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Check out their new Web site.
Data Text Processing Ltd. http://www.dircon.co.uk/datatext/index.html
The following texts are all in html (the hypertext markup language used on the Web.)
The following texts are all in html (the hypertext markeup language used on the Web)
A wide variety of classic etexts in French, including:
http://login.eunet.no/~presno/index.html
For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available at a nominal price from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, a project of The Samizdat Express. For further information, send email to samizdat@tiac.net .
The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced $65 million funds available to increase the use of the Internet by school districts, libraries, community groups, universities, state and local governments, public safety providers, and non-profit organizations. For details check the above sites, or send email to tiiap@ntia.doc.gov
From the Children's Literature Web Guide http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/index.html Maintained by D.K. Brown at the University of Calgary, this site provides an enormously rich array of material related to children's literature. If you are interested in that subject, this is the place to start.
From The Smithsonian Institute (SI) http://www.si.edu This home page provides access to the following resources:
From the Mark Twain Library http://hydor.colorado.edu/twain This sire is a "labor-of-love" project to collect and provide the works of Mark Twain. Lots of good pointers to related resources.
From Hillside Elementary in Minnesota http://hillside.coled.umn.edu/others.html They celebrated their first anniversay on March 12, and have added more material. Check it out.
From Mark Lottor of Network Wizards http://www.nw.com , ftp.nw.com Data on the size and growth of the Internet, based on results collected in late Jan. 1995. ftp://ftp.isoc.org/isoc/charts/hosts3.ppt Powerpoint graphs of host growth, based on the above data and prepared by the Internet Society.
From Proyecto Cervantes http://158.122.3.3/servicio.html , Sergio Pou (sergio@influx.mxl.cetys.mx ) is asking for help/collaboration in his effort to make Cervantes texts available on the Internet.
From the Amistad Research Center http://www.arc.tulane.edu , gopher gopher.tulane.edu Hosted at Tulane, this research center collects and preserves manuscripts related to the history and culture of African-Americans and other ethnic minorities. Major headings at this new (under construction) Web site include: Manuscript Collections, African-American Art Collections, African Art, Media, African-American Historical Exhibits, Library/Periodicals, and Tours, Vists and Museum Shop.
From the Tarlton Law School at the U. of Texas http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu This site provides links to law-related resources around the world. Apparently, it also plans to include the text of a variety of law journals.
From Montgomery County, Pennsylvania http://www.mciu.k12.pa.us More news from this project to provide Internet access for teachers in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. "We have 1400 accounts since Sept. We had to cut a typical modem session at 1 hour due to the traffic We currently have 16 lines coming in and they are heavily used after 3 PM into the evening. During the school day, we see 6-8 people on at a time. We are setting up "direct connections to districts this spring. We have 21 school districts in our region."
From NASA. To allow students a glimpse into the real world of modern research, NASA will make two research projects availble on-line from April through May. Both projects will provide frequent updates about day-to-day activities as well as extensive background information, available by Web and Gopher.
subscribe updates-tpo
subscribe updates-sra
NetPhone for Macintosh (from Electric Magic Company) http://www.emagic.com/ From the description on the Web, this sounds like a Macintosh version of the Internet Phone. (I don't have a Macintosh, so I haven't been able to check it out.)
A few years ago, the Internet was like the Rainman -- an autistic idiot-savant. It contained an incredible wealth of facts in its global "brain," but there was no built-in way to associate one piece of information with another or to find what you wanted when you wanted it.
With the coming of gopher and then the World Wide Web, one site or document could link to another site or document. This added a whole new power of association -- so long as the people who ran the various sites knew about related material elsewhere and went to the trouble to insert pointers. In cases, where a community of scholars made full use of this capability, it was possible to follow your threads of thought from one document to another, taking advantage of these previously planted associations.
