The Scout Report - June 14, 1996

June 14, 1996

A Publication of Internet Scout
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) or visit the Web version of the Scout Report. Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.

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

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

Research & Education
Preserving Digital Information: Report of the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information
Preserving Digital Information, produced by a task force commissioned by The Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA) and The Research Libraries Group (RLG) is available on the Internet. The purpose of this 64-page study "was to investigate the means of ensuring 'continued access indefinitely into the future of records stored in digital electronic form.'" The authors consisted of individuals from industry, museums, archives and libraries, scholarly societies, and government, among others. Its major findings include: "1) The first line of defense against loss of valuable digital information rests with the creators, providers and owners of digital information; 2) Long-term preservation of digital information on a scale adequate for the demands of future research and scholarship will require a deep infrastructure capable of supporting a distributed system of digital archives; 3) A critical component of the digital archiving infrastructure is the existence of a sufficient number of trusted organizations capable of storing, migrating and providing access to digital collections; 4) A process of certification for digital archives is needed to create an overall climate of trust about the prospects of preserving digital information; and 5) Certified digital archives must have the right and duty to exercise an aggressive rescue function as a fail-safe mechanism for preserving valuable digital information that is in jeopardy of destruction, neglect or abandonment by its current custodian." The report is available at present in Adobe Acrobat .pdf, Microsoft Word 6.0, and ASCII rich text formats. An HTML version will be available shortly.
http://www.rlg.org/ArchTF/
ftp://ftp.rlg.org/pub/archtf/
ftp to ftp.rlg.org
change directory to pub/archtf
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EurekAlert -- science news stories sponsored by AAAS
EurekAlert, a service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, presents the latest news on research in science, medicine and technology. News releases are submitted by academic institutions, journals, government sources, and non-profit agencies. The site is designed to be used by journalists, research institutions and members of the public. EurekAlert is updated daily and contains an archive that is searchable by key word, contributor institution type, and geography. Interesting stories presently available include the finding that breast-feeding may reduce risk of breast cancer, attempts by researchers to reduce the environmental impact of making computer chips, and the effect of doctor and patient age on medical decisions. Each story is abstracted and contains contact information and hyptertext links when available. Submissions are free at this time, but a posting fee will be imposed in the future.
http://www.eurekalert.org/
less graphical: http://www.eurekalert.org/E-lert/current/mainpage.shtml
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School Librarian Links
School Librarian Links is meant to be "an all-in-one reference site for school librarians new to seeking professional resources on the Internet." At present it is a list of selected pointers sorted by topic. Topics include acceptable use and censorship (including several acceptable use policies of middle and high schools), best education sites, curriculum links, librarian resources, online text/news, publishers and vendors, U.S. government search sites, and search engines. Each link is accompanied by a short annotation. This is a good starting point for a school librarian or media specialist who is new to the Internet. The site is a personal effort by Kathleen Gentili, a Library Media Specialist in Arizona.
http://www.nyx.net/~rbarry/
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H-Net -- Humanities Online from Michigan State University
The highlight of the Humanities Online Web site at Michigan State University is the H-Net List of Lists, a page containing over 75 scholarly discussion lists from H-Africa to H-World, as well as several humanities lists not affiliated with H-Net. Each listing contains subscription information, and may also contain discussion logs, reviews of scholarly works, calls for papers, conference announcements, grant, scholarship and fellowship information, and links to related sites when available. In addition, H-Net includes: a Review Project with hundreds of book reviews that can be sorted by discussion list, author, reviewer, or date; a weekly Job Guide; reports by the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (NCC), and selected links to humanities and social science sites.
http://h-net2.msu.edu/
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Entomology Index of Internet Resources -- Iowa State University
The Entomology Department at Iowa State University maintains the Entomology Index of Internet Resources, a comprehensive page of entomology pointers in over 20 categories, ranging from beekeeping to Usenet. WWW, gopher, FTP, electronic mailing lists, and Usenet news resources are included. While the resource is aimed mainly at the higher education community, the K-12 Educator Recommended Resources page contains nearly 50 pointers. The site has also recently established a new checklist category that contains pointers to seven insect checklists at this time. Most of the site is searchable.
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/List/
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Community Memory -- Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace
Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility (CPSR) announces the creation of "Community Memory -- Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace," a moderated discussion list whose purpose is to explore the origins, history and development of computer networks, computer hardware, software, and computer science, and the environment collectively known as "cyberspace." Emphasis is placed on human factors -- on who knew whom, how ideas spread and originated. This list is dedicated to the belief that awareness of history can help us make reasoned decisions in the present and future. By exploring the history of cyberspace, topical issues we face today -- such as privacy concerns, equality of access to computing, hacking, computer literacy, intellectual property rights, funding long-term R&D -- are placed in a broader, historical context. A primary focus will be the evolution of ideas in computing and the use of computers.
To subscribe send email to: LISTSERV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
