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Current Cities Volume 04 Number 11
_Current_Cites_
Volume 4, no. 11
November 1993
Information Systems Instruction & Support
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by David F. W. Robison
ISSN: 1060-2356
Contributors:
David B. Rez, Teri Rinne, Vivienne Roumani-Denn, Mark Takaro, Roy Tennant
_______________________________________________________________________
From the Editor: At the beginning of this month, I began working
as the Educational Documentation Specialist at NorthWestNet, a
mid-level Internet service provider. In order to make the
transition to a new editor and staff easier, I will continue to
edit and contribute to Current Cites for the last two months of
this year. Since I am now "dot net", rather than, "dot edu", to
avoid a conflict of interest, I have asked Roy Tennant to review
those articles that deal directly with network service providers.
I am truly excited to be working at an organization providing
Internet access and services and I am grateful to Berkeley, the
staff of Information Systems Instruction & Support, and the
TechWatchers for providing the environment that has lead me to
this juncture. Of course, Current Cites has been an important
part of my life these past three and a half years, and the
encouragement of so many readers has been crucial to our success.
It has been a real pleasure, and I hope to see you on the net!
Cheers,
David F. W. Robison
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Electronic Publishing
Franks, John. "The Impact of Electronic Publication on Scholarly
Journals" posted on VPIEJ-L@VTVM1 (November 4, 1993) as a reprint
from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society 40(9)
(November 1993):1200-1202. Franks addresses some interesting
issues facing authors, publishers, readers, and librarians, in a
time when serial prices are increasing rapidly, university
budgets are shrinking, and electronic publishing is taking hold.
Although Franks works in the Department of Mathematics at
Northwestern University, he has a good sense of the issues
facing librarians and their role in the information industry.
Franks also published an article on PACS-L last Spring, entitled,
"What is an Electronic Journal." This new article examines the
changes in the economics of scholarly publishing where authors,
universities, and readers play the necessary parts to create,
publish, and archive referreed works. Further, Franks offers
this analysis in a clear and concise manner. - DFWR
Networks and Networking
Christian, Eliot. "Government Information Locator Service (GILS)"
(draft of Novermber 11, 1993). Available via anonymous FTP as
text (gils1111.txt), Word for Macintosh (gils111.Word.hqx) and
Windows (gils1111.doc), and PostScript (gils1111.ps) at <URL:
ftp://ftp.cni.org/pub/docs/gils/>. Christian outlines the plans
for a system designed to help users locate govrenment-produced
information in a networked environment. According to this plan,
GILS would offer a variety of views of the data to satisfy both
inexperienced and expert users across a number of systems (i.e.,
the Internet, BBSs, CD-ROMs). The GILS would also be agency-
based, with maintenance of the data decentralized. The system as
a whole would comply with the current version of the Z39.50
standard. Included in the forward to the paper is a request for
comments. Comments should be received by December 15, 1993.
- DFWR
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. "Serving the
Community: A Public Interest Vision of the National Information
Infrastructure" (October 1993) [available via anonymous ftp in
Rich Text Format (cpsr_nii_policy.rtf - though I was unable to
get my word processor to read this version) and plain text
(cpsr_nii_policy.txt) at <URL:ftp://cpsr.org/cpsr/nii/>]. This
CPSR policy paper makes a number of recommendations about the
development of the NII, in terms of economics, social issues,
and technical issues. While most of the recommendations have
been made before, they are well articulated here, and placed
with an historical context. The 26 page text rests on the idea
that the NII will most likely be an outgrowth of the Internet,
and even if not, it should take lessons from the Internet. To
this end, CPSR has included a short history of the Internet and
examined some of the social, technical, and political issues of
it. A notable reminder is that the most popular use of the
Internet (in terms of number of transactions), is personal
communication of one kind or another. - DFWR
DeLoughry, Thomas J. "Surviving in the Internet Era" The
Chronicle of Higher Education 40(12) (November 10, 1993):A22.
