The Scout Report - October 29, 1999

October 29, 1999

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 Science & Engineering
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sci-eng/1999/se-991027.html
Volume 3, Number 4 of the Scout Report for Science & Engineering is available. The In the News section annotates ten resources related to the RADARSAT Satellite's high-resolution radar maps of the Antarctic. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Research and Education

Calendar and Register of Henry James Correspondence
http://jamescalendar.unl.edu/
Hosted by the University of Nebraska Press and created by Steven H. Jobe and Susan E. Gunter, this site offers information on all known letters written by novelist Henry James (more than 10,500) and brief biographical information on the (more than 1,000) recipients of these letters. Users can search the database by date, correspondent, repository, or keyword. Search returns include the date and place of the letter's composition, the addressee's name and identity, the publication source, and the repository in which the letter is held. The site also features comprehensive lists of all published sources of the letters and the more than 130 repositories and private collections where they are held, and statistics on the letters and correspondents. Henry James scholars will quickly find this site to be an invaluable research tool. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

PubSCIENCE
http://pubsci.osti.gov/
Modelled after the National Institutes of Health's PubMed, this new database developed by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) allows users to search across abstracts and citations of multiple publishers in the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines for free. Currently, the database indexes more than 1,000 scientific and technical journals. Users can search by keyword or publisher, or perform a multiple option advanced search. Search returns include author, title, journal title and number, date, and a fair-sized abstract. Some returns also contain links to the full text, which will come up immediately if the user or his/her institution has a subscription to the journal. Otherwise, information on pay-per-view or subscription access is provided. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Student Review Articles: Insect Behavior
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en507/papers_1999/index.htm
Selected Publications and Databases
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/publications.html
Colorado State University entomology professor Dr. Louis Bjostad provides this interesting resource of review articles on insect behavior. Each review article was written by a student as part of a graduate level course held in Spring 1999; review articles consist of a three to six paragraph summary of research, followed by a dozen or more recent references. Titles include "Communal Roosting in Insects" and "Behavioral Aspects of Biological Control of Spider Mites," among dozens of others. For those interested in reading summaries of (and finding references to) recent scientific articles on insect behavior, this is an excellent starting place. Note that there are two additional review pages (from the same course in previous years) listed on the Entomology Department's Selected Publications and Databases page (listed alphabetically). [LXP]
[Back to Contents]

Two on K-12 Education and Information Technology
Acceptable Use Policies: A Handbook
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/go/VDOE/Technology/AUP/home.shtml
CTER White Papers on Technology Issues for Educators
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/wp/
These two sites address a number of issues related to K-12 education and the use of information technology (IT). The first, provided by the Virginia Department of Education Technology Division, offers guidelines for the appropriate use of computer networks. These guidelines are generally known as Acceptable Internet Use Policy, or AUP, and are comprised of "a written agreement . . . signed by students, their parents and their teachers, outlining the terms and conditions of Internet use-rules of online behavior and access privileges." Rather than set out a single AUP, this online handbook features a collection of selected resources to help administrators, teachers, library media specialists, and parents develop their own local AUP. The handbook includes links to examples of various components of an AUP, sample policies from Virginia and other states, and a selection of templates. The second resource features white papers written by teams of teachers and other K-12 personnel enrolled in a Masters program called CTER: Curriculum, Technology, and Educational Reform at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign in the spring of 1999. The topics covered include Access Issues; Credibility and Web Evaluation; Free Speech vs. Censorship; Privacy; Commercialism; Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Plagiarism; and Computer Crime and Technology Misuse. The layout and content of each of the seven white papers varies, but most are presented as easily navigated Webpages ("An Educator's Guide To...") rather than simple digitized text. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Icy Continent Mapped from Space with RADARSAT [QuickTime]
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagewall/antarctica.html
Last week, scientists released images from the first high-resolution radar map of Antarctica. Taken over a period of eighteen days in 1997 by a NASA-launched Canadian satellite called RADARSAT, the images have revealed a number of amazing features never seen before. The most important of these is a complex network of ice streams, huge rivers of ice that move ice and snow from the continent's interior to the sea, some moving up to 3,000 feet and one system that sends up to 19 cubic miles of ice to the sea each year. Another hidden feature imaged by RADARSAT was Lake Vostok, a massive fresh water lake laying two miles beneath the surface of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. This site, hosted by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, offers a fascinating and often beautiful virtual tour of Antarctica, divided into fifteen stops, featuring images of varying resolution and QuickTime movies. Users can also read the official press release and learn more about the RADARSAT mission with provided links. For further resources on RADARSAT and Antarctica, see the October 27, 1999 Scout Report for Science and Engineering. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Two from the New York Public Library (NYPL)
Planning Digital Projects for Historical Collections
http://digital.nypl.org/brochure/index.html
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/writers_aa19/toc.html
These two resources from the NYPL consist of an overview of planning digital projects for historical collections and an example of just such a project. The first item is aimed primarily at librarians and administrators who would like to promote the use of often under-accessed and difficult to classify collections of unique historical materials. The guide briefly discusses the NYPL's own digital projects, answers common questions regarding digital projects, and guides readers through the steps of planning and creating the project, including selecting, organizing, and presenting the materials. The conclusion also offers a number of useful links. The African American Women Writers of the 19th Century site is an online collection of 52 full-text works. Users can browse the books by author, title, or literature type (fiction, poetry, biography and autobiography, and essays). Each work is (unfortunately) presented in a rather cramped frame, navigated with a table of contents on the left side. The site also includes a helpful introductory essay, technical notes, a discussion of editorial methods, a citation list, and an internal search engine. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

