Via:      UK.AC.OX.VAX; 19 NOV 92 11:04:02 GMT
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cdromlan
Date:         Thu, 19 Nov 1992 11:04:00 GMT
              <CDROMLAN@IDBSU.BITNET>
From:         GARTNER@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
Subject:      Information Networking News Issue no. 3

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Issue 3                          November 1992                 ISSN: 0966-2774
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INFORMATION NETWORKING NEWS is an electronic journal produced by the UK's
CD-ROM and Information Networking Group: it is automatically sent by
electronic mail to members of the CD-ROM-NETWORK@JNT and CDROMLAN@IDBSU
mailing lists, can be consulted on and retrieved from the BUBL Bulletin Board
in the UK, and is available for ftp on the LIBSOFT archive at the University
of Western Ontario.
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                                    CONTENTS
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GENERAL
NETWORKING CD-ROM ON A LARGE CAMPUS NETWORK - CAN OPT-NET TAKE THE STRAIN?
by Alan Neville, University of Manchester, UK

Z39.50 FOR INNOCENTS by Tony Addyman, University of Salford, UK

REVIEWS AND EVALUATIONS
CDSENTRY - AN EVALUATION by Morag Watson, University of Birminham, UK

FORTHCOMING EVENTS AND CONFERENCES

HOW TO GET COPIES OF INFORMATION NETWORKING NEWS

EDITORIAL BOARD

NEXT ISSUE
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                                     GENERAL
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     NETWORKING CD-ROMS ON A LARGE CAMPUS NETWORK - CAN OPTI-NET TAKE THE
                                     STRAIN?
                  by Alan Neville, University of Manchester, UK

Much has been said about the unsuitability of CD-ROMs as a medium for
networking on all but the most limited of networks. At the University of
Manchester, we connected the Library's OPTI-NET CD-ROM server  to the
Campus Ethernet in May 1991, so we now have nearly one and a half year's
experience with which to reach a verdict on this question. The fact that
the Manchester University/UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology) network now has access to 6 CD-ROM servers with a
total of 74 networked CD drives indicates that our experiences have not
been entirely negative.

Usage of the Library's CD-ROMs from buildings outside the Library has grown
steadily since our connection to the Campus LAN. OPTI-NET only allows PCs
that are directly attached to the Ethernet to access the CD server, and
many departments (in particular, the Medical School) had very limited
Ethernet connections in mid 1991. As more departments have installed
Ethernet, and as we have acquired more databases on CD-ROM, so the load on
our OPTI-NET servers has increased. Of particular significance was the
attachment of UMIST Library to the Campus LAN a year ago. Their
workstations can now use our CD-ROMS, and our workstations can use their
CD-ROMs -generating considerable traffic over the 4 kilometres or so of
cable between the two libraries.

Our original OPTI-NET CD-ROM server, a Tandon 386-33 PC with 16 Hitachi
3600 series CD drives, was easily able to handle the traffic without any
appreciable degradation when our network had 6 workstations within one room
in the Library. As the traffic has grown, there have been occasions when
users have remarked upon the poor response times, though most of the
time searching speed has been adequate.

When we examined carefully how our OPTI-NET server was performing under
heavy load, it was clear to us that, with the version of OPTI-NET (1.30)
that we were then running, only one workstation was getting access to a
single drive at any time. We didn't have simultaneous users - we had
sequential users - all queuing to use their particular drive. As the number
of active users of the OPTI-NET server increased beyond ten, the
performance began to suffer very badly - with twenty users, it had almost
come to a complete halt.

The lesson from this experience was to avoid the temptation to attach too
many CD drives to any one server. On a small local network, 20 CD drives on
one server may be reasonable. On a much larger network, it would be more
sensible to split the drives between two servers, and divide the popular
CD-ROMs between the two so that neither is overloaded.

Though we split our popular CD-ROMs between two servers, eventually, the
inexorable growth in traffic (particularly the use of one database,
Medline) meant that response times again began to degrade, and by the start
of this summer vacation, searching Medline was a very time-consuming
operation at peak times - mid morning and early afternoon.

