click of a button. Pages can be published directly to non-AOL servers if they support the HTTP PUT protocol. [TB]
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Volume 1, Number 8: The Scout Report for June 17, 1994
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/archive/6-17-94.html
The Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS)
http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/CDS.html
When the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center was annotated, it was noted for providing journal tables of contents and abstracts, searchable databases, and the AstroWeb meta-site of astronomical resources, among other features. These services are all still available at one of the earliest astronomical meta-sites. In recent months CDS has added a web interface to its Simbad (Set of Identifications Measurements and Bibliography for Astronomical Data) database of "about 1 million objects, for which 3.3 million identifiers, more than 1.5 million observational measurements and 1.4 million bibliographical references are available" (registration required, and the service is fee-based for some users). CDS users will soon have access to the Hipparcos and Tycho catalogs as well. [JS]
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1994-1997. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. 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 University of Wisconsin - Madison, the National Science Foundation, AT&T, or Network Solutions, Inc.

The Scout Report (ISSN 1092-3861) is published weekly by Internet Scout

Susan Calcari
Jack Solock
Matthew Livesey
Teri Boomsma
Aimee D. Glassel
Amy Tracy Wells
Michael de Nie
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The Scout Report - June 20, 1997

The Scout Report

June 20, 1997

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