Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

O >> Odd de Presno. All >> Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

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An earlier issue of the newsletter reviewed The Encyclopedia of
Information Systems and Services, a three-volume "bible" for online
users and producers (9th edition):
EISS covers more than 30,000 organizations, systems, services,
more than five thousand databases, publications, software products,
etc. Their international listing covers 1,350 information
organizations in 70 countries, and has 535 pages.
Topics: online host services, videotex/teletext information
services, PC oriented services, data collection and analysis
services, abstracting and indexing services, computerized
searching services, software producers, magnetic tape/diskette
providers, micrographic applications and services, library and
information networks, library management systems, information on
demand services, transactional services (new category), document
delivery services, SDI/current awareness services, consultants,
associations, research and research projects, and electronic mail
applications.
Contact: Gale Research Company, 645 Griswold, Detroit, MI
48226, U.S.A. Tel.: +1-313-961-2242. Price per set: US$ 420.00.

The European Common Market
--------------------------
Many services bring news and information from the European Common
Market. The Common Market's free database service, I'M-GUIDE, is
a good place to start.
I'M-GUIDE is available through ECHO in Luxembourg by telnet to
echo.lu . At the question "PLEASE ENTER YOUR CODE," enter ECHO and
press Return.
You can search I'M-GUIDE for information sources, send email
inquiries to ECHO, and more. Searches can be done in English,
French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and Portuguese.
If you have problems using I'M-GUIDE, call the ECHO Help Desk
in Luxembourg at +352-34 98 11.

More sources about sources
--------------------------
The "Internet-Accessible Library Catalogs and Databases" report is
available by email from LISTSERV@UNMVM.BITNET. Put the following
command in the TEXT of your message:

GET LIBRARY PACKAGE

Cuadra/Elsevier (Box 872, Madison Square Station, New York, NY
10159-2101, U.S.A. Tel.: +1 212 633 3980) sells a Directory of
Online Databases, which lists databases available around the world.
The catalog can be searched on Orbit and Data-Star.
The Online Access Publishing Group Inc. (Chicago) sells "The
Online Access Guide." Annual subscription for this printed manual
costs US$18.95 (six issues - 1992).
The LINK-UP magazine is another interesting source. If living
in North America, contact Learned Information Inc., 143 Old Mariton
Pike, Medford, NJ 08055-8707, U.S.A.. If living elsewhere, contact
Learned Information (Europe) Ltd., Woodside, Hinskey Hill, Oxford
OX1 5AU, England, if you live outside North America. Tel.: +44 865
730 275. Price: US$25.00 for six issues/year (1993). An online
version is available through ZiffNet's Business Database Plus on
CompuServe.
Two monthly magazines, Information World Review (price: GBP
30/year) and FULLTEXT SOURCES ONLINE from BiblioData Inc. in the
United States, is also available through Learned Information.
(BiblioData, P.O. Box 61, Needham Heights, MA 02194, U.S.A.)
FULLTEXT SOURCES ONLINE publishes their listing of full-text
databases twice per year. The price is GBP 50 GBP per booklet or
GBP 90 per year.
The newsletter SCANNET TODAY (c/o Helsinki University of Techn.
Library, Otnaesvaegen 9, SF-02150 ESBO, Finland) presents news of
Scandinavian databases by country. Subscription is free.
Computer Readable Databases from Gale Research is available
both in print and online through Dialog. Write to Gale Research
Company, 645 Griswold, Detroit, MI 48226, U.S.A.
Many electronic journals and newsletters are available through
the Internet, covering fields from literature to molecular biology.
For a complete list, send a message to LISTSERV@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA
with the following commands in the BODY of your text:

GET EJOURNL1 DIRECTRY
GET EJOURNL2 DIRECTRY

Practical hints about online searching
--------------------------------------
We cannot give a simple, universal recipe valid for all online
services. What is the best approach on one service, may be useless
on others.
Most services offer full online documentation of their search
commands. You can read the help text on screen while connected, or
retrieve it for later study.
Make a note about the following general tricks:

In conferences and forums:
--------------------------
Many services have commands for selective reading of messages.
For example, on CompuServe you can limit your search to given
sections. You can also select messages to be read based on
text strings in the subject titles. The command

rs;s;CIS Access from Japan;62928

displays all messages with the text "CIS Access from Japan"
in their subject titles starting with message number 62928.

