+ Page 1 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Computer Systems News Volume 5, Number 4 (1994) ISSN 1050-6004 Editors: Linda Thompson (LIB1J@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU) and Ann Thornton (AThornton@UH.EDU). Issued on an irregular basis by University Libraries, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-2091. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS Apple Announces "Cool Tools" Awards for Internet Programming Efforts, 1 Carnegie Mellon University and SIRSI Corporation Announce Library Management System and Technology Transfer Agreements, 3 Getty Art History Information Program Launches Initiative on Digital-Imaging Standards, 4 DRA Adds Subject and Keyword Searching to Its LC MARC Database, 5 ISSNs Now in PAIS Data Records on Tape, 6 APPLE ANNOUNCES "COOL TOOLS" AWARDS FOR INTERNET PROGRAMMING EFFORTS The Advanced Technology Group of Apple Computer, Inc. announced that it has awarded eleven individuals and organizations with "Cool Tools" awards. This special award is designed to recognize programmers and their contributions of a wide variety of tools to allow Macintosh users to navigate the Internet. In addition to a certificate of recognition, the Cool Tools awardees will receive an Apple(r) Power Macintosh(tm) 7100 from Apple. The Macintosh Cool Tools Internet Award recipients and their projects are: o The Internet Society, Reston, Virginia, for its efforts to foster a global environment conducive to the easy exchange of information and the rapid development of standards and new software. Internet Society, 12020 Sunrise Valley Dr. Suite 270, Reston VA, 22091. Telephone: (703) 648 9888; Fax: (703) 648 9887; Email: amr@isoc.org. o Steve Dorner of QUALCOMM Incorporated in San Diego, California, for Eudora, an electronic mail client for Internet users. Telephone (800) 2-EUDORA; Email: sdorner@qualcomm.com. + Page 2 + o Chuck Shotton, Houston, Texas, for MacHTTP, a World Wide Web server for the Macintosh. Telephone: (713) 794-5650; Email: shotton@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu. o Peter Lewis, Perth, Western Australia, for FTPd, an anonymous file transfer server, and Anarchie, an FTP client to search for and retrieve public files on the Internet. Email: peter.lewis@info.curtin.au.edu. o University of Michigan--Weather Underground, University of Michigan, for Blue-Skies, a gopher client for browsing, viewing and reporting real time weather and environmental information in an interactive graphic and text format. Key contributors include students Alan Steremberg, Derek Price, Chris Schwerzler, and Michael Kamprath. The Weather Underground is directed by Prof. Perry Samson with technical direction from Jeff Ferguson. Telephone: (313) 936-0491; Email: blueskies@umich.edu. o John Hardin of EINet, Austin, Texas, for MacWeb, a hypermedia World Wide Web client for the Macintosh. Telephone: (800) 844-4638; Email: macweb@einet.net. o National Center for Supercomputer Applications in Urbana, Illinois, for Mosaic for the Macintosh, the crossover application that has helped to spur interest in the Internet for many commercial and non-commerical users. Telephone: (217) 244-3473; Email: mosaic-mac@ncsa.uiuc.edu. o Aaron Giles of Cornell University Medical College, New York, New York, for JPEGView, a graphic utility that allows the user to view compressed images on the World Wide Web, Gopher or those retrieved from anonymous FTP servers on the Net. Telephone: (212) 410-2781; Email: giles@med.cornell.edu. o John Norstad of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, for Newswatcher, a Usenet new reader. Email: j-norstad@nwu.edu. o Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, for CU-SeeMe, a conferencing tool that is being used by elementary schools, individuals, and other organizations around the world for low-cost video communications. Telephone: (607) 255-7566; Email: r.cogger@cornell.edu. Files may be ftp'ed at gate d.cornell.edu in the /pub/video directory. o University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, for the TurboGopher client and GopherSurfer server. Internet Gopher is a distributed system for campus and world information which includes local information as well as links to other Gopher servers. Telephone: (612) 625 1300; Fax: (612) 625 6817. + Page 3 + Apple commissioned a panel of Apple employees to seek out and critique currently available tools for Macintosh on the Internet, to determine awardees. Programmers who would like more information about Apple and the Internet may contact Steve Cisler at sac@apple.com. For Apple press releases by fax, call (800) AAPL FAX (800 227-5329) and enter I.D. number 6172. For more information, contact: Betty Taylor, Apple Computer, Inc., (408) 974-3983; betty.t@applelink.apple.com. