The Scout Report - April 21, 2000

April 21, 2000

A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Scout Report is a weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators. However, everyone is welcome to subscribe to one of the mailing lists (plain text or HTML). Subscription instructions are included at the end of each report.


In This Issue:

Subject Specific Reports

Research and Education

General Interest

Network Tools

In The News


Subject Specific Reports

Scout Report for Social Sciences and Business & Economics
Scout Report for Social Sciences
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/socsci/2000/ss-000418.html
Scout Report for Business & Economics
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/bus-econ/2000/be-000420.html
The fifteenth issues of the third volumes of the Scout Reports for Social Sciences and Business & Economics are available. The In the News section of the Social Sciences Report annotates seven resources on the land crisis in Zimbabwe. The Business & Economics Report's In the News section offers ten resources on Metallica's lawsuit against Napster for listing downloadable audio files of their records on its cooperative database. [MD]
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Research and Education

Supreme Court of the United States [.pdf]
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
On April 17, the US Supreme Court launched its official Website. There are already a number of online resources for Supreme Court decisions and information, most notably Cornell University's Legal Information Institute Supreme Court Collection (last reviewed in the March 24, 2000 Scout Report), which actually offers considerably more content. However, the Court's new site is well organized and does contain some unique items. Information provided at the site, most of which is in .pdf format, includes the full text of 1999 Term Opinions (with a link to previous Bench Opinions), the Court calendar and schedule, background information about the Court and justices, Court rules, Bar admissions information, case handling guides, and public information, including a visitor's guide. The site features an internal search engine which also indexes .pdf files. Interested users will certainly want to bookmark and consult this site but continue to use Cornell's excellent resource as well. [MD]
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TRAC IRS Update
http://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/index.html
TRAC, a nonpartisan "data gathering, data research and data distribution organization" located at Syracuse University (last reviewed in the September 3, 1999 Scout Report), has once again updated its widely respected IRS Website. The important new findings featured at the site, which received some notice in the national press, include "the poor now have a higher audit rate than the wealthy; audits for all individuals and all corporations are substantially down; [and] key IRS collection activities such as levies, liens and seizures have plummeted." Users can delve deeper than the headlines at the site, which offers numerous graphs, maps, and tables which illustrate these key findings, analyze national trends over time, provide figures and rankings for specific IRS administrative districts, and give information for specific counties. The site also includes several short essays on significant aspects of IRS enforcement policies and practices. [MD]
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The University of California Press: Electronic Editions
http://www.ucpress.edu/scan/books.html
The University of California (UC) presents electronic editions of over 50 academic titles in the fields of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian studies; Classics; Literature; and European History. The editions offer frames that include the text itself and a detailed table of contents. The texts are available free for online browsing and study, but, of course, cannot be downloaded. Those who want their own copies can purchase them online (click on "View UC Press Catalog Page" under the desired text's title). "UC Press E-Editions is a joint effort between The University of California Press and The University of California Library at Berkeley, and has received substantial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation." [DC]
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Financial Crises in Emerging Markets [.pdf]
http://www.nber.org/crisis/
This project, from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), studies "the causes of currency crises in emerging market countries as well as the policies that can reduce the risk of future crises and the adverse effects when such crises occur." Along with a extensive collection of downloadable NBER research papers on this subject, the site also lists upcoming conferences on emerging markets and reports on past conferences. Chapters from forthcoming books authored by NBER associates as well as other authors affiliated with the World Bank, the Federal Reserve System, and numerous universities are also available for download. Those just beginning to learn about this topic will want to read the list of questions that the project is attempting to answer. [EM]
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The Thomas Jefferson Papers: Final Release -- LOC
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjhome.html
