Heriot-Watt University Library

_INTERNET RESOURCES_ Newsletter

Issue 12 - September 1995

Edited by:

Roddy MacLeod (libram@bonaly.hw.ac.uk)
and
Gordon Andrew (libgra@bonaly.hw.ac.uk)

Internet Resources Divider

Table of Contents:

Internet Resources Divider

"Nothing but porn on the net"?

Internet Resources Divider

Yesterday I had a discussion with a student who wanted to know whether a certain periodical was available in any library in Edinburgh. I suggested he search SALSER, the Scottish Academic Libraries Serials database (URL: http://salser.ed.ac.uk/SALSER/index.html) to answer his enquiry, and showed him how to connect to it using Netscape. He became quite interested in what I was showing him, and wanted to know whether we were using the Internet. I told him we were, and he replied "But I thought there was nothing but porn on the net". This took me back a bit. There has been a lot of publicity in the press recently about pornography and the Internet, but surely the student had read other articles, or seen other books about the Internet? Surely he had heard of _INTERNET RESOURCES_ , his own University's regular newsletter about the more useful resources on the net? After all, do we not mention it at all the Library's user education sessions, are there not posters all over the University about it, and had he not seen it mentioned in some of the popular Internet magazines? Apparently he hadn't. I showed him how to access the newsletter and he immediately wrote down the URL: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html.

His next question was more difficult to answer. "How can I be sure that the information I find on the Internet is reliable and accurate?" I explained that you couldn't really be sure, but that you could also never be 100% sure of the accuracy of printed material. "Is everything listed in _INTERNET RESOURCES_ Newsletter useful?", he continued. I explained that we tried to ensure that the rubbish was filtered out, but that whether it was useful or not depended upon what you are looking for.

The student's remarks got me thinking. What are the most useful resources on the Internet? As I told the student, this really depends on what you are looking for, but there are a few really useful resources which I come back to again and again. As I spend much of my time looking for references for students and staff who have projects to do, or who are undertaking research, I have decided to list a few of the freely available databases which I find useful:

AVERY INDEX TO ARCHITECTURAL PERIODICALS

The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals is a comprehensive listing of journal articles on architectural design, the history and practice of architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, interior design, and city planning. The database contains nearly 133,000 records for periodical literature indexed between 1977 and 1992, published as Avery Index on Disc. It isnt just restricted to Architecture - many papers of interest to Building are also indexed. Try searching under 'solar power' to see for yourself. Made available through the Getty Art History Program, this is a very useful free database.

URL: http://www.ahip.getty.edu/ahip/Text_multdb-form.html

MathSearch

This is a free database containing information about over 25,000 documents on mathematics and statistics servers across the Web.

URL: http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/MathSearch.html

RECONselect

This free database contains bibliographic citations for Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports (STAR file series), journal articles, and conference proceedings (Open Literature file series) and citations from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) collection, NASA's predecessor organization. The citations represent a selected portion of the publicly available information available through the NASA RECON system. The description may sound very specific, but such are NASA's interests that this is really a multidisciplinary database index of report literature.

URL: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/casitrs.html

DISSERTATIONS ABSTRACTS INTERNATIONAL

There is a free database giving details of about 5,000 dissertations and theses, covering the years 1980 to 1994, on the subjects of philosophy, theology and religion. These records were made available as a technical project to help UMI (the DAI database producers) ascertain what's involved in preparing records for the Internet and maintaining the server, and to begin to assess potential interest among humanities-type net surfers. Eventually it is possible that all of Dissertation Abstracts will be available on the Internet, but this may take some time.

URL: gopher://gopher.umi.com:70/11/.dissertations

ANNUAL REVIEWS

'Annual Reviews' is the name of a non-profit organisation which has made available an index to 26 annual review publications. They include the Annual Reviews of: Anthropology / Astronomy and Astrophysics / Biochemistry / Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure / Cell and Developmental Biology / Earth and Planetary Sciences / Ecology and Systematics / Energy and the Environment / Entomology / Fluid Mechanics / Genetics / Immunology / Materials Science Medicine: Selected Topics in the Clinical Sciences / Microbiology / Neuroscience / Nuclear and Particle Science / Nutrition / Pharmacology and Toxicology / Physical Chemistry / Physiology / Phytopathology / Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology / Psychology / Public Health / Sociology / These annual reviews are particularly useful publications because they tend to provide up to date surveys of the state of the art in their subject areas.