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY AND SIRSI CORPORATION ANNOUNCE LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AGREEMENTS Carnegie Mellon University and SIRSI Corporation, a leading provider of information technology, announce their intention to enter into agreements for future cooperation on several fronts. Carnegie Mellon will license and install the SIRSI Corporation Unicorn Information Management System. Unicorn is a UNIX-based open system that uses the opportunities presented by client/server architectures in highly networked environments. It provides the functionality required by academic and research libraries and is designed to manage increasingly large databases of bibliographic information. SIRSI and Carnegie Mellon will also enter into a technology transfer agreement, to work together in several vital areas. These include advanced usability testing for clients by Carnegie Mellon Libraries. In addition, SIRSI will begin implementing technologies for page image display, digital archiving, and natural language information retrieval developed at Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon will also work with SIRSI to implement authentication and authorization features which will provide necessary security for data and system integrity in open environments. Carnegie Mellon University is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The University Libraries hold a collection of over 805,000 print volumes, 500,000 titles, and 700,000 microforms. The University has over 7,500 students and 800 faculty. Founded in 1979 by information and computer professionals, SIRSI, based in Huntsville, Alabama, is a leading provider of information technology for libraries. SIRSI automates all aspects of information management, from consortia to the single desktop user. SIRSI systems are installed worldwide in academic, public, law, medical, government, and corporate environments. + Page 4 + For more information, contact: Jim Young, SIRSI Corporation, 205- 922-9820; or Charles B. Lowry, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, 412-268-2447. GETTY ART HISTORY INFORMATION PROGRAM LAUNCHES INITIATIVE ON DIGITAL-IMAGING STANDARDS The Getty Art History Information Program (AHIP) has announced the formation of an international Imaging Initiative to address issues related to the use of digital images in the arts and humanities. The Initiative will foster the development of standards necessary to ensure that scholars, teachers, students, and the general public have access to images of art and cultural objects over electronic communications networks. Recent technological developments make it possible to transmit and view digital images over computer networks, but many barriers remain to universal access. In March of this year, AHIP brought together representatives from the various constituencies involved in the issue--including image providers (museums, libraries, and archives), legal experts, and computer network specialists--to identify these barriers and pinpoint areas where AHIP could act most effectively. Three principle concerns were recognized: o Standards: Currently, there are no common standards for the description, capture, storage, and transmission of images within the arts and humanities community. Networked collections, accurate description, and high image quality and resolution are needed to build the critical mass of images necessary to change effectively the teaching and research methods used in the arts and humanities. The Imaging Initiative will work to form a common understanding of who uses digital images, how they use them, and the image quality they require. This effort will also include the development of standards for describing a digital-image file, ensuring that scholars can evaluate the digital images they use in their studies. o Intellectual property rights: Many image providers see electronic access to their collections as a great opportunity to reach new audiences, yet the issues related to compensation and the intellectual property rights of digital images remain largely undefined. The Initiative will develop and test a model for the licensing of images of works of art, setting up a mechanism for the reliable distribution of images that preserves image integrity and prevents misuse. + Page 5 + o Common vision: Currently, a wide range of technical options are available to information providers, yet few serve the long-term goals of universal access. Museum directors and library administrators are often ill-informed about computer technology, its potential, and its hazards. The Imaging Initiative will develop a tutorial with noted digital-imaging expert Howard Besser to inform image providers about the benefits and challenges of electronic imaging. The resulting information will be distributed through brochures, fact sheets, white papers, and as an interactive site on the Internet where users can work through materials, make comments, download reports, and view samples of digitized art. The Getty Art History Information Program, one of six operating programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust, seeks to make art-historical information more accessible to scholars and researchers through the use of advanced computer technology. It does so