The Scientist: The News Journal for the Life Scientist
http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/
Provided with the cooperation of the Institute for Science Information (ISI) and the University of Pennsylvania, The Scientist is a free newsletter for life scientists. Each issue features a variety of science news stories, focusing on recent developments, as well as commentary, opinion, "Hot Papers," professional information, commercial products and services, and jobs. Users can browse and search back issues and also subscribe to a free email notification service. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

history digitisation
http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/history-digitisation/
This new unmoderated mailing list is "concerned with the digitisation, of historical material, whether as an image or an OCR'd [Optical Character Recognition] document. This list aims to bring together experts in the field of digitising historical material and academics who have projects in mind." Users will find subscription information and an archive at the site. The archive can be searched by keyword or browsed by date, thread, subject, or author. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

General Interest

Ad*Access
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/
A collaboration of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History and the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, this database contains images of more than 7,000 advertisements printed mainly in US newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. The images are divided into five major categories: Beauty and Hygiene; Radio; Television; Transportation; and World War II. Each category can be browsed by a number of subtopics, listed by year. Users also have several search options, including keyword, complex, and Boolean searching. In addition, brief histories of the industries and timelines of world and national events are provided. While the site has obvious potential for cultural and business historians, general users may also enjoy browsing the images, which offer an interesting glimpse into how Americans conceived of themselves and consumer culture in the first half of this century. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Bitlaw
http://www.bitlaw.com/index.html
Created and maintained by Daniel A. Tysver of Beck & Tysver, P.L.L.P., an intellectual property law firm, this site is a comprehensive resource on technology law, with "over 1,800 pages on patent, copyright, trademark, and Internet legal issues." The site is divided into eight main sections, five of which (Patent Law, Trademark Law, Copyright Law, Software Patents, and Internet Legal Issues) are extended hyperlinked essays prefaced with an executive summary and a table of contents. The other three sections offer the full text of selected statutes, regulations, case law, and patent office documents; a large and well organized collection of annotated links; and sample forms and contracts, respectively. While there are any number of online legal resources, this site's clean navigation and depth set it apart. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

icon magazine [Shockwave Flash]
http://www.iconmagazine.com/
Designed and produced by Harvard undergraduates, icon is "part magazine, part gallery, part forum . . . a participatory space where the power of stories is given a new freedom and saddled with a new responsibility." The stories and poems offered in the current issue (Spring 1999) are wide-ranging: straightforward text, hypertext poetry, stories interlaced with images and changing backgrounds, several Shockwave Flash-enhanced stories, and a difficult to classify but fascinating piece exploring the stories found in a subway system ("Underground"). In addition, this issue includes a special feature, an eight poem meditation on Greece followed by extensive readers's comments. With its generally thoughtful writing and innovative experiments in blending fiction and Web design in ways that contribute rather than detract from the narrative, icon is well worth a visit. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