It was that stage of technology that gave rise to the concept of electronic "malls." The manager of a Web site could help guide the interests of the user by constructing sets of menus. The cyber visitor would come looking for one kind of information and see offerings of commercial enterprises listed in the same menu. This was association by proximity. And retailers hoped to attract on-line customers based on old mall-type business models. Indeed, a year ago, O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator or GNN (http://www.ora.com) was probably the best starting point on the Web.
Today we see search tools adding to the associative power of the Internet. Today Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) is probably the best starting point -- with nowhere near as much work involved as a site like GNN. The concept was simple -- let people who run Web sites submit information about their pages; keep it all in a database; and use readily available search tools to let people find what they want. The students at Stanford who created and run that site also offer a hierarchy of menus as an added help.
Meanwhile, the Britannica On-Line project (http://www.eb.com/eb.htm) uses a search mechanism (WAIS) to make its full content readily accessible. It also is designed so the reader can click on any word in an article and immediately get the dictionary definition of that word.
And now a company called Infoseek has added a new dimension ( http://www.infoseek.com:80/Home ). They index World Wide Web pages, usenet newsgroups (over 10,000 of them), the full text of over 50 computer newspapers and magazines, and the major news services (Reuters, Associated Press, Businesswire, PR Newswire, and the Newsbytes News Network). In response to your queries, you get a hypertext list of article titles. When you click on the one you want, you get the full text right away. Unlike Yahoo, you have to pay for this service. But if it saves you time, or you find an important item that otherwise you wouldn't know about, it's well worth the money. (In an ideal world, all information would be available on-line and free; and we would, as in this case, pay to get less -- to get exactly what we want when we want it.)
We expect to see even more powerful tools that will help novice users quickly find the Web site or the particular piece of information they need, without the need for an orderly superstructure, such as a mall or a television-style network. Such tools will be able to interpret content, to highlight main points, to do some basic language translation, and to automatically generate summaries to help us cope with the huge amounts of information available. Instead of picking the right on-ramp with the right selection of menu choices as signs to guide you, you'll use search and directory tools. And as a next step, based on such tools, it will be possible to have your own individual home page generated for you on the fly, tailored to a profile of your interests.
So we see the Internet rapidly developing associative powers that make metaphors from the traditional world of business seem irrelevant. With these tools, users are actively in control -- seeking what they want and getting it without intermediaries. The Internet increasingly becomes an extension of your own mind, building on your natural powers of association. In this kind of environment, location -- in time or space -- means nothing. Here the user is creator, not consumer.
Today, attracted by the media hype which they themselves help to spread, mega-infotainment companies are anxious to move into the Internet and "own" it. Such companies presume that because of the compelling content that they already own, they have a natural advantage here. They anxiously anticipate ever greater video capability. They expect that the business models that helped them dominate elsewhere will succeed here as well.
Some have already begun to mimic their print publications on the Web, and others are looking at the Internet as just another broadcast medium -- another way to deliver the same content to the same passive audience. Of course, they'll add some "interactive" elements as an enticement, but basically they still think that this is Kansas. They haven't woken up to the fact that they are entering Oz.
Will they win? Anything is possible. But the Internet is the natural home of the small and nimble, who feed on dinosaur eggs.
That's the favorite breakfast food in Oz.
PS -- Censorship, as an abridgement of freedom of expression, is marginally acceptable in a broadcast medium, where the choices of a few producers are imposed on many consumers. In that case, censorship can be seen as protecting the rights of consumers, so long as it actually reflects their desires. But in a medium where the individual has total control, and makes individualized choices among millions of files, and where anyone can be a creator/producer, censorship makes no sense at all. When the Internet becomes an extension of my mind, censoring the Internet is like trying to censor my thoughts. And no government should ever get into that business.
In other words, the same misunderstanding that is leading mega-media companies to rush into the Internet business is leading government to try to control Internet content.
When will they realize that this isn't Kansas?
From: Ed Langthorn <edlang@ccnet.com>
While I disagree that all human beings will show their "bad side" if given a chance (Mandela and Ghandi never sought revenge though they controlled large masses of people) I do believe the Internet will be a great resource for the positive advancement of mankind.