In the body of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE CYHIST yourfirstname yourlastname
CPSR home page:
http://memex.org/community-memory.html
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General Interest
Federal Court Panel Finds CDA Unconstitutional
Full text of the unanimous decision of a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Pa., which ruled much of the Communications Deceny Act unconstitutional, is available at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) Web site. Along with the decision, the site contains a 40 minute ACLU news conference (in RealAudio format), case materials, and selected trial testimony and transcripts. The ACLU, along with the American Library Association, spearheaded the legal challenge to the CDA. An ALA press release about the court result is available from the ALA gopher.
ACLU: http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/trial/trial.htm
ALA press release:
gopher://ala1.ala.org:70/00/alagophii/alagophiipress/cdarulin.txt
gopher to ala1.ala.org
select About ALA (news, directories, etc.)/ALA Press Releases/Librarians Applaud CDA Ruling
[Note: Gopher site may no longer be available.]
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Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace
The Dayton accords, signed in Paris on December 20, 1995 by the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, marked the end of open hostilities in Bosnia. But the tragic saga of this conflict continues, as the people of the former Yugoslavia try to rebuild their shattered region. The New York Times presents an interactive photo essay by the French photojournalist Gilles Peress, which documents the last weeks of the siege of Sarajevo in February and March. The site is arranged geographically, allowing the viewer to tour Sarajevo itself and three of its suburbs, including Grbavica, the last to be turned over to Bosian rule. Peress' audio narration describes the scenes he documents, making this virtual photo gallery truly multimedia. Visitors to the site can participate in month-long forums on a wide range of issues, each hosted by an individual with experience in the Bosnian conflict. The Times has gathered a great deal of contextual information to accompany the photoessay, including background articles, maps, and RealAudio broadcasts from National Public Radio. No registration is required to view this site.
http://www.nytimes.com/bosnia/
Less graphical: http://www.nytimes.com/bosnia/intro.html
Site index: http://www.nytimes.com/specials/bosnia/indext.html
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New Photos From the Hubble Space Telescope
Amazing new photos have been added to the Space Telescope Electronic Information Service Site. Hubble Space Telescope images released in the last month include Dynamics of the Crab Nebula and Doomed Star Eta Carinae. Included are several black & white and color resolutions, as well as well as explanatory captions. Of particular interest are the incredible gas clouds emanating from each side of Eta Carinae. "Even though Eta Carinae is more than 8,000 light-years away, structures only 10 billion miles across (about the diameter of our solar system) can be distinguished. Dust lanes, tiny condensations, and strange radial streaks all appear with unprecedented clarity."
Dynamics of Crab Nebula
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/22.html
Doomed star Eta Carinae
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/96/23.html
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State Parks Online
State Parks Online contains links to information on state parks in 44 states. Most of the links are to state departments of tourism, but there are some to personal pages. Also included are a park of the week, miscellaneous individual state park sites, and a link to L.L. Bean's ParkSearch service. This site provides one-stop shopping for prospective vacationers.
http://www.mindspring.com/~wxrnot/parks.html
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Benny Carter -- jazz saxophonist
As saxophonist Benny Carter approaches his ninetieth year, a web site that pays tribute to this jazz pioneer brings his career to the Web. The site includes a selected discography (all currently available on CD) and many photographs of the musician's life and career, as well as information about recent and upcoming tributes and live appearances. There are links to other Web resources about Benny Carter, and the site itself is well designed and easy to navigate. Duke Ellington once wrote, "The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he." This Web site makes it easy to find out why.
http://www.lpb.com/benny/
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Sports-Card Mailing List
The purpose of the Sports-Card mailing list is for trading, buying, selling, and discussion of sports cards. This list is unmoderated and card dealers are welcome. This list is also available in digest form.
To subscribe, send email to: listserv@listserv.aol.com.
In the body of the message type:
SUBSCRIBE SPORTS-CARDS your name
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Net Tools
Beyond Bookmarks -- Schemes for Organizing the Web
Beyond Bookmarks: Schemes for Organizing the Web, provided by Gerry McKiernan of the Reference and Instructional Services Department of Iowa State University, "is a clearinghouse of World Wide Web sites that have applied or adopted standard classification schemes or controlled vocabularies to organize Web resources." The page points to alphabetic, numeric, and alphanumeric schemes, including Klassifikationssystem for Svenska Bibliotek, Danish Veterinary and Agricultural Library Classification, Dewey, Ei Classification Code, Mathematics Subject Classification, Nederlandse Basisclassificatie, UDC (Universal Decimal System), AGRICOLA (National Library of Agriculture) subject category codes, Computing Reviews Classification System, and McKiernan's own Cyberstacks, a beginning attempt at Library of Congress classification.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/CTW.htm
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InfoSpace
InfoSpace is a new Web based phone directory that claims to be the "most comprehensive on the Internet," with over 112 million listings. Users can search people, businesses, yellow pages, and fax directories in the U.S. and Canada. A blue pages government and toll free 800 number directory is available for the U.S. only at this time. Forthcoming services include a large email search service and map-based individual, business, and government directories. As always, there is no guarantee that information found is correct (as it is based on telephone directory listings), but the sheer magnitude of this venture, along with the fact that it includes Canadian as well as American listings, merits a look at InfoSpace.
http://www.infospaceinc.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.

Internet Scout Project