Online searching often starts by selecting databases. The
next step is to enter search words (or text strings), and
a valid time frame (as in "between 1/1/90 and 1/1/91").

The following sample search terms are used on NewsNet:

VIDEO* search for all words starting with
VIDEO. "*" is a wild-card character
referring to any ending of the word.
VIDEO* matches words like VIDEOTEXT
and VIDEOCONFERENCE.

SONY AND VIDEO The word SONY and the word VIDEO. Both
words must be present in the document
to give a match.

SONY WITHIN/10 VIDEO Both words must be present in the text,
but they must not be farther apart than
ten words. (Proximity operators)

IBM OR APPLE Either one word OR the other.

Many services let you reuse your search terms in new search
commands. This can save you time and money, if there are too
many hits. For example: if IBM OR APPLE gives 1,000 hits,
limit the search by adding "FROM JANUARY 1st.," or by adding
the search word "NOTEBOOK*".

In file libraries
-----------------
The commands used to find files are similar to those used in
traditional databases. Often, you can limit the search by
library, date, file name, or file extension. You can search for
text strings in the description of the contents of a file, or
use key words.

Example: You're visiting a bulletin board based on the BBS
program RBBS-PC. You want a program that can show GIF graphics
picture files. Such files are typically described like this:

VUIMG31.EXE 103105 07-15-91 GIF*/TIFF/PCX Picture Viewer/Printer

From left to right: file name, size in bytes, date available,
and a 40 character description.

You can search the file descriptions for the string "gif". You
do this by entering the term "s gif all". This will probably
give you a list of files. Some will have the letters GIF in
the file name. Others will have them in the description field.

Using ANDs and ORs
------------------
Boolean searching may seem confusing at first, unless you already
understand the logic. There are three Boolean operators that
searchers use to combine search terms: AND, OR, and NOT.
Use the Boolean operator AND to retrieve smaller amounts of
information. Use AND when multiple words must be present in your
search results (MERCEDES AND VOLVO AND CITROEN AND PRICES).
Use OR to express related concepts or synonyms for your search
term (FRUIT OR APPLES OR PEARS OR BANANAS OR PEACHES).
Be careful when using the NOT operator. It gets rid of any record
in a database that contains the word that you've "notted" out. For
example, searching for "IBM NOT APPLE" drops records containing the
sentence, "IBM and Apple are computer giants." The record will be
dropped, even if this is the only mention of Apple in an article,
and though it is solely about IBM.
Use NOT to drop sets of hits that you have already seen. Use
NOT to exclude records with multiple meanings, like "CHIPS Not
POTATO" (if you are looking for chips rather than snack foods).
Often, it pays to start with a "quick-and-dirty" search by
throwing in words you think will do the trick. Then look at the
first five or 10 records, but look only at the headline and the
indexing. This will show you what terms are used by indexers to
describe your idea and the potential for confusion with other
ideas.
Use proximity operators to search multiword terms. If searching
for "market share," you want the two words within so many words of
another. The order of the words, however, doesn't matter. You can
accept both "market share" and "share of the market."

Searching by email
------------------
MCI Mail and MCI Fax have a program called Information Advantage,
under which online services and newsletters can deliver search
results and other information over the online services. Dialog,
Dun & Bradstreet, NewsNet, and Individual Inc. have signed up for
the program.
You can request a search by direct email to say Dialog. The
search results will be returned to you via MCI Mail or MCI Fax.
With Dun and Bradstreet, you call them for a credit report and
they send it to you. With History Associates, you send them a
message via MCI Mail, and they report to you.