LANIC Electoral Observatory
http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/info/newsroom/elections/
The Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) at the University of Texas (last mentioned in the November 13, 1998 Scout Report) has added a new feature to provide users with quick reference guides to online resources for each of the thirteen presidential or legislative elections in Latin American and Caribbean countries between this month and the end of 2000. The pages for each country are divided into five sections: Electoral Coverage, Electoral Resources, News, Parties and Candidates, and (after the election) Results. Users should note that the number of links contained in each of these sections will vary considerably by country, depending on what is available. Currently, the site has content on four of the thirteen elections (Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, and Chile) as well as information on three recent referenda or elections in Guatemala, Venezuela, and Panama. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

The History of Phrenology on the Web
http://www.jmvanwyhe.freeserve.co.uk/
Popular in early nineteenth-century Europe (especially in Britain), and later in America, phrenology was the controversial belief that one could determine the character and intellectual traits of a person by examining the shape and contours of the skull ("reading the bumps on your head"). Created and maintained by John van Wyhe of Cambridge University, this site claims to be "the largest and most comprehensive website for the history of phrenology." Contents include the full text of several phrenological works, phrenology images, a brief introduction and timeline, some contemporary criticism, and a critical bibliography. Links to other online texts and related sites are also provided. Despite some poor choices of background and text color that make portions of the site difficult to read, this site is a good resource for historians and general users interested in what its practitioners called, "the only true science of mind." [MD]
[Back to Contents]

The Home Energy Saver [QuickTime]
http://homeenergysaver.lbl.gov/
Developed by the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, this site is designed to help homeowners save energy and money. The heart of the site is the Energy Advisor, which allows users to enter their area code to receive initial energy use estimates and then receive customized results after entering more details about their home. The Energy Advisor also offers recommendations on selected upgrades to help your home become energy efficient. Several on-site QuickTime movies demonstrate use of the Home Energy Advisor. Additional resources include the Home Energy Librarian, which offers a large number of annotated energy conservation links; a glossary of energy terminology; and the Making it Happen Module, which contains a collection of tips and links to help users capitalize on energy savings opportunities. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Crimeboss
http://www.crimeboss.com/
Created by Richard Wolfe to share some of the gems of his collection of crime comic books from the 1940s and 1950s, this site features a gallery of more than 100 crime comic covers in all their lurid and exploitative glory. Comic fans and anyone else who gets a kick out of trashy titles like "Crimes By Women," "Gangsters and Gun Molls," "Crime Does Not Pay," "Murder Incorporated," and "Teen-Age Dope Slaves" will thoroughly enjoy this site. Although thumbnails are only available for a few of the titles, all images load quickly and are of excellent quality. Wolfe also offers commentary on several of his favorites, the text of some articles on the history of crime comics, and some related sites. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Network Tools

Northern Light Search Alert Service
http://standard.northernlight.com/cgi-bin/cl_alert.pl?cb=200
Northern Light has recently announced the beta release of a new free service that will notify users via email whenever new information meeting their search criteria is found in Northern Light's daily updates to its database of 150 million Webpages and 8 million Special Collection articles. After setting up a free Northern Light account, users can enter their own topic for Search Alerts or choose from a number of topics listed on the advanced search forms (Power Search, Industry Search, Current News, Investext, and WEFA - Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates Report). Users can also preview sample results before registering their alert. From the email notification, users can launch a results list with the new information, although Special Collections articles may only be read after paying a fee. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

Au2HTML [Windows 95/98/NT]
http://www.filehouse.com/au2html/
Au2HTML is a tool aimed at Webmasters and others who are interested in developing Webpage galleries. Its most useful feature allows the creation of thumbnails from images of varying file formats. Customizable thumbnail options include image size and the border style. Au2HTML also comes with an HTML editor and can be integrated with your FTP client to ease file transfers. The registration fee is $99. A demo version is available for no charge. [JB]
[Back to Contents]

