NETWORKS AND COMMUNITY : January 3, 1994 Networks and Community is devoted to encouraging LOCAL resource creation & GLOBAL resource sharing. compiler : Sam Sternberg samsam@vm1.yorku.ca This first report of 1994 is the 6th weekly survey. Coverage includes: LEGISLATION DISCUSSIONS NEW SERVICES FUNDING RECENT REPORTS & TRENDS ------------------------------------------------------- LEGISLATION An excellent summary of pending legislation effecting communets is available in the latest issue of the American Library Assoc. e-newsletter - ala-won. To subscribe send mail to : listserv@uicvm.uic.edu -> subscribe ala-wo [your name here] Along with your subscription acknowledgement will come info on using the archives to retrieve items like the current issue. ----------------------------------------------------------- DISCUSSIONS The NPTN list was very busy this week. The prime focus was on delaying the restructuring conference till summer and using the remaining time to develop issues on single topic listservs. Norman Kurland posted a draft funding document that generated interest. He proposed a support approach involving a mix of free and paid services. nkurland@albanyvms.bitnet Fee-nets were temporarily granted permission to charge for services but warned that doing so was dangerous for several reasons - including the possibility of losing charitable status. The Office of Technology Assessment hired NPTN to conduct a multisite discussion on using electronic technology for delivering Social Security services. This distributed research project is a first of its kind. It is to be completed by the end of January. The result will be worked into a report from OTA. The Cypherwonks list has essentially died at the hand of one of its founders and his numerous detractors. Several prior participants are trying to find a moderated forum on which to continue the very fruitful discussion which took place during the early days of the list's operation. COMMUNET developed an active discussion on the potential role of Cable systems in delivering community network services. The ignorance of Local governments - responsible for regulating the cable providers - was decried. Some members are actively trying to educate their municipalities and get them to reguire community access to the internet as a licensing feature. Additional comments on the danger to the "character" of the Internet from commercialization were made. This included several impassioned pleas for activism on the part of the readers. ------------------------------------------------------------- FUNDING A fee based - online - fundraising workshop is being offered. I would love to see a similar workshop offered for free; but this price is in line with fees for conventional workshops on funding. It begins Feb. 1, 1994. The workshop fee is $100.00 per participant. Post-workshop personalized consultations (by e-mail or other means) are available at $100 per hour. Registration: To register, send a check for $100 "per participant ***" payable to Internet Works, Inc. to: Internet Works, Inc. Proposal Planning & Writing Workshop 9988 Whitewater Drive Burke, VA 22015 [ *** on the Internet no one knows your a participant - pricing information and services is a problem on the net - so the honour system prevails - sam ] Include the usual information needed for them to know how to e- mail the lessons to you and mail you other pertinent info. --------------------------------------------------------------- RECENT REPORTS A very important proposal for improving the flow of e-mail on the Internet has been posted to the gopher at : cyfer.esusda.gov -> American Communicating Electronicly ACE --> M.U.S.E. Report The report is very verbose but its worth reading. It argues that the U.S. federal government must develop uniform e-mail standards and its goes to great lengths to explain the economic and other benefits of doing so. Its most exciting feature is a detailed discussion of the types of "address books" that should be provided. "One might think of the M.U.S.E. as an electronic cloud into which anyone outside the Federal Government could send a piece of e-mail, and have it delivered to any Federal Government addressee regardless where that addressee might be located. Unlike the USPS which is a single mail cloud for everyone in the Nation, the M.U.S.E. would be a single cloud for the whole Federal Government only. Everyone outside the Federal Government must fend for themselves as best they can. That's where all those private sector, state and local mail systems get their chance for a piece of the action. When it comes to mail between their customers and Federal Government parties, those other systems just dump it into the cloud and collect it from the cloud". The proposal is based on 5 principles. 1. A single functional agency interface (for enveloping, transport and directory services) to everyone outside the agency. 2. No multi-agency, multi-interface burden on the private sector or on state and local governments. 3. A standard interface and discipline for interoperation with any non-Federal network, such that all private sector, state and local networks can provide an accommodation for their respective users or customers. If there were a national e-mail system, Federal Government parties could be expected to accommodate to it rather than vice versa. However, the reality is that there are potentially hundreds of unique e-mail systems outside the government which will want to offer government interoperation to their customers and users. 4. A directory arrangement that will support use by everyone outside the Federal Government, to support their dealings with the whole government; specifically, to find services, to find information, and to conduct business, regardless of which agency may be involved. 5. A solid foundation to support the regulatory needs of agencies and the needs and tests of the Federal Courts, for the conduct of Federal Government business and delivery of Federal Government services. Once again using the postal system as analogy, there must be the equivalent of the postmark to determine, legally, when something was mailed; of the return receipt to establish legally that something was delivered and when it was delivered; of the dependability of transport; of the preservation of item integrity; and of the address to which something required can be sent easily by all respondents regardless where the respondents may be located." The report clearly points out the economic advantages of substituting electrons for paper. It is on this point that community network advocates should support the proposal and point out the important role communets can play in making the savings real. " The paperwork required under law has two results. First, benefits and services cannot ordinarily be delivered until the paperwork has been completed. Second, the processing of the paperwork creates a cost that is borne by the taxpayers. A certain percentage of the total cost of every government program is the collection and processing of necessary information. While this percentage is usually low (less than five percent), if it were to ggregated across the entire Federal Government, it would robably total in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. To be sure, program administration involves more than just handling forms, reports, notices, and payments. Clerks and benefits specialists in Federal agency offices across the country explain programs and benefits, answer unusual questions, and assist citizens, organizations, and local governments in their