Using BITNET discussion lists through Internet
----------------------------------------------
To get a directory of Internet/BITNET mailing lists, send the
following email message:

To: LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU
Subject: (keep this blank)
Text:
LIST GLOBAL

You will receive a LONG list of available sources of information. A
recent copy had over two thousand lines of text. Each mailing list
is described with one line. All these mailing lists can be used by
email through the Internet. Here is a random selection:

Network-wide ID Full address List title
--------------- ------------ ----------
AESRG-L AESRG-L@UMCVMB Applied Expert Systems Research Group List
AGRIC-L AGRIC-L@UGA Agriculture Discussion
AIDSNEWS AIDSNEWS@EB0UB011 AIDS/HIV News
ANIME-L ANIME-L@VTVM1 Japanese animedia and other animation news.
BANYAN BANYAN-L@AKRONVM Banyan Networks Discussion List
BRIDGE BRIDGE@NDSUVM1 Bridge Communication products
CHEM-L CHEM-L@UOGUELPH Chemistry discussion
EJCREC EJCREC@RPIECS Electronic Journal of Communication
FAMCOMM FAMCOMM@RPICICGE Marital/family & relational communication
SOVNET-L SOVNET-L@INDYCMS USSR electronic communication list

The column "Network-wide ID" contains the names of the mailing
lists. "Full address" contains their BITNET email addresses. "List
title" is a short textual description of each conference.
Keep the list on your hard disk. This makes it easier to find
sources of information, when you need them.

Subscribing to mailing lists
----------------------------
Each line in the list above refers to a mailing list, also often
called 'discussion list'. They work like online conferences or
message sections on bulletin boards, but technically they are
different. (Read about KIDLINK in Chapter 2 for background
information.)
All BITNET mailing lists are controlled by a program called
LISTSERV on the host computer given in column two above (for
example @UMCVMB). They offer "conferencing" with the following
important functions:

* All "discussion items" (i.e., electronic messages sent to the
lists' email address) are distributed to all subscribers.
* All messages are automatically stored in notebook archives.
You can search these log files, and you can have them sent
to you as electronic mail.
* Files can be stored in the lists' associated file libraries
for distribution to subscribers on demand.

Where to send a subscription request, depends on where you are
communicating from relative to the host running the LISTSERV. If
this host is your nearest BITNET LISTSERV, then send the request
to the address in column two by replacing the list name by LISTSERV.

Example:
AESRG-L@UMCVMB is administered by LISTSERV@UMCVMB. Subscribe
(or signoff) by email to LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET .

If there is a LISTSERV closer to where you live, then you should
subscribe to the nearby system rather than to the remote. This
helps keep the total costs of the international network down.

Example:
You live in Norway. The nearest LISTSERV is at FINHUTC. To
subscribe to AESRG-L@UMCVMB, send to LISTSERV@FINHUTC.BITNET .

Use the addresses in column two when sending messages to the other
members of the discussion lists, but do NOT send your subscription
requests to this address!! If you do, it will be forwarded to all
members of the mailing list. Chances are that nothing will happen,
and everybody will see how sloppy you are.
So, you subscribe by sending a command to a LISTSERV. The
method is similar to what we did when subscribing to Infonets in
Chapter 7. If your name is Jens Jensen, and you want to subscribe
to SOVNET-L, send this message through the Internet (assuming that
NDSUM1 is your nearest LISTSERV host):

To: LISTSERV@NDSUVM1.BITNET
Subject: (You can write anything here. Will be ignored.)
Text: SUB SOVNET-L Jens Jensen

When your subscription has been registered, you will receive a
confirmation. From this date, all messages sent to the list will be
forwarded to your mailbox. (Send "SIGNOFF SOVNET-L" to this address,
when you have had enough.)
Some lists will forward each message to you upon receipt. Others
will send a periodic digest (weekly, monthly, etc.).
To send a message to SOVNET-L, send to the BITNET address in
column two above. Send to

SOVNET-L@INDYCMS.BITNET

Review the following example. Most BITNET lists will accept these
commands.

Example: Subscription to the China list
---------------------------------------
CHINA-NN is listed like this in the List of Lists:

CHINA-NN CHINA-NN@ASUACAD China News Digest (Global News)

Scandinavians may subscribe to CHINA-NN by Internet mail to
LISTSERV@FINHUTC.BITNET . North American users may send their mail
to LISTSERV@NDSUVM1.BITNET .
If your name is Winston Hansen, write the following command in the
TEXT of the message

SUB CHINA-NN Winston Hansen

When you want to leave CHINA-NN, send a cancellation message like
this:

To: LISTSERV@NDSUVM1.BITNET
Subject: (nothing here)
SIGNOFF CHINA-NN

NOTE: Send the cancellation command to the address you used, when
subscribing! If you subscribed through LISTSERV@FINHUTC, sending
the SIGNOFF command to LISTSERV@NDSUVM1 will get you nowhere. Send
to LISTSERV@FINHUTC.
Never send the SIGNOFF command to the discussion list itself!
Always send to the LISTSERV.