The Library of Congress American Memory Project has announced the second and final release of the Thomas Jefferson Papers (reviewed in the April 16, 1999 Scout Report). This second release "completes presentation of all nine series of the Thomas Jefferson Papers. They now include approximately twenty-seven thousand items organized into nine series with a total of 83,000 images." The papers may be searched by keyword or browsed by series. The largest of these, General Correspondence, comprises almost two-thirds of the total collection and includes "letters, memoranda, notes, drafts of documents, small maps, drawings, and designs." The documents are offered as large images with a link to an even larger JPEG file. Unfortunately, many documents are rather difficult to read owing to the ravages of time and the letterpress process Jefferson used to retain copies of outgoing correspondence, which blurred his pen strokes. In some cases, transcriptions are provided. Additional special presentations at the site include an interactive timeline of selected collection highlights with links to related documents, selected quotations, and an essay which reveals how the "Series 8, Virginia Records originally collected by Jefferson for their historical importance were rescued from disintegration." [MD]
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Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent [RealPlayer]
http://africafocus.library.wisc.edu/
This "digitize-and-rescue mission" is a joint project of the African Studies Program and the General Library System at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Instead of focusing solely on visual resources like most online African collections, Africa Focus attempts to cover the "full spectrum" of African life. At the site, visitors have several options to access the collection of over 3,000 slides, 500 photographs, and 50 hours of sound from 45 African nations: browse by collection, subject, or country; through an interactive atlas; or search by keyword or multiple fields. Images are offered as thumbnails that link to high quality (and briefly annotated) full-size images, and audio clips are presented in RealPlayer format with two connection speed options. An excellent resource for a variety of researchers and classrooms or anyone interested in the continent. [MD]
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Guide to Researching the Council of Europe
http://www.llrx.com/features/coe.htm
Published by LLRX.com (described in the April 7, 2000 _Scout Report) on April 17, this guide was created by Anne Burnett, the Reference/ Foreign & International Law Librarian at the University of Georgia School of Law Library. The Council of Europe (CoE), created in 1949 and now comprised of 41 member states, "plays an important role strengthening democracy, human rights, the rule of law and Europe's cultural heritage in its Member States." Anyone interested in researching the Council and its decisions or actions will want to begin with this well-organized and comprehensive guide, which points readers to a wealth of online resources for official information and publications. Clearly written and thoroughly hyperlinked, the guide covers the major institutions of the CoE and their documents as well as selected Council of Europe entities, conventions, and Websites, sorted by subjects such as bioethics, cultural affairs, human rights, and environment, among others. [MD]
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TheseNet
http://thesenet.abes.fr/
AltaVista Translations
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/
Sponsored by ABES (Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Superieur), a government agency that oversees libraries in higher education, the TheseNet database indexes dissertations written for PhDs granted in France. The database currently contains citations for dissertations since 1972 for applied and hard sciences, humanities, social sciences, and law; as well as those in health sciences since 1983; and veterinary medicine since 1990. Users can search (Recherche) by author, date, granting institution, keyword, title, general subject area, and discipline within a subject. Each record includes the author's name, dissertation title, major advisor, subject, keywords, year, university, and a link (Localisation) to information on the institution holding the original thesis. In a sample of theses searched, some also included abstracts in French and occasionally in English. Users needing help translating from French to English can use AltaVista's translation page (discussed in the December 12, 1997 Scout Report) to translate entire pages by entering URLs or short selections by copying and pasting text to be translated into the form at the AltaVista site. Using a fast connection, the help page (Aide) of TheseNet was translated in a matter of seconds and included information on the database's content as well as search strategies. [AG]
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CAA Reviews
http://www.caareviews.org/contents.html
College Art Association (CAA)
http://www.collegeart.org/
CAA Reviews is an online publication "devoted to the peer review of new books relevant to the fields of art history." Published on a continual basis, CAA Reviews covers a variety of resources, including new major museum and gallery exhibitions, conferences, electronic media, as well as print books on a range of art topics (the latter constitute a clear majority). Articles appearing in CAA Reviews are commissioned by a board of editors. The journal will be free to the public for the first three years (the site opened in October 1998), after which time a subscription fee will be charged. University art history professors and other interested users will find a healthy selection of scholarly and well-written reviews of important and useful new works in the field. The main CAA site offers periodicals, membership information, a newsletter, career development information, notices of conferences, and other professional information. [MD]
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General Interest

Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read [.pdf]
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrppubskey.cfm
National Reading Panel (NRP)
http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org
On April 13, the National Reading Panel (NRP) released the results of "the largest, most comprehensive evidenced-based review ever conducted of research on how children learn reading." Established in response to a 1997 congressional directive, the NRP is composed of "leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education, reading teachers, educational administrators, and parents." The report, which is available in .pdf format along with the reports of the subgroups, concludes that the best way to teach children to read is through a combination of methods, including phonemic awareness, phonics, guided oral reading, and the application of reading comprehension strategies. The NRP Homepage offers background information, additional documents, and related links. [MD]
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Picture Library Search -- National Portrait Gallery
http://www.npg.org.uk/search/
The (UK) National Portrait Gallery's online portrait database now has a search feature, ideal for all of us who eagerly flip to the back of a book's dust jacket for the author's picture or check a Website's "about" section for images of its creators. The online database contains approximately 10,000 images selected from the million or more portraits of famous Britons in the Gallery's collection. Using simple search, users enter a name and click a radio button indicating whether the person is a portrait artist or sitter. The search returns, however, include links to the work of sitters who are artists as well. For example, searching on John Singer Sargent yields one portrait of the artist and 45 by him. Clicking the radio button for portrait executes a search by title. In advanced search, it is possible to search by profession, such as explorer or food writer, or broader categories of professions, including travel and exploration, education, or literature and writing. [DS]
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First Images From Terra [QuickTime, .mpeg, .tiff]
Image and Movie gallery
http://terra.nasa.gov/Gallery/browse.php3
Terra Homepage
http://terra.nasa.gov/
QuickTime Movie of Images of North America
http://terra.nasa.gov/Gallery/Viz/ev2/ev239_n_america_a.mov
Press Release
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/2000/00-062.txt
On Wednesday, NASA released the first collection of images from Terra, "the first satellite to monitor daily -- and on a global scale -- how the Earth's atmosphere, lands, oceans, solar radiation and life influence each other" (discussed in the March 29, 2000 Scout Report for Science and Engineering). Launched in December, Terra has completed its on-orbit checkout and is now officially "open for business," using its five onboard instruments to monitor Earth's climate changes on a long-term basis. The striking and often downright neat images, movies, and animations are presented in a variety of formats: .jpeg, .tiff, QuickTime, and .mpeg. Users can view the complete collection or browse by instrument. Some images are offered in multiple resolutions, and all have a full record with more information. [MD]
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Minority Health Initiative (MHI) -, NIH [.pdf]
http://www1.od.nih.gov/ormh/
On April 14, the Office of Research on Minority Health (ORMH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a new Website to offer information about the NIH Minority Health Initiative (MHI), a multi-year program aimed at "improving the health of minority Americans and research training programs designed to increase the numbers of underrepresented minorities in all aspects of biomedical and behavioral research." For patients and the public, the site offers information on ORMH programs, publications, links to selected clinical trials, and numerous other related links. Scientists, health care providers, and students will find information on research and training opportunities, links to data, reports, and other resources. While the majority of the content is actually off-site, the MHI site should develop as a useful portal for resources and news related to the ORMH. [MD]
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Drugsearch
http://www.drugscope.org.uk/drugsearch/
Drugscope
http://www.drugscope.org.uk/
Provided by Drugscope, a leading UK center for drug policy information, this online encyclopedia offers reliable and tempered information on a large number of illegal and legal drugs and street terms. For each entry (sorted alphabetically), the encyclopedia contains recent related news, a history, information on the (UK) law, and a review of the drug's effects and risks. While never downplaying the dangers of various drugs, the site does skewer some long-held myths that have surrounded them. The main Drugscope site offers several reports on UK drug use, recent news items, related links, and a keyword-searchable information database that indexes documents held by Drugscope, though the full text is not available online. [MD]
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Martin Luther King: Living Memory
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/martinLuther/
This modest but elegant collection of photos is offered in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Composed of photos taken by Ben Fernandez during the last year of Dr. King's life, the site also asks visitors "to share their own thoughts and experiences concerning the fight for civil rights, which will be posted in a Book of Remembrance." Each photo, many of them new to this reviewer, is annotated, and some include additional comments from Fernandez and from visitors as well. [MD]
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The Science Museum [QuickTime, Cortona VRML]
http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/welcome.html
The homepage of London's Science Museum hosts numerous online features and exhibitions that will appeal to a wide audience. Continually updated, the site features both companion pieces to current exhibits in the physical museum and Web-only items. Attractive, easy to navigate, and quick-loading, current offerings include Fusion, The Art of Invention, Materials, and Dolly the Sheep, among others. Numerous exhibitions offer animated or other video content in QuickTime format, and at least one section of the site (the Wellcome Wing) requires the Cortona VRML plug-in (Windows systems only). For researchers, information on various Museum resources, including an online catalog of its library, is provided. Information for prospective visitors is also posted. [MD]
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Woodnet: The Woodworker's Online Resource
http://www.woodnet.net/
Provided by August Home, publisher of Woodsmith,Shopnotes,Workbench, and other magazines, this site contains a number of useful resources for woodworkers. In the Woodworking Tips & Techniques section, users will find over 100 suggestions culled from the three magazines, organized by subjects such as Gluing, Drilling, Table Saw, Sanding, and Clamping, among others. The site also hosts five (fairly active) discussion forums (registration required to post), a collection of tool reviews from Shopnotes and Workbench, and categorized related links. Over 100 plans are available for download for a fee. [MD]
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Network Tools