The organization the runs BITNET has recognized that it can not
compete with the Internet, so they have come up with a plan to
remain valuable in the academic world. With BITNET III, users
associated with colleges and universities will be able to look
in the phone book for a local Internet-access number, and gain
access to their home institution's computers when they are
travelling. The pilot project should begin this Spring, with
local access numbers in 10 cities. - DFWR
Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Open Platform Campaign: Public
Policy for the Information Age" (November 1, 1993). Available
via anonymous FTP as both gzip'd PostScript (op2.0.ps.z - use
GNUs gunzip to uncompress, then remove the first line) and text
(op2.0) at <URL:ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/papers/>. The EFF has
just released its second revision of the Open Platform proposal,
bringing it up to date with recent developments in networking and
telecommmunications policies and technologies. The idea behind
the proposal is to encourage the development of a national
information infrastructure that offers open-access, affordable
service, and with sufficient bandwidth both to and from
consumers. Specifically, "Open Platform service must meet the
following criteria: widely available, switched digital
connections; affordable prices; open access to all without
discrimination as [to] the content of the message; sufficient
'up-stream' capacity to enable users to originate, as well as
receive, good quality video, multimedia services." The
proposal is also reviewed in EFFector Online 6(5) <URL:ftp://
ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Newsletters/effector6.05>. - DFWR
"FBI's Operation "Root Canal" Documents Disclosed" CPSR Alert
2(5) (November 12, 1993) <URL:ftp://cpsr.org/cpsr/alert/
alert-2.05.txt>. Through documents released through a
Freedom of Information Act request, the Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility have discovered that the Federal
Bureau of Investigation undertook an orchestrated effort to
convince congress and the public of the dangers of non-
breakable cryptography. While this is not so surprising, it
is interesting to read that field offices were unable to
provide evidence that modern telephony created any additional
challenges to law enforcement. - DFWR
"GAO Report Criticizes Gov't Crypto Policy" CPSR Alert 2(5)
(November 12, 1993) <URL:ftp://cpsr.org/cpsr/alert/
alert-2.05.txt>. A Government Accounting Office report
indicates the restrictions on the sale of cryptographic
software by US firms to foreign countries has far reaching
effects. The loss of sales due to the restrictions has
limited the developers' ability to produce new and better
software, thereby leaving US businesses more vulnerable to
computer espionage. - DFWR
"Intenet is a Tough Sell on Wall Street" The Internet Letter
1(2) (November 1, 1993):1, 6-7. While most Wall Street firms
are unsure and a bit afraid to get on the net, others are using
it to their advantage. The Internet offers the possibility of
better communications with customers and potential customers,
the ability to transfer data within the company (when security
is not a great concern), and access to a wealth of economic
data. As an example, J.P. Morgan & Co. receives almost 10
Gigabytes of data a month from the Internet. - DFWR
Kriz, Harry M. "Windows and TCP/IP for Internet Access" posted
in two parts on PACS-L@UHUPVM1 (Novemmber 16, 1993). Kriz has
compiled a list of public domain and shareware programs
available via anonymous FTP that allow a PC running Windows
with an Internet connection (hardwired or dialup SLIP or PPP)
to run TCP/IP applications. Also included are brief
instructions for installation of each package. Even if you
already have TCP/IP applications running on your Windows PC,
you may find this list helpful. - DFWR
"Library Groups Join in Issuing Telecommunications Policy
Principles" ALAWON 2(49) (October 27, 1993). The American
Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries,
the Association of Research Libraries, the Coalition for
Networked Information, Libraries for the Future, the Medical
Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association
have all joined the Telecommunications Policy Roundtable. The
Roundtable has seven principles relating to the developing
information infrastructure: universal access; freedom to
communicate; vital civic sector; diverse and competitive
marketplace; equitable workplace; privacy protection; and
democratic policy making. - DFWR
Markoff, John. "Keeping Things Safe and Orderly in the
Neighborhoods of Cyberspace" The New York Times v.143 (October
24, 1993):E7. Markoff introduces us to Richard Petthia, the
coordinator of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). As
the Internet grows in leaps and bounds, so does the number of
malicious computer break-ins. CERT helps site administrators
handle attacks as well as offering prophylaxis. For those
unsure of the real danger behind computer break-ins, there is
the attack in England that knocked out weather warnings for the
English Channel and a ship was lost. - DFWR
Markoff, John. "Traffic Jams Already on the Information
Highway" The New York Times v.143 (November 3, 1993):A1, D9.
Markoff describes some interesting events that caused
literal traffic jams on the Internet. Because of the speed
with which information about events and resources travels,
host computers offering new resources can be deluged with
requests causing both problems for the server itself, as well as
x for the network. As Mark Rotenberg of Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility says, "If there is a lesson to be
learned it is that you must create technical fixes for these
problems because you can't create social fixes." Once again,
we are reminded that the Internet is not about computers, but
about people. - DFWR
"Retrieving the National Information Infrastructure Documents"
EFFector Online 6(5) (November 15, 1993) <URL:ftp://ftp.eff.org/
pub/Eff/Newsletters/effector6.05>. Find out how to get copies
of the Clinton Administration's National Information
Infrastructure reports, press briefings, and more. This fact
sheet lists the multiple paths of access currently available via
Gopher, FTP, Email, and BBS. - DFWR
Wilson, David L. "Near-Disaster on the Internet" The Chronicle of
Higher Education 40(13) (November 17, 1993):A26-27, A29. A patch
for a security whole in common Unix network software was recently
released by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). The
patch should be installed on Unix machines that are connected to
the Internet to protect them from unauthorized access.