The answer to our problems, we were told, was to use CD-ROM drives with
SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) controller cards. These controller
cards (or at least, those which support the SCSI-2 standard) have a
"disconnect-reconnect" feature which allows the controller to pass on a
request to a CD drive, then disconnect while the drive is attempting to
fulfil the request, and deal with a second drive in the meantime, offering
virtually simultaneous access to several drives. Unfortunately, short of
trading in your old CD drives (at a considerable loss) for a new set with
SCSI interfaces, there doesn't seem to be any reasonable way of
converting CD drives with proprietary interfaces to CD drives with SCSI
interfaces.

So we bought a new set of CD drives, with SCSI controller cards and set up
a new OPTI-NET server. Our disappointment was considerable when this server
proved no better than our existing server with (much cheaper) proprietary
Hitachi controller cards. OPTI-NET 1.30 didn't support the SCSI
connect-disconnect feature! Our disappointment was even greater when we
upgraded to OPTI-NET 2.0 several months later. Version 2.0 specifically
states that SCSI connect-disconnect is supported by its 'turbo' driver -
but it also told us that our SCSI controller cards didn't support this
feature !!!  It appears that not all SCSI controllers cards are equal, and
the default (ie cheaper) SCSI cards which dealers will supply with SCSI
CD-ROM drives are usually not suitable for use with the OPTI-NET 2.0 turbo
driver. Be warned - when making a purchase of SCSI CD-ROM drives - specify
that they must work with the OPTI-NET 2.0 turbo driver.

Undaunted, we purchased another set of 10 SCSI interface SONY CD drives,
with two supported (ADAPTEC AHA-1542B) SCSI controller cards, plus two
replacement controller cards for our previous set of 10 SCSI CD drives, and
attached all 20 drives to a Tandon MCS 486-33 PC. Setting up the SCSI
controller cards was a very exacting task - with some five jumper sets to
configure (compared to one jumper on the proprietary Hitachi cards), but we
got it right eventually.

The performance of the new server is quite remarkable. Simultaneous access
to several drives is possible, and response time degrades much more slowly
as the number of users increases. Twenty simultaneous users no longer bring
the server to a halt - I have seen it cope with 25 simultaneous users. This
is partly because our most popular database is Medline, a multi-disc
database, so the users are spread between discs. If all the users were
interested in a single disc, then the improvement in performance with SCSI
CD drives would be less marked.

For the moment, as least, it would appear that an OPTI-NET 2.0 server with
suitable SCSI interface CD-ROM drives can cope with networking CDs onto a
large network. OPTI-NET 2.0 has other features which are very helpful on a
Campus LAN. It enables the supervisor to limit the number of simultaneous
users of particular databases, thus allowing enforcement of database
licensing conditions. It also produces a (rather crude) usage log, and we
have written a qbasic program (qbasic comes with MS-DOS 5) which extracts
some very useful database usage statistics from this log file. Hence we can
report that we average a total of 700 connect hours per week on Medline,
and we can look at the distribution of use of particular databases between
ourselves and UMIST, for example. Our OPTI-NET servers have proved very
reliable, and are left running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In
practice, they have been available over 99% of the time, and have very
rarely required resetting.

Though we are very pleased with our OPTI-NET 2 SCSI server, we have
observed, like those who build motorways, that demand has a habit of
growing to fill available capacity, so we never have the opportunity to
rest on our laurels !


Alan Neville
John Rylands University Library of Manchester
Oxford Rd., Manchester M13 9PP UK

Tel:+44 (0)61-275-3751 Fax:+44 (0)61-273-3751 Email:
A.F.Neville@uk.ac.manchester

                                   ********


                               Z39.50 FOR INNOCENTS
                    by Tony Addyman, University of Salford, UK


1. Imagine - A Nightmare

Imagine the Internet of today, but without the Telnet and FTP protocols
(just the reliable transport connection, for those who understand these
things). To log on to a remote host to use a service, you would need to
know which particular protocol(s) that host supported, and as a
consequence, which particular client software you should use. Your choice
would vary from host to host, and may even vary depending on your choice of
service on a particular host. You would face the same intimidating problem
if you wanted to transfer a file between two machines. [Aside: To many of
you this nightmare is so unreal as to be unbelievable. We are so used to
these ubiquitous protocols that we take them for granted.] You awake,
sweating ...


2. Reality

Awakening from your nightmare you recall that the Internet does indeed
provide standard protocols for FTP and logon to remote hosts. It was all
bad dream. Your panic subsides. You fall asleep once more ...


