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Current Cities Volume 06 Number 03
_Current Cites_
Volume 6, no. 3
March 1995
Information Systems Instruction & Support
The Library
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Teri Andrews Rinne
ISSN: 1060-2356
Contributors:
John Ober, Margaret Phillips, David Rez
Richard Rinehart, Teri Rinne, Roy Tennant
Electronic Publishing
Jacobson, Robert L. "No Copying" Chronicle of Higher
Education 40(26) (March 10, 1995) A17-A19. -- Soon-to-be
proposed legislation that will outline "fair use" of
copyrighted materials in electronic formats is expected
to favor the concerns of commercial publishers and to
"protect the marketplace" from unrestrained digital
copying. Whereas current fair use laws provide for
exemptions that allow educators to copy portions of books
and periodicals for non-profit educational uses, the new
legislation is expected to be much more restrictive.
Instead of being able to capitalize on new technologies
that allow increased access to copyrighted materials,
users may find that electronic media will only be
accessible by fee. Many academic and library leaders fear
that this legislation, authored by the Commerce
Department's Working Group on Intellectual Property,
could seriously disrupt scholarly communication as they
now know it. -- MP
Powell, James. "Spinning the World Wide Web: An HTML
Primer" Database 18(1) (February/March 1995):54-59.
-- A concise article that includes a brief overview
of the World-Wide Web, a quick description of HyperText
Markup Language (HTML) and a simple guide to marking up
a document in HTML. Included in the article are some
very helpful sidebars describing "HTML Helpers" such as
converters, editors and tools and their ftp addresses.
The bulk of the article is a guide to HTML mark-up and
although it is just a "primer" it is also quite useful
as a guide for the novice and a quick reference for the
seasoned HTML editor. -- DR
Vaughan-Nichols, Steven. "Internet Publishing Tools
Proliferate" Byte 20(3)(March 1995):30.-- This is a brief
descriptive list of some of the new author/editing tools
and add-ons that are becoming available for creating
documents in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) formats. The
list includes several HTML add-ons for popular word
processing programs such as Microsoft Word for Windows
and for full-blown SGML editing tools such as Electronic
Book Technologies' DynaText. -- DR
Networks and Networking
Barlow, John Perry. "Is There a There in Cyberspace?"
Utne Reader 68 (March-April 1995): 50-75. -- The theme
for this issue, announced on the cover, is "Cyberspace
vs. Neighborhood". It is not a one-sided battle. The
editors' opening article is titled simply "Networks are
*not* communities", and other articles cover the noticeable
absence of African-Americans online, the monetary obstacles
to even cursory connectedness for the average citizen, the
rush to allow the commercial industries to subsidize the NII,
as if they will kindly step aside once it's built to make way
for all the online museums, town halls, and other groups
which have little voice in old media, but have found one
online. Articles swing from grassroots, libertarian calls to
abandon social networking, to more moderate comparisons of
the values and advantages between virtual and physical
communities. -- RR
Gallegos, Bee, Charles E. Kratz, and Victoria J. Spain.
"Internet Resources for Education" College & Research
Libraries News 56(3) (March 1995): 153-157. -- This
month's C&RL News feature on Internet resources by
discipline focuses on sources in education. Included
are lists of scholarly discussion lists and electronic
conferences, usenet groups, electronic journals and
newsletters, gopher sites and World-Wide Web sites.
Particularly useful in this article are the references
at the end to other bibliographies and lists on Internet
resources in education. -- MP
"Internet Security" Internet World 6(2)(February 1995):
32-72. -- This sequence of nine articles answers many of
the questions that new users and experienced alike are
posing about Internet security. While the articles focus
on the importance of securing transactions for business
use of the net, such as for credit card purchases, other
articles also explain the current and future security of
longstanding Internet activities including email. Richard
Wiggins "Business Browser" (pp.52-58) is especially
informative in its coverage of the development of secure
World-Wide Web servers and clients. -- JLO
Jacobsen, Kristin. "Time to put the Internet in
Perspective" College & Research Libraries News 56(3)
(March 1995):144-147. -- A timeline of the history of
the Internet from its inception as a communication
network for the Department of Defense in the 1960s to
the establishment of the NSFNET backbone in the mid-1980s
to today when the number of hosts on the Internet
surpasses 4,800,000, this article provides a basic
historical context for the development of the Internet
and successfully illustrates the fact that the Internet
is not the overnight success that mainstream media
coverage seems to suggest. The bulleted chronology along
with the selective bibliography should be useful tools
for individuals giving presentations or training sessions
on the Internet. -- MP
Reinhardt, Andy. "New Ways to Learn" Byte 20(3) (March 1995):
50-72. -- This article covers the impact of new technology
in learning, both in education and the workplace. The three
areas of technology credited with the most impact are
networking, multimedia, and mobile computing. The article
also contains useful sidebars with case studies from NYU,
Carnegie Mellon, and UCLA. The article is rife with statistics,
and mentions briefly that in the race of educational
institutions to utilize new technology as a means of reducing
overall costs, we should take the time to consider how the
technology is changing our audience as well as the way they
learn, and not just the tools they learn with. -- RR
Optical Disc Technology
Beiser, Karl. "CD-ROM Report: Evolving Search Interfaces"
Database 18(1) (February/March 1995):88-92. -- Beiser looks
at two new CD-ROM products that successfully employ a
graphical approach (WinSPIRS and Map'n'Go) and a third
product that has improved by increasing database coverage
within a powerful DOS shell (Global Books in Print Plus).
Not only does the extent and quality of the database need
to be evaluated, but the means of gaining efficient access
to that content is also a primary concern. The products
described make reference tools easier to learn and more
pleasant to learn, yet without an obvious performance
penalty. -- TR
General
"The Computer in the 21st Century". Scientific American 6(1)
1995 Special Issue. -- This entire issue is dedicated to
exploring many aspects of computing, from an article on civil
liberties by Mitch Kapor to one on government & cyberspace by
Al Gore. Other issues addressed include computers in education,
technical innovations to watch for, and digital photography.
Of special interest to librarians and archivists is the short
article on the last page about archiving electronic resources.
The article mentions that it seems easy enough to print out
important records for archiving, but what about complex hyper-
media, or the need to invoke involuntary "archiving"? In one
instance of the latter, the courts were able to stay the
destruction by the White House of paper records of Iran-Contra
dealings by invoking archival value, but the Administration did
not hand over any email about the issue, and those records are
still in litigation. -- RR
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Current Cites 6(3) (March 1995) ISSN: 1060-2356
Copyright (C) 1995 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.
To subscribe, send the message "sub cites [your name]" to
listserv@library.berkeley.edu, replacing "[your name]"
with your name. 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:
trinne@library.berkeley.edu // trinne@ucblibra // (510)642-8173
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