Google Goes International
http://www.google.com/
Google, one of the Scout Report's favorite search engines, has added even more functionality in the form of a multiple language search service. Currently available for Beta testing, this new feature allows users to search and receive returns in ten additional languages: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, and Danish. GoogleScout and cache functions are available in multi-language searches, though links to related categories in the Google Directory are not. Search returns and rankings will vary considerably based on the selected language. [MD]
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Every file format in the world -- whatis
http://www.whatis.com/ff.htm
whatis
http://www.whatis.com
Created by whatis, a large online encyclopedia of information technology, this site contains a huge list of probably "every file format in the world." Arranged alphabetically, some with links to additional information, the list may prove helpful to users at all computer skill levels. The main whatis site offers over "2,000 individual encyclopedic definition/topics and a number of quick-reference pages." whatis supplies definitions for almost any computer-related term, and the site has long held a spot in the Scout Report's Webtool bookmarks. [MD]
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Dot Com Statistics -- Network Solutions
http://www.nsol.com/statistics/
Created and maintained by Network Solutions, this site provides easy access to recent (January 2000) and past domain registration statistics and trivia. US, International, and business domain statistics tables for 1998, 1999, and January 2000 are offered, as well as some other quick facts. An interesting and quick diversion, the site promises future monthly updates. [MD]
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In The News

Vermont Poised to Approve Same-Sex Civil Unions
The Vermont Legislative Bill Tracking System: Baker v. State
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/baker/baker.cfm
"Younger generation had impact on civil-unions vote" -- Rutland Herald
http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/News/Story/6390.html
"Vermont Senate OKs 'Marriage' Rights for Gays" -- Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_gays000420.htm
"Vermont Senate Votes for Gay Civil Unions" -- New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/042000vt-gay-marriage.html
"Happy Unions" -- Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Story/6395.html
"Vermont takes a major step forward on gay rights" -- Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/egay21_20000421.htm
"Civil Union in Vermont" -- Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33854-2000Mar17.html
Human Rights Campaign
http://www.hrc.org/
Family Research Council
http://www.frc.org/
Acknowledging that it will likely cost some of them their jobs, on April 19, Vermont's Senate approved a bill establishing marriage-like civil unions for gay couples by a vote of nineteen to eleven. In the face of numerous hostile letters and phone calls, and even vandalism to their cars, the Senators, including two Republicans, displayed considerable courage in approving a measure simply because they believed it was the right thing to do regardless of the political consequences. The vote followed passage of a similar bill in the House, which was introduced after a ruling by the State Supreme Court in December that same-sex couples were being unconstitutionally denied the benefits of marriage. Provided the House approves the slight changes made by the Senate, Democratic Governor Howard Dean has said he will sign the bill, perhaps as early as June. Among other things, the legislation would allow same-sex couples to form civil unions that entitle them to the approximately 300 rights and benefits available to married couples under state law. These couples would still not be entitled to federal benefits available to married couples in regard to taxes and Social Security, and it is highly unlikely that any other state will recognize the unions, at least for the present time. Still, the bill goes well beyond any present legislation and is widely regarded, by supporters and opponents alike, as a milestone for gay civil rights.

At the Vermont Legislature's Bill Tracking System Site, users can read the full text of the Court's decision in Stan Baker v. State of Vermont and all of the related bills and amendments that have followed. Concise but helpful reports on the bill's passage are offered in the Rutland Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times (free registration required). Editorials have appeared in the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus,Detroit Free Press, and the Washington Post. Sharply opposing commentary on the proposed civil unions can be found at the Human Rights Campaign, a Gay and Lesbian civil rights organization, and the Family Research Council, a conservative organization "which reaffirms and promotes the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system." [MD]
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Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-2000. The Internet Scout Project (http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The Government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, are preserved on all copies.

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