February 1997 No. 44
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.
Interactive Media Journal
Pulp Fiction Preservation
Project Muse
CALL Reference Materials
Cable Channel Launches New Web Service
Social Informatics Resources
Special Report on Organizing the Internet
IAT Librarian's Links
The Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) was launched in September 1996 by the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute. This online peer-reviewed journal covers the theoretical and practical aspects of interactive media in education. JIME does not have a chronological concept of an issue, but, rather, publishes articles for open peer review as they are received. Submissions are available for online peer review for about a month. Both papers and reviewers' comments are posted on the Web, allowing readers to trace the flow of the review process and add their own comments as well. Read JIME at http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/jime/
The Open University is Britain's largest educational and training organization. It is open to any adult living in the UK or other member states of the European Union, with teaching materials that are delivered to the students in their own homes or places of work by mail, by computer, and via national BBC broadcasts. For more details see http://www.open.ac.uk/
The Knowledge Media Institute was formed in 1995 by major research teams at the Open University working in related areas of learning applications of new technologies. The institute's interests include knowledge systems, multimedia enabling technologies for disabled people, advanced telematics, virtual classrooms, customizable authoring tools, virtual science laboratories, intelligent agents, and training on demand. For more details see http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/
Although several library digitization projects are concentrating on making rare and precious books and manuscripts available to scholars in electronic form, high-tech preservation is also essential for less lofty literature. The paper used in printing 19th- and 20th-century mass market fiction has a high acid content and is rapidly deteriorating, despite careful handling in libraries. Scholars and devotees of pulp fiction will eventually be able to access several collections of these materials thanks to two current preservation projects.
From 1855 through the 1950s, Street & Smith published a variety of dime novels, pulp magazines, and comic books. The firm operated as a "fiction factory" with a stable of writers, including Horatio Alger, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, and Jack London, whose pseudonymous, formulaic works included graphics by such illustrators as Winfield Scott, Tom Lovell, Anton Otto Fisher, Amos Sewell, and N.C. Wyeth. A $250,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access is funding the Syracuse University Street & Smith Archives Preservation and Access Project for a two-year period to microfilm and catalogue the Street & Smith Publishing Company's archives. Many of the original materials, such as colored covers from serials and novels, will also receive conservation treatment to preserve them for future study.
For more details on the scope and progress of this project, see the Syracuse University Library Street & Smith Archive Preservation and Access Project site at http://libwww.syr.edu/aboutsul/depts/speccoll/
The Virginia Tech Speculative Fiction (VTSF) Project, begun in August 1994, is an "experiment in recovering and preserving text and graphic materials related to speculative fiction, including fiction originally published in science fiction and fantasy magazines dating from the earliest periods of 20th-century American and British fantastic fiction." In this project the original magazines are scanned, creating master document files with both text and graphic elements. Files are formatted for Web display with HTML tagging, with links made from tables of contents to the individual textual and graphical items, arranged by magazine and issue.
For more details and to view the issues completed and available on the Web, link to the Virginia Tech Speculative Fiction homepage at http://athena.english.vt.edu/vtsfpilot/SF-Project.html
Project Muse is a joint venture between the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library to provide worldwide networked access to the full text of the Press's 40 scholarly journals in the humanities, the social sciences, and mathematics. When a library subscribes to a Project Muse journal, that journal is made available without passwords to the entire campus, not just to workstations at the library. Faculty, students, and staff of a subscribing institution may distribute articles freely within the contiguous campus community, allowing users to download, print, and make unlimited paper copies for classroom or personal use.
The annual costs of Project Muse subscriptions are about 10 percent lower than the cost of comparable paper subscriptions. A demonstration site has been set up to give non-subscribers access to one issue of each online journal. To view the sample issues and for more details on Project Muse link to http://muse.jhu.edu/
Athelstan publishes and distributes products related to computer-assisted language learning (CALL), including CD-ROMs, software, videos, and reference materials. The Athelstan Newsletter on Technology and Language Learning is sent free to teachers in the U.S., and extracts from the newsletter are available on the Athelstan Web site. Athelstan also publishes the Technology and Language Learning Yearbook which contains listings of information about companies and organizations that are involved in language teaching with the use of software, videos, CD-ROMs, and language laboratories. Volume 6, the current edition, is available in printed form for $6.75(US). However, Volume 7, which is nearly ready, will be free and only available on the Web site at http://www.nol.net/~athel/athel.html
For more information, contact: Athelstan, 2476 Bolsover, Suite 464, Houston, TX 77005 USA; tel: 800-598-3880 or 713-523-2837; fax: 713-523-6543; email: athel@nol.net
CABLE CHANNEL LAUNCHES NEW WEB SERVICE
On January 27, 1997, the Discovery Channel's "Cable-in-the-Classroom" took a new approach to its Assignment Discovery and TLC Elementary School classroom series. Programs broadcast on the Discovery Channel and the Learning Channel in these two series are organized into five interdisciplinary themes. Spring 1997 themes include: "H2Oceans," "Cities Through Time," "Great Books," "American Frontiers," and "Earth to Mars." The programs are commercial-free and copyright-cleared, and are free for educators to tape and retain for use in the classroom for at least one year. The Web site includes a library of online resources for each program; including hands-on classroom activities, lesson plans, connections to academic standards, and links to related sites on the World Wide Web. In addition, a cadre of online educators, known as Subject Area Managers (SAMs), lead forum discussions and provide insight on effective use of the programming in the classroom. Educators may also join the Discovery Channel School online mailing list to receive weekly programming updates. For more details, connect to the Discovery Channel School at http://school.discovery.com/
For more Web sites that are related to educational television programs,
see the PBS Web site at http://www.pbs.org/
and
Turner Learning, Inc. site at http://www.turner.com/tesi/
Social Informatics (SI), a term created in 1996, refers to the body of research and study that examines the social aspects of computerization, computer-mediated communication (CMC), and "computers and society." SI crosses many disciplines, including information systems, anthropology, computer science, communications, sociology, library and information science, political science, and science and technology studies. Professor Rob Kling, Director of the Center for Social Informatics at the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, has created a collection of Web pages to help locate research-related Social Informatics resources. Link to the collection at http://www-slis.lib.indiana.edu/SI/
SPECIAL REPORT ON ORGANIZING THE INTERNET
In a special Scientific American report, "The Internet: Bringing Order from Chaos" (March 1997), several noted technologists comment on how to deal with organizing knowledge on the Internet. Topics include multilingualism on the Internet, secure publishing systems, searching and filtering information, an aural interface to the Web, digital libraries, search interfaces, and Internet archives.
The articles can be read on the Web at http://www.sciam.com/0397issue/0397intro.html
"Evaluating Web Resources" in the October 1996 issue of IAT Infobits
included a list of articles to help educators review and evaluate Web
sites. A new IAT Information Resource Guide, "Evaluating Web Sites for
Educational Uses: Bibliography and Checklist," includes the citations
from this article plus several additional resources. A short checklist
of questions is also included to aid in selecting sites for educational
purposes.
http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-49.html
The following Information Resource Guide was revised and updated:
"Multimedia Technology: Bibliography"
http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-12.html
To access a list of the documents in the Information Resource Guides series, link to http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/guides.html The list now includes the date each guide was last updated.