"The world is one country and mankind its citizens" said Baha'u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Baha'i Faith. This is truer today than ever before, thanks in part to the instant global communications made possible by the Internet. The trick here is to make access available to all. By Internet exposure to other cultures we will see that unity in diversity is far more desirable than fragmentation and separation
As we watch the decline of the institutions upon which we have relied for so many years, it becomes apparent that we must rely instead on each other. To do so we must communicate. The Internet provides a fast, cheap and efficient method.
Universal education will help lift masses of humanity from utter poverty to productive rewarding lives. The Internet is the educational tool of the future. Separate teachers and classrooms will be replaced by central classes and courses with worldwide Internet students.
As the new society grows and the old one crumbles, we will emerge united to create a new world based on cooperation, rather then self-interest. It is coming and the Internet is paving the way.
Regards,
Ed Langthorn
From: Lynn Zelvin <lzelvin@pond.com>
I would like to get onto your electronic distribution list for your catalog and newsletter. I would also like to ask you a question regarding the "World Wide Web"
In your newsletter, you refer to this as the begining of unrestricted for all, or are warning of the dangers of separate organizations becoming proprietary regarding text that should be freely available. I am sorry if I am a little confused. What I understand is that the "Web" is basically adding a graphic and more powerful overlay to text information to link it together and make more easy to "point and click".
I am a computer user who is partially blind and uses a synthesizer to access the computer. For a long time the world of GUI's has loomed large for those of us using speech or braile to access computers because they were not accessible. Nibbles into that problem are being made. It is far from being solved and a lot of the technology is getting away from us.
While once the computer was beconing a leveler between and sighted it is now becoming an obstacle.
This is where my question lies. I have thought of the Internet as a potential source of unrestricted access to the world of information that that has been unavailable to me. However, if accessing that material and the internet in general is going graphic, it feels like another door slamming. You have spoken about the glory of having this space free from any sort of regulation, but is there any way that those of us who have the least access to the free flow of ideas, information, knowledge won't become second class citizens in electronic space unless there is some sort of regulation that mandates people be considerate and write interfaces that can also be accessed through text-based systems or that are written in such a way as to be accessible through the programs that are attempting to provide access to systems like Windows?
As it is now, speech access adds a substantial amount to the cost of using a computer and braille adds a lot more. The cost is highest if you want a synthesizer that is pleassant sounding enough to make it palatable enough to use for reading a whole book. Every new thing we must access adds another expense. For instance, since I now use DOS and have a need to use Windows, I will need to spend another $500-$700 in order to buy a program that will give me mediocre access to windows. Using Windows will not simplify computing for me, as it is designed to do for the sighted user, but make it more complicated. Will this "Web" mandate another such expense for every graphic program written by every separate individual? Of course you can't answer this question.
Maybe, just be aware that freedom of speech and press and information are not available to all of us. Or, in other words, some of us are not as equal as others. And money is not the only line that divides people who have those rights from those of us who don't.
Thanks
Lynn Zelvin, Philadelphia, PA
I believe that we should put the emphasis on encouraging the entrepreneurs who actually use this technology on their Web sites to continue to make plain-text versions of their material available when they upgrade to the latest and greatest graphical presentation method. Many sites already provide a choice of graphics or text-only on the first screen. And many design their pages with the understanding that users may be connecting with LYNX, a character-cell browser (see issue #6). We need to encourage more sites to do that now,and all sites to continue that practice as graphical technology advances.
Use the power of the marketplace. It's in the best interest of Web sites to provide choice. Otherwise they lock out not just the blind, but also the millions of folks who have slow connections or older equipment and software or for other reasons can't download graphics or or video or don't want to. When a site ignores that need, simply send them email and encourage others to send them email. Simply remind them that they should provide low-tech plain-text versions of whatever they do, in addition to the latest and greatest graphical technology.
Richard Seltzer
Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com
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