IAT Infobits - December, 1993
No. 6
ISSN 1071-5223
About INFOBITS
Infobits is an electronic service of the Institute for Academic Technology's Information Resources Group. Each month we monitor and select from a number of information technology and instruction technology sources that come to our attention and provide brief notes for electronic dissemination to educators.
Wired Magazine Now Online
The Digital Library -- Is It Here Yet?
Scholar -- Listserv for Humanities Disciplines
Computers and Copyrights
Trainmat: The Network Training Materials Gopher
CAUSE93 Papers Available Online
Wired, the magazine that merges trendiness and technology now has a gopher, at wired.com (port 70). For those without gopher, Wired has an infobot that will allow you to retrieve articles by email. For instructions, send email to infobot@wired.com with the word "help" as the text. Hardcopy of Wired is published monthly by Wired, 544 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA; tel: 800-SO WIRED (inside U.S.) or +1(415)904-0660 (outside U.S.); email: subscriptions@wired.com. Individual subscriptions are $29.95/year.
THE DIGITAL LIBRARY--IS IT HERE YET?
"Report from the Kudzu Patch: Hypatia Screamed," by Jane Smith (Internet World, Jan/Feb 1994, pp. 86-89), is a message of reason and restraint for those of us who (to continue Smith's classical reference) sometimes feel like Laocoon grappling with the serpents of the Internet. Smith begins with the report of a corporate library being eliminated and replaced with three Internet tools (WAIS, Gopher, and WorldWide Web) and moves on to explain the folly of solely relying on what currently comprises the "digital library."
Although many educators are jumping aboard the Internet resources bandwagon, she cautions that we are, for the most part, still using experimental software to access resources that lack the organization, authentication, and permanency that we find in traditional libraries. Closing the library at this time, therefore, is not advisable. Information exploration on the Internet is an exciting supplement to traditional resources, but "the skills of librarians and the tenets of librarianship will be increasingly critical if we are to deliver on the promises of the 'Information Age.'"
Jane Smith is assistant director of the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR). CNIDR, funded by NSF, works to "promote close communication and collaboration between software engineers and librarians during the development and deployment of usefully managed distributed networked information services." For more information, send email to info@cnidr.org.
Internet World is published monthly by Meckler Corporation, 11 Ferry Lane West, Westport, CT 06880, USA; tel: 203-226-6967; email: meckler@jvnc.net. Individual subscriptions are $29/year.
SCHOLAR--LISTSERV FOR HUMANITIES DISCIPLINES
The Scholar listserv, sponsored by Queens College Foundation, City University of New York, is an online listserv providing periodic information for text analysis and natural language applications. Monthly editions contain book notes, articles, software reviews, and job announcements. Here are some examples of articles from the November 1993 release:
Ednet Educators Guide to Email Lists Literary Data on Disks from Samizdat Express Network Accessible Sacred Texts European Bibliographic Databases in the Humanities Corpus of British Children's Spoken English Spanish Texts on CD-ROM A Pen-Based Computer for Chinese Update of Georgetown Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text
Subscribers receive a table of contents listing the items in the latest release of Scholar along with instructions for retrieving them by email. The articles can also be retrieved by Gopher.
Via email:
To subscribe to the Scholar list and automatically receive all releases, send the following email to listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu with the following message:
subscribe scholar your full name
Example: subscribe scholar Rebecca West
Via Gopher:
Point your Gopher to the Johns Hopkins University Gopher at URL gopher://jhuniverse.hcf.jhu.edu:70/11/.HAC/Journals/.SCHOLAR
Problems in accessing Scholar files should be addressed to lnaqc@cunyvm.cuny.edu
"Computers and Copyrights" by Thomas J. DeLoughry (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/24/93, pp. A15-16) summarizes a recent hearing convened by the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, a subgroup of the White House Information Infrastructure Task Force. Electronic dissemination of information and multimedia applications are making copyright a hot issue for users and publishers. One disturbing development is some publishers' use of contract law to circumvent the fair use provisions of current U.S. copyright law. Such "back door" approaches create more complications for educators who are increasing their reliance on electronic information channels.
The Chronicle of Higher Education [ISSN 0009-5982] is published weekly by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc., 1255 Twenty-Third Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20037, USA. One-year subscription is $75.
The IAT has a document, "Computers and Copyrights: Bibliography," to direct faculty and computer support staff to more information on copyright. The references cover copyright law as it relates to software and new media technologies, as well as general guides to U.S. copyright law and pointers to electronic resources covering copyright.
Copies can be obtained from the IAT Web server at URL http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-04.html.
TRAINMAT: The Network Training Materials Gopher
This is an experimental gopher server set up to promote and encourage network training. Trainmat is an initiative of the UK Network Training Materials Project, a joint enterprise of NISP (Networked Information Services Project) and ITTI (Information Technology Training Initiative), based at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
"Through the Trainmat gopher, the Network Training Materials Project aims to make it easy for trainers to access a range of network training materials which they may then use as models, or which they may adapt for their own training programmes. End-users may also find much of the material of interest."
To access Trainmat, point your gopher client to: trainmat.ncl.ac.uk
CAUSE93 PAPERS AVAILABLE ONLINE
Papers for CAUSE93 were made available in advance of this year's conference. This is a fine example of how the Internet can be used to provide information in ways that weren't possible in pre-networked information times.
To get a list of the available papers, send email to: search@cause.colorado.edu with the message:
LIBSEARCH CNC93
Papers can be read online on the CAUSE Gopher server at URL gopher://cause-gopher.Colorado.EDU:70/11/conferences/CAUSE93
URL: http://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits/bitdec93.html
Infobits editor: Carolyn Kotlas
© Copyright 1993, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.
May be reproduced in any medium for non-commercial purposes.
Center for Instructional Technology
Academic & Technology Networks
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