Information on the fix is available from <URL:ftp://cert.org/pub/
cert_advisories>. - DFWR
New ejournal announced: Meta. The first issue of a Meta, an
ejournal covering issues of interest to the networking community,
was published last week in both PostScript and Replica formats.
The journal will be published each month and distributed
freely via anonymous FTP and email. Included in the journal are
fairly high quality color graphics and advertisements. The
Replica viewer is free, and includes seach capabilities. The
articles in the first issue are a bit slim, but cover Internet
service providers, multimedia MOOs (M[ulti-User Dungeon (MUD)]
Object Oriented), Linux (a free Unix system for PCs), and the
legacy of Unix. According to the publishers release, future
issues will cover topics such as cryptography, electronic
publishing, free software development, intellectual property,
and internet commercialization. Access: files meta1193.ps
(PostScript(R)), meta1193.rpl (Replica version without viewer),
meta1193.exe (Replica version with reader) at <URL:ftp://
ftp.netcom.com/pub/mlinksva/>; or email to mlinksva@netcom.com
with a subject of: send1193ps, send1193rpl, or send1193exe. The
exe version includes an imbedded copy of the replica reader.
Just plug and play. - DFWR
Optical Disc Technologies
Atkins, Susan L. "CD-ROM: A Review of the 1992 Literature"
Computers in Libraries 13(8) (September 1993):20-53. Atkins'
annual tour de force does not disappoint. In the past, this
comprehensive review was featured in CD-ROM Librarian. Earlier
this year, CD-ROM Librarian changed its name and its focus,
becoming CD-ROM World. Due to popular demand, CD-ROM Librarian
returns as a regular feature within the pages of Computers in
Libraries. Its debut appropriately showcases this review of
literature published during 1992 which summarizes developments in
CD-ROM technology, with special emphasis on its impact in
libraries. The article provides an overview of the CD-ROM
industry from an international perspective and summarizes the
effects of CD-ROM on librariy policies and practices governing
selction, budgeting, collection development, reference, staffing,
users, and instructions. Major issues associated with
networking, licensing, publishing, and standards are also
prominently featured. An extensive bibliography, with nearly 400
entries, concludes the review. - TR
Spanbauer, Scott. "The Write Stuff: CD-Recordable" New Media
3(10) (October 1993):62-68. This article describes the
capabilities and drawbacks of the new CD-R systems, from a
multimedia publisher's perspective. Although CD-R has real
potential in the multimedia market, Spanbauer sees CD-R's true
niche as a corporate archiving and back-up medium that will
compete head on with tape, rewritable magneto-optical and even
hard disk drives. Although CD-R recording systems now cost
between $6,000 and $7,000, it is predicted that prices will drop
to below $2,000 within the next two years. - TR
General
Crawford, Walt. "Dreams, Devices, Niches, and Edges: Coping with
the Changing Landscape of Information Technology" The Public-
Access Computer Systems Review 4(5) (1993):5-21 [available via
email by sending the following message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 or
LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU: GET CRAWFORD PRV4N5 F=MAIL]. With the
explosive growth of information technology in the last few years,
many librarians have felt bewildered and even threatened by the
changes. Not only must we deal with the actual changes we see
around us, but also with the visions of the dreamers among us
who envision an even more radical future. Crawford offers some
succor. While the dreamers are important, their dreams must be
viewed in the context of reality. And while information
technology is changing our profession, each library fills an
important niche, filled with both paper- and non-paper-based
materials, not likely to be replaced entirely by electronics.
Crawford, himself, envisions a "library beyond walls, but not
[a] library without walls." - DFWR
Rooks, Dana. "The Virtual Library: Pitfalls, Promises, and
Potential" The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 4(5) (1993):
22-29 [available via email by sending the following message to
LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 or LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU: GET ROOKS PRV4N5
F=MAIL. Rooks reminds us that the shift towards the virtual
library is just one more step in the ongoing evolution of
libraries. Further, she exhorts librarians to become involved
in the development of the technologies and user interfaces,
saying, "It is imperative that librarians become involved in the
technical design issues of the virtual library, or we and, most
importantly, our users will pay the price of our failure." - DFWR
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Current Cites 4(11) (November 1993) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1993 by the Library, University of
California, Berkeley. All rights reserved.
All product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of
their respective holders. Mention of a product in this publication
does not necessarily imply endorsement of the product.
Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by computerized
bulletin board/conference systems, individual scholars, and
libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their
collections at no cost. An archive site is maintained at
ftp.lib.berkeley.edu in directory /pub/Current.Cites
<URL:ftp://ftp.lib.berkeley.edu/pub/Current.Cites>. This message
must appear on copied material. All commercial use requires
permission from the editor, who may be reached in the following
ways:
drobison@library.berkeley.edu // drobison@ucblibra // (510)643-9494
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