Monitoring the action
---------------------
THINKNET is an online magazine forum dedicated to "thoughtfulness in
the cybertime environment." It brings reviews of significant and
thought-provoking exchanges within our new electronic nation.
This electronic publication is free. If you're interested in
philosophy, subscribe by sending a message through Internet to
thinknet@world.std.com . Write the following in the TEXT of the
message:

SEND THINKNET TO Your-Full-Name AT UserId@Your-Internet-Email-Address

Example:
If your email address is opresno@extern.uio.no and your name
Odd de Presno, use the following command:

SEND THINKNET TO Odd de Presno AT OPRESNO@EXTERN.UIO.NO

THINKNET is also available through the Philosophy conference on The
Well, and on GEnie in the Philosophy category under the Religion
and Ethics Bulletin Board. (Hard copy versions can be bought
through THINKNET, PO BOX 8383, Orange CA 92664-8383, U.S.A.).
If you're on The Well, read the topic "News from Around Well
Conferences" to learn about new developments.
These are some mailing lists that may help you locate sources
of interest:

NETSCOUT (NETSCOUT@VMTECMEX) The BITnet/Internet scouts.
Subscribe by email to LISTSERV@VMTECMEX.BITNET
with the following in the TEXT of your message
SUB NETSCOUT yourfirstname yourlastname

This is where you can discuss and exchange information
about servers, FTP sites, Filelists, lists, tools, and
any related aspects.

HELP-NET (HELP-NET@TEMPLEVM) BITNET/CREN/INTERNET Help Resource.
Send email to LISTSERV@TEMPLEVM.BITNET with the text
SUB HELP-NET yourfirstname yourlastname

The list's main purpose is to help solve user problems
with utilities and software related to the Internet
and BITNET networks. The library contains several good
help files for novice networkers. A great place for
new Internet users!

Other sources available through the Internet
--------------------------------------------
The Interest Groups List of Lists is available by electronic mail
from mail-server@nisc.sri.com . Send a message with the following
text in the message body:

Send netinfo/interest-groups

Note that as of April 1993, the file was over 1,100,000 bytes in
size. It will be returned to you in moderately sized pieces.
You can search the List of Lists by email. Say you're looking
for a mailing list related to Robotics. To find out, send a message
to LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU containing the following commands:

//ListSrch JOB Echo=No
Database Search DD=Rules
//Rules DD *
search robotics in lists
index
search robotics in intgroup
index
search robotics in new-list
index

Replace the search word 'robotics' with whatever else you may be
looking for.
The Usenet list of news groups and mailing lists is available on
hosts that run Usenet News or NetNews servers and/or clients in the
newsgroups news.announce.newusers and news.lists.
The members of news.newusers.questions, alt.internet.help,
alt.internet.access.wanted, and alt.internet.new-users readily
accept your help requests.
Alt.internet.services focuses on information about services
available on the Internet. It is for people with Internet accounts
who want to explore beyond their local computers, to take advantage
of the wealth of information and services on the net.
Services for discussion include:
* things you can telnet to (weather, library catalogs,
databases, and more),
* things you can FTP (like pictures, sounds, programs, data)
* clients/servers (like MUDs, IRC, Archie)
Every second week, a list of Internet services called the "Special
Internet Connections list" is posted to this newsgroup. It includes
everything from where to FTP pictures from space, how to find
agricultural information, public UNIX, online directories and
books, you name it.
Dartmouth maintains a merged list of the LISTSERV lists on
BITNET and the Interest Group lists on the Internet. Each mailing
list is represented by one line. To obtain this list, send a
message to LISTSERV@DARTCMS1.BITNET . Enter the following command
in the text of the message:

INDEX SIGLISTS

InterNIC Information Service maintains an announcement-only service
at LISTSERV@is.internic.net called net-happenings. It distributes
announcements about tools, conferences, calls for papers, news
items, new mailing lists, electronic newsletters like EDUPAGE, and
more. To subscribe, send a message to the LISTSERV containing this
command:

subscribe net-happenings Your Name

InterNIC's automated mail service is at MAILSERV@RS.INTERNIC.NET.
It allows access to documents and files via email. To use it, send
email to the Mailserv with the word "HELP" in the subject field of
your mail.

