The Scout Report - March 8, 1996

March 8, 1996

A Publication of Internet Scout
Provided by the InterNIC as a Service to the Internet Community

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) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report. Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.
http://rs.internic.net/scout/report

Send comments and contributions to: scout@cs.wisc.edu

Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue
Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers over 100 handouts on English writing skills. The collection could be called an online grammar book or a basic writing course. Categories covered include sentences, punctuation, parts of speech, spelling, methods of citing sources in research paper writing, English as a second language, and general writing concerns such as writers block, proofreading, non-sexist language, resume writing, business and professional writing, and coping with writing anxiety.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/introduction.html
The same resource is offered via gopher access by the Virginia Technical University on their Self-Serve Gopher, where it is available in Microsoft Word format for PC and MAC, as well as ASCII text format. The index to the filenames can be found under the "Text" menu.
gopher://athena.english.vt.edu:70/11ftp%3AWWW%3AGophers%3AOWL_Gopher%3AWriting%2 0Handouts%20%3A
Gopher to: athena.english.vt.edu
Select: OWL Gopher/Writing Handouts
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Federal Government Information on the Internet - Update
"Federal Government Information on the Internet", by Maggie Parhamovich Farrell, has recently been updated. Although primarily aimed at U.S. government document librarians, it is a great resource for anyone interested in U.S. government information. It contains both free and for fee links to government information by subject, from the Agency for International Development to weather, and includes nearly 100 subjects, as well as selected mailing lists and library catalogs. It is one of the first places to go for a logical collection of pointers to U.S. government information.
http://www.unlv.edu/library/GOVT/
[Note: When last checked by the Internet Scout team, this site URL was no longer available.]
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International Information on the Internet
The University of Colorado-Boulder Government Publications Library site is similar to the Federal Government Information on the Internet Web page, with one major exception. It also covers foreign agency statistics and government information very thoroughly. Under "International Documents" there are links to various international agencies such as the Asian Development Bank, European Union, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the United Nations and several of its organizations, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), among others. "Information about non-U.S. Countries" includes subject information about non-U.S. countries covering children and youth to weather forecasts. Included in these pointers are several searchable World Bank databases, country health profiles, business directories for various countries, endangered species information, and links to election information in many countries, as well as parliamentary sites for over 30 countries, among others. This variety of pointers makes this a very good place to start for finding international information.
International Organizations Information: http://www-libraries.colorado.edu/ps/gov/int/internat.htm
Non-U.S. Country Information: http://www-libraries.colorado.edu/ps/gov/for/foreign.htm
And you can find an updated guide to Canadian government information (by subject, province, and municipality) from the University of Waterloo Electronic Library:
http://library.uwaterloo.ca:80/discipline/Government/CanGuide/
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Women's Studies Bibliographies
The Women's Studies Librarian's Office of the University of Wisconsin System has recently made two new annotated bibliographies available via gopher. "Information Technology and Women's Lives" , by Linda Shult, contains over 750 citations, some annotated, in the categories of general, computer science and education, employment and health, and online usage/electronic resources. The bibliography is available as one file, or as individual chapters, and is completely searchable. Also offered is "Mentoring Women in Higher Education: An Annotated Bibliography", by Phyllis Holman Weisbard, which is Number 75 in the "Wisconsin Bibliographies in Women's Studies" series.
"Information Technology:" gopher://silo.adp.wisc.edu:70/11/.uwlibs/.womenstudies/.infotech
"Mentoring Women:" gopher://silo.adp.wisc.edu:70/00/.uwlibs/.womenstudies/.bibs/.mentor
gopher to: silo.adp.wisc.edu
Select: Campus Libraries Information-U.W. Madison/U.W. Madison Libraries Centers U-Z/Women's Studies Librarian's Office/Wisconsin Bibliographies in Women's Studies.
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Center for History and New Media
The Center for History and New Media, a collaboration between George Mason University, the American Social History Project, and the Center for Media and Learning at the City College of New York, is an attempt to respond to the way new media are changing the teaching and studying of history. The Center aspires "to produce innovative historical works in the new media" such as CD-ROM disks on U.S. history, and present seminars and conferences on history and new media. Their web site, newly opened, presents information about the Center and hypertext essays on new media and history including a hyptertext guide to history sites, which first appeared in the American Historical Association's December 1995 "Perspectives." Also provided are reviews of history CD-ROM's and software, connections to teaching projects, and links to other history sites, including a long list of university and college history departments.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/
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Web4Lib Mailing List
Web4Lib is a mailing list for World Wide Web based library managers. Issues discussed include Web resource selection as it relates to overall collection development, cataloging and metadata information as it relates to Web resources, and training of staff in use and creation of Web resources. Web4Lib is not a moderated list, but only subscribers may post messages.
Send email to:listserv@library.berkeley.edu
In the body of the message type:
subscribe Web4Lib your name
To browse archives of the discussion articles, which can be sorted by date, subject, author, or thread:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive.html
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NTIA Announces Schedule for 1996 Application
