From: mrp@ITD.Adelaide.EDU.AU (Mark Prior)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: AARNet white pages?
Date: 16 Oct 92 00:30:39 GMT
Distribution: aus
Organization: Information Technology Division, University of Adelaide
NNTP-Posting-Host: sirius.itd.adelaide.edu.au

In article <ggm.718865165@brolga>, ggm@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (George Michaelson) writes:
|> ednstras@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Michael Strasser) writes:
|>
|> >Does such a beast exist?  Is there a straightforward way to find someone's
|> >E-mail address given his/her name and institution?
|>
|> Yes, such a beast exists, but I doubt it will work. No, there isn't a
|> straightforward way to find RANDOM somebodys email address from these
|> facts alone. Combinations of inertia, politics and the sheer scale of
|> the problem make this a simple idea to think of, and a hard one to do.
|>
I would have thought the birth of your son would have cheered you up
George but I see you are as pessimistic as usual :-) :-)

|> You can browse the directory very simply by using the 'anonymous'
|> contact points dotted around the network (they're periodically announced
|> into news) -In fact since Griffith Uni run their own directory, you
|> probably have one on campus so I'd ask of the ITS. Failing which try:
|>
|>      whois -h sirius.oz.au "Surname, Organization, AU"
|>
Nice try but it's moved. If you want to use our public access point
into the X.500 directory then you should use wp.adelaide.edu.au
instead. There is also a "fred" account there that you can login to
and use one of the directory user agents directly.

The whois at sirius.ua.oz.au is different to the one at
wp.adelaide.edu.au and is an experimental version based on work being
conducted in an IETF working group. It also only lists information
about people at Adelaide Uni (and there is now way to change the scope
of it's searches).

If you want to find out info about people at Adelaide Uni you can also
use "finger person@wp.adelaide.edu.au", where person is their name,
changes spaces to "."'s or enclose the name in quotes.

|>
|> WAIS also has an index of email addresses collated from news, you can search
|> that if you KNOW the person is news active with a high chance of finding
|> their address.
|>
Netfind is easier to use than WAIS for this. You could also consider
using the phone book section within Gopher.

|> >It would be useful in trying to track down someone who I think works at a
|> >particular institution.
|>
|> You bet. Just ain't that simple. around 50,000 entries exist Australia-wide,
|> of which (i estimate) under 5% would have email address information recorded.
|> That 50,000 is peanuts, given the size and number of the universities alone.
|>
10-15% of our entries have e-mail addresses.

|> We're talking libraries where less than 10% of the books are indexed,
|> and of those, less than 5% have shelving information in the index entry.
|>
Yes but we are just coming out of the Dark Ages in this regard so you
should be grateful that we at least have some of the books and the
enthusiasm and motivation to start indexing the suckers.

Mark.
--
Mark Prior                              Phone : +61 8 228 5680
Information Technology Division         Telex : UNIVAD AA89141
University of Adelaide                  Fax   : +61 8 223 6245
GPO Box 498 Adelaide S.AUSTRALIA 5001   E-mail: mrp@ITD.Adelaide.EDU.AU