How to get more out of your magazine subscriptions
--------------------------------------------------
PC Magazine (U.S.A.) is one of those magazines that arrives here by
mail. We butcher them, whenever we find something of interest. The
"corpses" are dumped in a high pile on the floor.
To retrieve a story in this pile is difficult and time
consuming, unless the title is printed on the cover.
Luckily, there are shortcuts. Logon to PC MagNet on CompuServe.
Type GO PCMAG to get the following menu:

PC MagNet

1 Download a PC Magazine Utility
2 PC Magazine Utilities/Tips Forum
3 PC Magazine Editorial Forum
4 PC Magazine Programming Forum
5 PC Magazine After Hours Forum
6 PC Magazine Product Reviews Index
7 Free! - Take a Survey
8 Submissions to PC Magazine
9 Letters to the Editor
10 Subscribe to PC Magazine

Choice six lets you search for stories. Once you have a list with
page/issue references, turning the pages gets much easier.
PC Magazine is owned by the media giant Ziff-Davis. PC MagNet
is a part of ZiffNet on CompuServe. So is Computer Database Plus,
which lets you search through more than 250,000 articles from over
200 popular newspapers and magazines. The oldest articles are from
early 1987. The database is also available on CD-ROM, but the discs
cover only one year at a time.
CDP contains full-text from around 50 magazines, like Personal
Computing, Electronic News, MacWeek and Electronic Business.
Stories from the other magazines are available in abstracted form
only.
To search the database, CDP, you pay an extra US$24.00 per
hour. In addition, you pay US$1.00 per abstract and US$1.50 per
full-text article (1992). These fees are added to your normal
CompuServe access rates.
ZiffNet also offers Magazine Database Plus, a database with
stories from over 90 magazines covering science, business, sport,
people, personal finance, family, art and handicraft, cooking,
education, environment, travel, politics, consumer opinions, and
reviews of books and films.
The magazines include: Administrative Management, Aging,
Changing Times, The Atlantic, Canadian Business, Datamation,
Cosmopolitan, Dun's Business Month, The Economist, The Futurist,
High Technology Business, Journal of Small Business Management,
Management Today, The Nation, The New Republic, Online, Playboy,
Inc., Popular Science, Research & Development, Sales & Marketing
Management, Scientific American, Technology Review, UN Chronicle,
UNESCO Courier and U.S. News & World Report.
In the next chapter, we will present another ZiffNet magazine
database: the Business Database Plus.
Magazine Index (MI), from Information Access Company (U.S.A.),
is another source worth looking at. It covers over 500 consumer and
general-interest periodicals as diverse as Special Libraries and
Sky & Telescope, Motor Trend and Modern Maturity, Reader's Digest
and Rolling Stone. Many titles go as far back as 1959.
Although most of the database consists of brief citations, MI
also contains the complete text of selected stories from a long
list of periodicals. It is available through Dialog, CompuServe,
BRS, Data-Star, Dow Jones News/Retrieval, Nexis, and others.
Say you so often get references to a given magazine that you
want a paper subscription. Try the Electronic Newsstand, which is
available by gopher or telnet to gopher.netsys.com. If these
Internet commands are unavailable, try mail to staff@enews.com.

Finding that book
-----------------
Over 270 libraries around the world are accessible by the Internet
telnet command. Some of them can also be accessed by Internet mail.
This is the case with BIBSYS, a database operated by the Norwegian
universities' libraries.
I am into transcendental meditation. I'm therefore constantly
looking for books on narrow topics like "mantra". To search BIBSYS
for titles of interest, I sent mail to genserv@pollux.bibsys.no .
The search word was entered in the subject title of the message. By
return email, I got the following report:

Date: Fri, 21 Jul 93 13:54:18 NOR
From: GENSERV@POLLUX.BIBSYS.NO
Subject: Searching BIBSYS

Search request : MANTRA
Database-id : BIBSYS
Search result : 5 hits.