by promoting common perspectives and standards among international institutions and organizations on projects in three general areas: coordinating vocabularies to facilitate consistent data entry and retrieval; providing bibliographic services; and assembling art-historical databases. AHIP plays a catalytic role in helping to focus attention on the collective challenges facing the information community in the coming decades. Among AHIP's projects are the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, the Bibliography of the History of Art, the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, the Provenance Index, the Witt Computer Index, and the Getty Study of Online Searching by Scholars. For more information, contact: Phillipa Calnan, Director, Public Affairs, The J. Paul Getty Trust, 401 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 900, Santa Monica, CA, 90401-1455; Phone: 310-395-0388; Fax: 301-395- 5289. DRA ADDS SUBJECT AND KEYWORD SEARCHING TO ITS LC MARC DATABASE Data Research Associates, Inc. (DRA) announced that it has increased the flexibility and accessibility of one of its most popular resources, the LC MARC database, when it added the ability to search by subject or by keyword. These searches are in addition to past search capabilities, including author, title, and various identification numbers. Keyword searching provides, among other functions, the ability to perform a search for a series title and the ability to search for current popular topics. + Page 6 + Via DRA's Z39.50-compliant server, the LC MARC database can be accessed from any Z39.50-compliant client, whether or not that client is a DRA product. The server supports all Z39.50 Version 2 facilities, allowing for a wider range of search capabilities, including: o search qualifiers (such as author, title, subject, call number, LCCN, ISBN, etc.) o truncation in search terms o named search sets (enabling the combination of previous search result sets with new search terms) Available for more than a decade, the LC MARC database consists of more than four million records representing bibliographic, serial, map, and other items cataloged by the Library of Congress. Hundreds of libraries across the globe use this database daily, via either the Internet or Open DRANET, to serve as a reference tool. Or, if they are using the DRA cataloging module, they use the database to copy bibliographic records to their own system. Recent average use included more than 5,200 connections per day, with more than 1,200 records copied. For more information, contact: Joe Bonwich (Joe@dra.com). ISSNs NOW IN PAIS DATA RECORDS ON TAPE Public Affairs Information Service, Inc. (PAIS), publishers of the premier international index of public affairs and social policy information, is pleased to announce that its magnetic tape format of the PAIS International bibliographic database now includes the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). In 1993 PAIS introduced a new magnetic tape format providing distinct data fields, such as Library of Congress number, journal name, or Superintendent of Documents number, which had previously been formatted in a single citation field. The new tape format is designed to provide data elements in separate fields in order to make index-building easier and consequently to improve search results. The ISSN, while provided as a data element in the separate Periodicals Authority file, the complete listing of periodicals used for PAIS indexing documents, was not provided in the periodical bibliographic entry. Now the bibliographic entries for 94% of the PAIS periodical articles includes the ISSN. + Page 7 + PAIS expects the provision of the ISSN in the bibliographic entry to prove valuable. One anticipated benefit is in the area of document delivery. It will be easier to order documents identified in the PAIS International database with the ISSN number in the bibliographic entry. Subscribing organizations can also use the ISSN as a match element to identify periodicals held in their collection. Public Affairs Information Service, Inc., founded in 1914, is a nonprofit educational corporation, chartered by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, providing online, printed, and optical bibliographic indexes to the public policy literature of business, health, law, government, political science, and other social services. For more information, contact: Barbara M. Preschel, 212-736-6629. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Computer Systems News is an electronic newsletter that is distributed on Internet and other computer networks. There is no subscription fee. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-P First Name Last Name. PACS-P subscribers also receive two other electronic serials: Current Cites and The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. Public-Access Computer Systems News is Copyright (C) 1994 by the University Libraries, University of Houston. All Rights Reserved. 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