cni-directories: Re: Public Catalog of InterNet Resources
Re: Public Catalog of InterNet Resources
Tony_Barry@LIBRARY.ANU.EDU.AU
Sun, 2 Feb 1992 11:34:02 +1000
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1992 11:34:02 +1000
From: Tony_Barry@LIBRARY.ANU.EDU.AU
Subject: Re: Public Catalog of InterNet Resources
David Mattison writes -
>What efforts are being made to establish a TELNET host/s that would serve as
>a public catalog of InterNet resources?
Robert Maas formerly at Stanford University in his "Topindex" document
available from a number of archive servers has provided a valuble guide to
the main documents on internet resources.
The Internet resource guide is available as a wais server as is the
Australian equivalent, the AARNet resource guide.
The three main guides to Library catalogues and similar information, Art St
George's, Billy Barron's and Peter Scott's are on a wide range of archive
servers and also are available as wais databases. The Billy Barron list is
up as a searchable database on (I think) melvyl and as a finger database at
Sydney University in Australia.
The wais services pioneered by Brewster Kahle at Thinking machines corp.
have the central directory server at quake.think.com with a backup at
Cleverland.
The various internet gopher sites give access direct to a wide range of
services in Europe and the US and seem to cross refer each other
extensively.
The growing number of archie servers started by Peter Deutsch at McGill (11
at last count) now index 100 Gig of files at over 1000 sites world wide.
Numerous individuals have assembled comprehensive information on particular
aspects of the network. Michael Strangelove at Univ. of Ottawa on
electronic serials, Judy Hallam at Houtson for CWIS sites for instance.
A number of sites have made comprehensive collections of such information
held for FTP - Gord Nickerson at Case Western Reserve and Deidre Stanton at
Murdoch Univ. in Australia are examples.
While some of this information is available via telnet access there are
much more powerful tools available in gopher and wais and, in what is still
a relatively small corpus of directory information (a few megabytes), ftp
cannot be discounted.
Also -
>Shouldn't the national libraries of those
>countries with public and private data networks be reminded of their
>obligations to catalog electronic information?
Until the National Libraries of the world catch up with what are still
essentially developments in the educational sector and computing industry
this will be difficult. The National Library of Finland is still the only
National Library which provides a full service over the net. Only
institutions which are strongly user driven by a research based clientele
will feel the need and will have the capability to undertake this work at
the present time and the role of the individual innovator will remain
crucial for some time yet.
Regards from down under
Tony
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