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The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Computation Authority
News bulletin #115
22-February-1998
Today's topics:
- LIBnet news.
- Internet connection.
Bellow you'll find two articles which I received and pass them as
they are. Since both topics seem important to the research community
(at least to my opinion...) I am forwarding them to all users.
The first one discusses the new digital libraries while the second one
is Machba's view on the international link.
__Yehavi:
o LIBNET News - News of the Israel Universities Library Network
#1 - Feb. 1998
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- Library consortium established
- Web of Science
- Electronic journals
- Subscribing to this newsletter
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Library Consortium Established
Sender: owner-libnet@cc.huji.ac.il
Precedence: bulk
The Israel Association of University Heads (Va'ad rashe
ha-universita'ot) recently decided on the establishment of a framework
for joint activities relating to digital information services.
"MALMAD" (ha-Merkaz le-sherute meda' digitaliyyim) is formally a unit
of the Israel Inter-University Computer Center ("Machba") but with its
own director and policy-making steering committee consisting of
library directors and other representatives of the universities
community. The director of MALMAD is Prof. Elhanan Adler
(elhanan@libnet.ac.il). The chair of the MALMAD steering committee is
Prof. Israel Shatzman, former director of the Jewish National and
University Library.
The MALMAD plan of operations for 1998 emphasizes several new
services: the WEB OF SCIENCE (see below) and joint access to
electronic full-text journals. All MALMAD services will be based on
the World-Wide-Web standard, using graphic-interface browsers such as
NETSCAPE or MICROSOFT EXPLORER, and will be available to the entire
university communities around the clock. These services will be
accessible from any workstation with a university internet
identification (IP number), including access from home for those with
university internet dialup privileges.
Some MALMAD services will be based on local servers, others on access
to services abroad, depending on the communications, economics, and
possible options of the specific services.
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Web of Science
The Web of Science is a product of the Institute for Scientific
Information (ISI). This composite data base includes:
- Science Citation Index Expanded (including 2000 more titles than
the CD-ROM version of Science Citation Index) (with abstracts)
- Social Science Citation Index (with abstracts)
- Arts and Humanities Citation Index
The Web of Science can be searched by keyword, author, journal, and
citation (works cited). It is as up-to-date as Current Contents,
nevertheless, it does not replace Current Contents completely, as it
doesn't have some of the latter's specific search options.
The data base begins with material for 1998 and is updated weekly
(about 22,000 additional items per week).
Access to the Web of Science database is restricted to staff and
students of the participating institutions. Access validation is
automatic, based on the identification (IP number) of the user's
computer.
For further information and access to the database, start at:
http://wos.libnet.ac.il/wos/wos.htm
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Electronic journals
One of the major projects planned by the consortium is joint access
and/or subscription to electronic editions of scholarly journals.
Negotiations are underway with several publishers and suppliers.
Since electronic articles (particularly those with illustrations) are
usually rather large files and their retrieval from abroad very slow -
we are looking into two options: improving the speed of retrieval from
abroad and establishing local "mirror sites".
At the moment a local test site with a few issues of Elsevier journals
is available and you are welcome to try it (start from:
http://www6.huji.ac.il/libnet/scstest.shtml).
*** Please note that this test site will be available only until
6/3/98.
Most electronic journals today are in "pdf" format and you must have
the Adobe Acrobat Reader program installed on your PC to read them.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is available free at:
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.shtml
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Subscribing to this newsletter
This electronic newsletter will appear periodically with news of
services of the university library network. If you did not receive
it directly and would like to be added to the mailing list, send an
email message to:
majordomo@shum.cc.huji.ac.il
the message should consist of a single line:
subscribe libnet
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o Poor internet connectivity: I think I am not telling you anything you
didn't know by saying that during the last several weeks (or better
say months) the connectivity to the Internet has deteriorated for the
majority of the users. This happened due to the increasing demand for
bandwidth, while the link capacity to the Internet remains relatively
unchanged.
The reason why the capacity has not been increased is lack of funding.
The universities have decided that any further increase in capacity
should be funded by users willing to pay for the bandwidth they
consume. The mechanism by which such funds are raised was termed
"Business Class" Internet (probably because it allows the users to
stretch their legs). The mechanism allows any user or a group of
users to subscribe to such service, and receive an improved (faster!)
speed while accessing the Internet over the international link. The
funds raised this way are invested back in enlarging the links
capacity. Although some of this increase can be made available to the
general public, most of it, especially during peak hours, is made
available to the paying users. Currently, the performance provided to
BC users is comparable to the performance one gets while using the
services of leading commercial ISPs in Israel.
Most of the above is to say that although some minor relief is
expected in the future, no dramatic change over the current situation
will occur, unless people will be willing to pay for good connectivity
to the Internet.
For more details regarding the Business Class service please consult
http://www.tau.ac.il/cc/pages/prices/internet.shtml
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