The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is accepting applications for the 1996 round of the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP). TIIAP provides seed money for innovative, practical projects that extend the benefits of advanced telecommunications and information technology to rural and urban underserved Americans. Priorities in the 1996 round include funding demonstration projects that can be replicated in other communities, improving access to information and communication technologies for disadvantaged communities, and supporting innovative planning efforts. Non-profit organizations, colleges and universities, and all non-federal governmental entities are eligible to apply. Application deadline is Apr. 4, 1996. Information about the program's regulations and procedures can be found in the Notice of Solicitation of Grant Applications, published in the Federal Register on February 29, 1996. For more information, see the Web or email addresses below, call (202) 482-2048, or use the automated fax-back system by dialing (202) 501-2303.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/tiiap/tiiap.html
Send email to:tiiap@ntia.doc.gov
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Women's History Month
In honor of Women's History Month, The Feminist Majority Online's Women's Web World has created a "Women's History Month" page. A fact of the day, book of the day, and link of the day are provided, as are calendar dates and events. A "Teach Women's History" page offers various teaching tools including a full text browsable and searchable online version of "The Feminist Chronicles: 1953-1993", by Toni Carabillo, Judith Meuli, and June Bundy Csida.
Women's History Month: http://www.feminist.org/other/wh_menu.html
Women's Web World: http://www.feminist.org/
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Canadian Online Explorer--CANOE
The Canadian Online Explorer (CANOE), provided by the Toronto Sun Publishing Company and Rogers Multi-Media, is a comprehensive Canadian news site, featuring selected stories from the Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, and Toronto Sun newspapers. The "Slam Sports" section features articles on hockey, football, baseball, and basketball. Selected articles from the Financial Post newspaper and McLean's magazine are provided, as is a "Canoe Money" business section, and "Jam Showbiz," with TV, theatre, and movie news. Other interesting items include McLean's rankings of selected Canadian Universities, "Canoe Money's" current rates on everything from savings to currency -- including a mortgage rate calculator and currency exchange rate converter, and Financial Post's coverage of Canadian financial news. Each constituent part of CANOE is searchable. News is updated daily. At present there is no archive. The site is available in English only.
http://www.canoe.ca
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U.S. National Park Service
The United States Department of the Interior has recently opened its National Park Service (NPS) Web site, offering listings of all U.S. national parks, monuments, historical sites, memorials, and other designations by name, state, or region -- although state and regional access is limited to clickable maps only at this time. Each NPS site provides varying quantities of information. "Preserving America's Heritage" contains exhaustive information about natural resources and history in the parks, as well as educational resources related to the NPS. "Caring for the American Legacy" has useful information about the NPS, including the nomenclature of the National Park System Units located under "What is the National Park System?". There is also a "Hot Topics" section of NPS issues. Although the "Search the National Parks by Theme" section is in an immature state at present, watch for it to improve, making access to specific information even easier.
http://www.nps.gov/
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Mongolia gets its first Internet node
Mongolia recently opened its first Internet node, as well as a Web site. "About Mongolia" links to information about Mongolian economics, culture, history, and politics, including the Mongolian Constitution. See a Mongol Empire chronology and map and a portrait of Genghis Khan. Sections on language, art, music, and daily life are provided, as well as links to other Mongolian information on the Internet.
http://202.131.0.8/
[Note: When last checked by the Internet Scout team, this site URL was no longer available.]
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March Madness High School Basketball--Illinois
With "March Madness" approaching -- high school state and national college basketball tournaments -- attention should be turned to one of the best basketball sites on the 'Net, provided by one of the most basketball crazy states in the U.S. -- Illinois. The Chicago Tribune now offers a Web site called March Madness which chronicles the complete history of boys and girls Illinois state high school basketball tournaments since 1908 (boys) and 1977 (girls). The site contains full text of the original Tribune articles covering every championship game, along with box scores and all-tournament teams. Individual and team records, biographies of "all time" Illinois players and coaches, and a list of "Mr. and Ms. Basketball" in Illinois are available, along with this year's schedule of games. Probably the highlight of the site is a video library of over ten short films (for both PC and Mac) of great finishes, the early years, and great teams and players. These files are very large, but worth viewing. Even if you're not from Illinois, if you're a basketball fan, you'll enjoy this site.
http://chicagotribune.com/sports/prepsplus/ws/0,1246,3896,00.html
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eAuto
eAuto is a comprehensive pointer site to Web auto sites. Included are pointers to auto brands from Acura to Volvo (both company and "enthusiast" sites), traditional and virtual dealers, auto parts, tires, accessories, and services -- including car clubs, trade associations, and U.S. federal government departments. Also provided are pointers to automotive and motor sports periodicals, as well as racing resources of all kinds.
http://www.eauto.com/
Text only: http://www.eauto.com/text/index.html
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PepsiWorld
The new browser-busting PepsiWorld site will test many of your browser's new plug-in capabilities. Pepsi's site is massively graphical, and not for those with slow connections. But if you've got some time to spare, and want to see all the latest Web tools and gadgets in action, pay them a visit. In order to really see the sights you have to become a "squatter", which means registering.
http://www.pepsi.com/
Less graphical: http://www.pepsi.com/intro2l.html
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Web, Gopher and FTP via Email
The Agora email server is for Internauts with email access but without a full IP Internet connection. You can use email to pull down Web pages and read them locally with a browser on your workstation. There are several servers available, but the fastest and most efficient is included here. Using the Agora email server you can get Web documents as HTML, or as text with either absolute or relative embedded URL's. You can also get your HTML file converted to postscript. Note that this method does not help you if a site is hyperlinked only by image maps. However, this is an effective method to get the content of a Web site via email.
Send email to:w3mail@gmd.de
In the subject line type: Help
In the body of the message type: Help
When you have done that, to get more information on other Agora servers:
http://shocker.gi.net/NET/PM-1996/96-03/96-03-06/0036.html
[Note: When last checked by the Internet Scout team, this site URL was no longer available.]