Audio Interview with Tim Berners-Lee [QuickTime, MP3]
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,32073,00.html
Wired News has posted an audio recording and the text of its recent interview with World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee. In the interview, Berners-Lee talks about "the Web's development, his thoughts about its current state, and his predictions for the future." Users can hear the 31-minute interview in its entirety in QuickTime audio or MP3 format or listen to selected highlights. [MD]
[Back to Contents]

In The News

Team of the Century?
The Yankees, A Century of Champions -- The Sporting News
http://www.sportingnews.com/features/yankees/
"The Team of the 90's Plays Coy at the Mere Mention of Dynasty" -- The New York Times [RealPlayer]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/sports/baseball/102999bba-yanks.html
"No Team Finer In This Century" -- New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/1999-10-28/Metro_Sports/Baseball/a-45426.asp
"A Decade Ahead of the Rest" -- Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/baseball/longterm/1999/playoffs/worldseries/articles/boz28.htm
ESPN World Series [RealPlayer]
http://espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs99/index.html
majorleaguebaseball.com [RealPlayer]
http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com/
On Wednesday, the New York Yankees completed their second consecutive four-game sweep of the World Series, winning the title for the third time in four years and for the 25th time this century. The game, incidentally, was also the team's twelfth Series win in a row (tying the record set by the "Murderers' Row" Yankees of the late 1920s) and future Hall of Famer Roger Clemens's 250th career win. Sports writers have, of course, commented extensively on this impressive performance, many stating that it is only fitting that a century of baseball should draw to a close "in pinstripes." Love them or hate them, no team has been so successful and so dominating as the New York Yankees. In New York, at least, they certainly do love their Bronx Bombers, and a ticket tape parade will be held today in their honor.

The Sporting News special feature on the Yankees provides a nice review of the Yankees's teams and players throughout the century, with stats, history, quotes, photos, numerous articles on selected legendary players, and analysis of the team under George Steinbrenner. The New York Times examines the Yankees's place in history and whether they truly are a baseball dynasty in an extended article. The site also offers links to related articles, a slide show, and audio selections. The New York Daily News and the Washington Post sports columnists also offer some comments on the team and its place in baseball history. ESPN's World Series site includes a number of articles and features, analysis of the Yankee and Braves rosters, and some video excerpts. Finally, the official site of Major League Baseball currently contains a number of items on the World Series and the Yankees, including game summaries, analysis, photo galleries, and audio and video selections. Additional resources on professional baseball can be found in Signpost), the Scout Report's database. These include Total Baseball Online, Baseball Weekly, and By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s. [MD]
[Back to Contents]


Below are the copyright statements to be included when reproducing annotations from The Scout Report.

The single phrase below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing any portion of this report, in any format:

From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-1999. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/

The paragraph below is the copyright notice to be used when reproducing the entire report, in any format:

Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1999. 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.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, or the National Science Foundation.


The Scout Report (ISSN 1092-3861) is published weekly by Internet Scout
Susan Calcari
Rachael E. Bower
Michael de Nie
Travis Koplow
David Charbonneau
Pat Coulthard
Aimee D. Glassel
Sheilah Harrington
Emily Missner
Laura X. Payne
Krishna Ramanujan
Mike Roszkowski
Debra Shapiro
Amy Tracy Wells
Joseph Bockhorst
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
Director
Managing Editor
Editor
Production Editor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor
Contributor

Scout Report and Scout Report HTML Subscription Instructions

To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report each week, join the SCOUT-REPORT mailing list. This is the only mail you will receive from this list.

To receive the electronic mail version of the Scout Report in HTML format, subscribe to the SCOUT-REPORT-HTML mailing list. This is the only mail you will receive from this list.

[Back to Contents]


Internet Scout
A Publication of the Internet Scout Project

Comments, Suggestions, Feedback
Use our feedback form or send email to scout@cs.wisc.edu.

© 1999 Internet Scout Project
Information on reproducing any publication is available on our copyright page.