URL: http://www-lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/annRev.html

A Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies

This is a collection of bibliographies in computer science in BibTeX format in a uniform layout. The collection consists of about 600 locally stored bibliographies, about 360,000 references (mostly to journal articles, conference papers and technical reports) and 160 MBytes of BibTeX entries. About 8000 references contain URLs to an online version of the paper. There are more than 1100 links to other sites carrying bibliographic information.

URL: http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/computing/bibliographies/Karlsruhe/index.html

Can be searched by keyword at:

URL: http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/index.html#search

ERIC

ERIC stands for 'The Educational Resources Information Center'. It is is a national information system providing access to an extensive body of education-related literature.

You can search part of the database from an experimental server, at:

URL: http://ericir.syr.edu/ERIC/eric.html

Roddy MacLeod,
(libram@bonaly.hw.ac.uk)

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Internet Resources Divider

NEW/RECENT INTERNET RESOURCES

Internet Resources Divider

Subject-oriented resources are organized in the following sections by access method. Many of the resources have been gleaned from various listserv and mailbase lists, and no special claims are made for accuracy or originality.

E-Mail / FTP

1. New MAILBASE Lists:

esrc-china
This list is to facilitate discussion of issues concerning the politics, economics and social affairs of modern China.
estate-management
The estate management list covers urban land and buildings their development, use, management and valuation/appraisal; it is of primary interest to academics and researchers in Land Economy, Estate Management and related fields.
fot-group
This list aims to provide a communication channel for biomedical researchers interested in the study of clinical respiratory physiology by the forced oscillation technique (FOT). This is a fast moving field in which discussion and collaboration are essential.
inorganic-chemistry
This list is designed to be a forum for Inorganic Chemists to discuss and exchange information on research and teaching interests and concerns. It will also allow for easy and effective notification of forthcoming conferences and vacant faculty, post-doc and studentship positions.
mycob-research
Mycobacterial disease, including tuberculosis and leprosy, is a huge global problem, and more research at all levels is urgently required. This list will discuss all matters related to mycobacterial research.
netskills-news
Netskills is an exciting high profile project under the new Electronic Libraries Programme. It will play a major role in shifting the culture within all Higher Education Institutions towards effective and widespread use of JANET, the Internet and networked information resources. To do this we will develop and deliver training courses in network skills using both traditional and new (network based) methods of training.

More information at:

URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/netskills/intro.html

polibus
This list aims to encourage collaboration between scholars who are active in researching the interface between politics and business, in order to develop, promote and advance theoretical, comparative and empirical understanding of the study field.
rae-impact
The HEFCE have commissioned a study of the impact of the Research Assessment Exercise process on the conduct of research in English universities. This list is for discussion of issues related to the project and can be used by anyone with opinions or (better!) evidence to contribute.
xafs-spectroscopy
This list is designed for users of X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (XAFS) and is intended to allow for discussion on: improvement of data collection, analysis and integrity; recent theoretical advances; new experimental facilities; and suggestions for hardware/software upgrades.

For information on how to subscribe to Mailbase lists, please see Issue 1 of _INTERNET RESOURCES_ . More detailed information about Mailbase lists is always available from the Mailbase WWW Server ( URL: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/ ).

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2. New LISTSERV lists and other E-Mail and FTP Resources

Useful General Links:

GENTECH 

GENTECH is an open, unmoderated mailing list to support discussions
about genetic engineering.

To subscribe to GENTECH send a mail with any or none subject
to GENTECH-REQUEST@doo.donut.ruhr.com  with the following
command in the body

   SUBSCRIBE firstname lastname

NETSURFER TOOLS

NETSURFER TOOLS is a new e-zine bringing news about online technology to
technical professionals and others interested in keeping current on
network tools. The majority of the information is about the Web with a
sprinkle of related utilities. Also available via email in either plain
text or text with HTML versions.

URL:  http://www.netsurf.com/nst/

send email to:   nstools-request@netsurf.com
   in the body of the message type:   subscribe  nstools-text
   or   subscribe nstools-html

PEER ASSISTED LEARNING 

A listserv covering various forms of peer assisted learning, e.g.

Peer Tutoring (pt)
Mentoring (m)
Peer Education (pe)
Peer Monitoring (pm)
Peer Assessment (pa)
Student Tutoring (st)  (see OTHER LISTS below)
in various SECTORS of education/learning:

To  join   the   list,   send   to   the   LISTSERVER   address
maiser@psychology.dundee.ac.uk a command  message  saying only:

subscribe PAL

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