For information on ftpmail, a service that allows you to access ftp files through email, and gophermail, a service that allows you to retreive gopher menus and text through email, check Patrick Crispen's Internet Roadmap.
ftpmail: http://www.brandonu.ca/~ennsnr/Resources/Roadmap/map15.html
gophermail: http://www.brandonu.ca/~ennsnr/Resources/Roadmap/map22.html
Note that Crispen's ftpmail and gophermail servers may not be current. Try as many as you need until you find one that works.
For a list of current ftpmail servers, see Scott Yanoff's newly updated "Internet Services List":
http://www.uwm.edu/Mirror/inet.services.html#FTP
For more on Yanoff's list check the Scout Toolkit:
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/toolkit/searching/subcatalogs.html
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Switchboard
Switchboard, provided by Banyan Systems, Inc., allows users to search its U.S. database of over 90 million names for telephone numbers and addresses. Listings are compiled from white pages directories throughout the U.S., although because white pages directories are usually updated annually, there is a possibility that the listing you get might be out of date. Switchboard is searchable by name, city and state. Retrieval looks exactly like a telephone listing. A help file is available on the home page. You may also register at the site and personalize your listing, adding an e-mail address if you wish. 10 million U.S. businesses are also searchable.
http://www.switchboard.com/
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Copyright Susan Calcari, 1996. 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 - March 8, 1996

March 8, 1996

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Scout Report and Scout Report HTML Subscription Instructions