The following is one of the references. I have forwarded it to my
local library for processing:

Forfatter : Gonda, J.
Tittel : Mantra interpretation in the Satapatha-Brahmana
/ by J. Gonda.
Trykt : Leiden : E.J. Brill, 1988.
Sidetall : X, 285 s.
I serie : (Orientalia Rheno-traiectina ; 32)
ISBN : 90-04-08776-1
1 - UHF 90ka03324 - UHF/INDO Rh III b Gon

The Danish library database REX may be accessed through most
international packet switching networks. Its Network User Address
(NUA) is 23824125080000. When connected, enter RC8000 and press
return. Press ESC once. The system will respond with ATT. Enter KB
REX, and you're ready to search Dansk Bogfortegnelse since 1980,
Dansk Musikfortegnelse since 1980, and ISDS Denmark.
BARTON is the library system of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Its database contains everything received since 1974
except magazine articles, brochures, and technical reports from
sources outside M.I.T. Phone: +1-617-258-6700 (1200 bps). Press
ENTER a couple of times to access the system.
On CompuServe, there is a section for book collectors in the
Coin/Stamp/Collectibles Forum, and a Weekly Book Chat section in
the ScienceFiction & Fantasy Forum. In the Electronic Mall, you can
buy books directly from Ballantine Books, Penguin Books, Small
Computer Book Club, The McGraw-Hill Book Company, Time-Life Books
and Walden Computer Books.
On the Internet, Roswell Computer Books Ltd. (Canada) has an
online bookstore with a database of over 7,000 titles (1993).
Gopher to nstn.ns.ca, select "Other Gophers in Nova Scotia", and
then "Roswell Electronic Computer Bookstore". Failing access to
gopher, send your email requests to roswell@fox.nstn.ns.ca .
The Book Review Digest (GO BOOKREVIEW) is CompuServe's database
of bibliographical references and abstracts of reviews (since
1983). You can search by title, author, and keywords found in the
text of book reviews. CompuServe also offers book reviews through
Magazine Database Plus.
"Books in print" is a North American bibliographic reference
database. It is available on BRS and CompuServe.
South African Bibliographic and Information Network has a
gopher service at info2.sabinet.co.za.
FidoNet has COMICS (The Comic Book Echo), BITNET the list Rare
Book and Special Collections Catalogers (NOTRBCAT@INDYCMS). NewsNet
has the COMPUTER BOOK REVIEW newsletter and on The Well you'll find
the "Computer Books" conference. OCLC's WorldCat is a reference
database covering books and materials in libraries worldwide.
Bookworms may appreciate the BITNET discussion list DOROTHYL
(LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU), and especially if they like Agatha
Christie, Josephine Tey and Dorothy L. Sayers.
On Usenet, you will find alt.books.reviews, k12.library,
alt.books.technical, rec.arts.books, and misc. books.technical, and
more.
On the Internet, there are a rapidly growing number of library
online public-access catalogs (OPACs) from all over the world. Some
provide users with access to additional resources, such as
periodical indexes of specialized databases. More than 270 library
catalogs are now online (1992).
An up-to-date directory of libraries that are interactively
accessible through Internet can be had by anonymous ftp from
ftp.unt.edu (then: cd library). File name: LIBRARIES.TXT. Check out
the end of Chapter 12 for how to get the file by email (ftpmail).
You will also find full electronic versions of books. This book
is one example. Many texts are courtesy of Project Gutenberg, an
organization whose goal is to develop a library of 10,000 public
domain electronic texts by the year 2000.
Since books are often quite large, they are somewhat bulky for
email transfer. If you have direct Internet access, use anonymous
ftp instead.
Many books are available through the /pub/almanac/etext
directory at oes.orst.edu. For more about how to use the Almanac
information server, send Almanac@oes.orst.edu the following email
command:

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