[645] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Working Paper Summary, Parts 1 and 2
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Wed Jul 1 12:26:08 1992
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1992 11:21:30 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
*-----
An apology to those readers who received parts 3 and 4 yesterday without
parts 1 and 2. Attached are parts 1 and 2. --Jill
2 Messages, 176 Lines
*-----
*From: <DEGRAY@SJC>
*Subject: Working Paper Summary 1/4
Re: Working Paper Summary to the following question:
Saint Joseph College, West Hartford, CT, may be joining the Internet in the
fall and we would like to provide some files to Internet users for ftp'ing.
Our Provost asked me if an institution's "working/occasional" papers
might be of value to Internet users. Do other institutions make their
"working papers" available for ftp'ing? Is it a good idea?
Ron DeGray
Department of Mathematics
Saint Joseph College
West Hartford, Ct
degray@sjc.bitnet
P.S. I want to thank Christopher Nolan from Trinity University for his
suggestion to post my query to this list.
*From: IN%"BUCHANAN@WULIBS.BITNET" "Paul Buchanan" 4-JUN-1992 10:01:49.7
... at Washington University we maintain an archive of departmental technical
reports in computer science from several institutions, and it is used quite a
bit. Most of them are Postscript files, so some folks may have trouble printing
them; plus the organization is rather ad-hoc and there is no real index of what
is there. We are wondering whether we should put more effort into organizing
this sort of thing (primarily tech reports in sciences and engineering), and I
would certainly be interested in the responses you get to your query (and your
decision on putting up something like this).
If you want to look at what we have, ftp to wuarchive.wustl.edu and look under
the /pub directory.
Paul Buchanan <buchanan@wulibs.wustl.edu>
Washington University Libraries
St. Louis, MO
*From: IN%"ekj@rsch.oclc.org" 4-JUN-1992 10:09:09.43
I would encourage you to make materials of the sort you
describe available to the Internet community. Establishing and
publicizing the availability of an FTP site for your institution's
working/occasional papers would encourage interaction among interested
readers, provide greater access to the authors' materials, and provide
an alternative distribution mechanism. These benefits certainly augment
scholarly exchange, enhance communcation, and build and broaden communities
of interested professionals.
Because FTP archives often provide little information to help users
locate materials of interest, it is useful for the archive administrator to
take several small steps to assist users. These would include:
1. Establish a meaningful hierarchy for the material. For example, could
working papers and occasional papers be stored in separate directories? Is
there a further breakdown by subject? author? date? etc.
2. Use meaningful names for the directories and files. Often, the only
information provided to users is given in the path/file names at the FTP
site. The more meaningful the names, the better.
3. Establish and maintain an index of the papers available for FTPing. Put
the index at the highest level directory related to these materials.
4. Establish and maintain "readme" files to contain instructions or
information not suited for the index. You could put one readme file in
each directory that contains files.
5. Announce the availabilty of the FTP archive via related conference lists,
and announce each new addtion as it is posted. As a service to interested
users, you could establish a mailing list whereby you could distribute
announcements, citations, or abstracts upon publication/posting of a paper.
My comments arise from some nine months of research, funded by the U.S.
Department of Education, "Assessing Information on the Internet: Toward
Providing Library Services for Computer Mediated Communication."
A report will be forthcoming from the OCLC Office of Research, if you are
interested.
Sincerely,
Erik Jul
Communications Manager
Office of Research
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
6565 Frantz Road
Dublin OH 43017-3395
ekj@rsch.oclc.org
(614) 764-4364
(614) 764 6096 FAX
*-----
*From: <DEGRAY@SJC>
*Subject: Working Paper Summary 2/4
Working paper summary, PART 2
From: IN%"pgw@equinox.unr.edu" 4-JUN-1992 11:56:19.56
Many CWISes provide access to faculty publications. Making them available
for FTP wouldn't be an "unusual" service or anything ...
Glee Willis
Engineering Librarian
Internet: willis@unssun.scs.unr.edu
*From: IN%"HART@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu" "Michael S. Hart" 4-JUN-1992 12:59:52.52
You might find more ftp'able papers than you imagined, including ones on
math and cognate fields. Here is a blurb about Project Gutenberg.
******* REPLY *******
This reply up to date as of May 22, 1992
To FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
ftp mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu or 128.174.201.12
login: anonymous
password: name@node
cd etext92 or cd etext/etext92 (for current [1992] etexts)
cd etext/etext91 (for 1991 etexts)
For information about Project Gutenberg:
cd etext/articles [Gutenberg articles and newsletters]
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
[if you leave set for bin and do ascii files you get c/r l/f]
[Don't forget to set to bin if you then retransfer to home]
GET INDEX or INDEX.GUT
for a list of books
and
GET NEW.GUT for general information
and
MGET GUT* for newsletters.
Please tell us what books you want and how you like these.
*====================================================
The trend of library policy is clearly toward
the ideal of making all information available
without delay to all people.
The Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia (TM)
(c) 1990,1991 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.
Michael S. Hart, Director, Project Gutenberg
National Clearinghouse for Machine Readable Texts
*From: IN%"PHELPS@USCVM.BITNET" "Charles Phelps" 4-JUN-1992 13:49:29.29
I read your message on pacs-l regarding making occasional/working papers
available for ftp on the Internet. I think you would find the following
message, which appeared on pacs-l last April, of interest.
Charles Phelps
Head of Access Services
Science & Engineering Library
Univ. of Southern Calif.
*From: "Katherine Branch" <katherine_branch@yccatsmtp.ycc.yale.edu>
*Subject: Instant Math Preprints
*---------------------------Original message----------------------------
REGARDING Instant Math Preprints
About a week ago, a PACS-L posting asked whether there were any mathematical
sciences resources available via Internet. Dave Rodgers of the American
Mathematical Society responded with a description of e-MATH and mentioned
Yale's IMP (Instant Math Preprints) service in his response. This posting
describes the Instant Math Preprints project in more detail. For more
information, please contact Katherine Branch, Yale University,
katherine_branch@yccatsmtp.ycc.yale.edu. We are actively soliciting more
institutions to contribute to the database.