interactions with the Federal Government. While this will always be needed, a portion can be shifted to electronics, as the use of sophisticated computer-based voice response systems, together with "800" number calling have demonstrated." The section dealing with "address location" proposes the following types of information sources. The M.U.S.E.'s White Pages design is for the benefit of citizen and organization communication with elected and appointed officials, and the facilitation of e-mail across agency lines within the government. The Blue Pages design is for the removal of barriers to Federal Government services; to make the government less confusing and impenetrable to the Nation, and to speed the delivery of services by shortening the time to connect a citizen to an appropriate servicer. The Yellow Pages design is the mother lode in the gold mine, not only for individual agencies and individual non- Federal parties, but for the Nation as a whole. More hard dollar benefits may be associated with the Yellow Pages than with any other single feature of the M.U.S.E. While the Yellow Pages may be the most cost-beneficial part of the directory, its sophistication makes it the hardest to appreciate. In a nutshell, what the Yellow Pages do is facilitate not only the Federal Government's business with parties outside the government, but also those parties' business oportunities with the Federal Government. "Business" in this context is not just procurement, but any mission or program activity. Yellow Pages: Non-Procurement E-mail includes the concept of what is called "distribution list" addressing. A distribution list is a list of addressees which has a separate name for the entire list, taken as a whole. Someone who wishes to send the same message to everyone in the list need enter the message only once, addressed to the name of the list. The e-mail environment automatically sends the message to everyone in the list. The M.U.S.E. Yellow Pages let the Federal Government reap the full benefits of distribution list addressing by marrying it with the information-finding capabilities of the telephone Yellow Pages. "Green Pages" This name was coined to identify a functionality so closely related to the Blue Pages that it might almost be wedded to that part of the directory. Just as the Blue Pages help people find sources of Federal assistance, the Green Pages help people find sources of Federal information publications and holdings. [ this post is on an U.S. agricultural extension service gopher. This service has been particularly good about promoting lower cost and more effective government thru electronic means. - Rural communets should be working with their local extension offices and land grant colleges.] ------------------------------------------- Another interesting report is the VALA conference report from Australia. The report is international in scope and the article quality is high. While it was aimed primarily at libraries; it includes several items about public information providers like communets. The conference took place 2 months ago. gopher -> gopher.latrobe.edu.au -> VALA It is encouraging to see conference reports available electronicly within weeks of an event. Prior to the Internet this "document" would have been available to very few non austrailians and then not for at least a year or two. --------------------------------------------------------- NEW SERVICES 2 interesting new gopher based services have appeared. The University of Missouri provides what it calls "enhanced subject areas". It is making use of its status as a federal depository library to provide the internet with many important government documents not previously available in electronic format. These include: Army area handbooks - this is an extraordinarily good series of books about foreign countries. Japan is the first available. State Department Background Notes Foriegn Trade Practices reports - which provide excellent information about doing business with specific countries. Occupational Outlook Annual Report - with details about types of work and future prospects for each type. There are several other new docs as well. [ I hope that Federal Depository libraries will get together and divide up the task of placing valuable older materials on line. They could also be lobbying for more material to be available in electronic format as well ]. The most interesting section for communets that want to provide improved international business information to their community is: gopher -> umslvma.umsl.edu. -->subject area ---> business ----> international marketing This site has gone from 420 logins in Jan 93 to 17,000 last Oct. -------------------------------------- Also of interest is the unique approaches to information location and to subject area resources taken by the the University of Southern California. This gopher allows full text search of all data from its top level menu [ and there is a lot of data on this gopher ]. Just visit the Indexes topic. It also treats subject information uniquely by offering a List of Subjects which contain the subject related material from many seperate gophers' subject areas. Do have a look at both features. gopher -> cwis.usc.edu --> other gophers ---> gopher jewels --> indexes ---> search title ---> search full text -------------------------------------------------------- TRENDS The importance of Distance Education to the information superhighway is becoming clearer. More than 40 conferences on Education Technology are already announced for 1994. All of them will include discussions of Distance Ed. It looks like schools and libraries may end up vying for the LIFE LONG LEARNING role that distance ed is beginning to fill. Still funding is a problem. The U.K.'s open university has openned its database of distance education materials to the public for free. This formerly fee based service was not making ends meet or meeting its intended service goals so it hopes enough folks will sign up for the free service to allow it to find sponsorship. telnet --> acsvax.open.ac.uk answer the first three prompts with 1 - icdl 2 - {the name of your country of origin in capitals} 3 - ARA --------------------------------------------- The list of distance ed resources is Compiled by J. H. Ellsworth . It was last updated: 21-October-1993 This guide is available via FTP at host: una.hh.lib.umich.edu, path: /inetdirs, file: disted.ellsworth Among its most worthwhile listed resources is EDNET Education Net : listserv@nic.umass.edu EDNET is for those interested in exploring the educational potential of the Internet. Discussions range from K-12 through postsecondary education. A very active list. Send the usual message to the listserv. Also useful is the semiannual publication The Online Chronicle of Distance Education and Communication To subscribe to The Online Chronicle of Distance Education and Communication, send the following command to listserv@uwavm or to listserv@uwavm.bitnet SUB DISTED your_full_name ------------------------------------ NETWORKS and COMMUNITY is a public service of FUTURE DATA; a partnership of researchers and research system designers. Our research resources include all commercial and non commercial nets, along with over 200 cd-rom databases, 50,000 magazines and more than 30 million books. For commercial services contact Gwyneth Store - circa@io.org This newsletter is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN and may be used as you see fit. To contribute items or enguire about this newsletter contact Sam Sternberg samsam@vm1.yorku.ca .