3. Imagine - A Dream

Imagine the Internet of tomorrow. Not only does it offer standard protocols
for logging onto remote hosts, transferring files, and electronic mail - as
it does today, but it also offers a standard protocol for accessing remote
information sources, e.g. bibliographic databases, On-line Public Access
Catalogues (OPACs), Campus Wide Information Servers, (CWISs) etc. With one
protocol would come one piece of client software to learn! Many activities
would become much easier; both for ordinary users and for information
specialists. No more need to learn the command language and the Boolean
search syntax of many different vendors. Users would be much easier to
train. The Internet would be much more useful to the ordinary library user.
Happiness is ...! You awake. Your happiness punctured by reality! Perhaps,
one day, your dream will come true.


4. Making the dream come true - Z39.50 and SR

To make the dream come true we would need a standard way for one computer
to access a database on another computer. In the field of commercial data
processing there already is such a standard: the Structured Query Language
(SQL), but SQL is not suitable for (textual) information retrieval
applications. Another standard is needed.

In fact there are two standard information retrieval protocols: ANSI/NISO
Z39.50 (Ref. 1 & 2) and ISO Search and Retrieve (SR) (Ref. 3). These two
standards have evolved in parallel and are very similar. As there is a
commitment to harmonise the second version of Z39.50 (often referred to as
Z39.50-1992) with SR, so that SR will be a functionally compatible subset
of Z39.50, we will consider them to be a single standard, called Z39.50 for
convenience, with the differences being described later. Further
information about Z39.50 and SR may be found in (Ref. 4).

Z39.50 is an Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) standard. It does not cover
such issues as establishing a connection between the client and the server,
or the coding and sending of messages, as these are dealt with by other OSI
standards. It focuses on information retrieval between two computer systems
- a client and a server - by defining the services to be provided. It uses
an abstract model to describe a database, which is seen as being made up of
one or more files. Information may be retrieved from a database in the form
of records. All the records within a file will have a common structure,
contain a common set of data elements and have a common set of access
points. An access point may be the same as a data element, may be derived
from a data element, or may be the combination of all or part of two or
more data elements. For example, if there were a "title" data element,
searching for a word within the title or a phrase within the title would be
two different access points.

The most important Z39.50 service is the SEARCH service. The search request
provides

*    the database(s) to be searched,
*    the name to be given to the result set (for identification purposes),
*    the preferred format for any records that are returned,
*    the query itself, and
*    bounds which define "large", "medium" and "small" result sets.

The response to the SEARCH gives the number of records found and the number
returned. The number returned will depend on the classification of the
result set. If it is "large" no records are returned, if it is "small" all
the records are returned, otherwise the number of records returned is
controlled by a separate parameter. The PRESENT service allows a client to
retrieve records from a result set, enabling the retrieval of any records
that were not included with the SEARCH response. Other services provide for
the initialisation and termination of the dialogue, and allow the client to
delete result sets that are being held by the server.

The query itself may be structured in a number of different ways. The
standard defines a notation that provides Boolean operators, relational
operators and truncation, but not proximity operators - although these are
appearing in the more recent drafts. The standard also recognises the query
formats defined in IS8777 and NISO Z39.58. The use of a standard query
structure has enormous potential, as it should allow any client to
interrogate any server. To do so, however, requires the client and the
server to map their own query languages onto a standard query language.
Such mappings are certain to cause problems; for example, when a client
that supports phrase searching interrogates a server that only supports
word searching.

The Z39.50 standard defines two optional services: RESOURCE CONTROL and
ACCESS CONTROL that are not in SR. These allow a server to authenticate a
client before processing a request, and allow a server to provide status
reports during processing.

The above description is of a relatively simple information retrieval
service. There are several notable problems.

*    Clients cannot discover what databases are available, nor obtain
     relevant details concerning these databases, e.g. ownership, cost of
     use, the names of fields that can be searched.
*    Clients cannot browse through the thesaurus or controlled vocabulary
     that was used when indexing a database
*    The abstract database model, which assumes records have a common
     structure, is not appropriate for free text retrieval.

The first two issues are among those currently being addressed as part of
the revisions of Z39.50 and SR as the EXPLAIN database and the BROWSE
service, respectively. Free text retrieval is being addressed by WAIS.
Z39.50 and SR are being used in a number of development projects in the
United States and in Europe. The experience gained in this development work
is being fed into the standards making process and helping to improve
revisions of the standard. This close relationship between the standards
writers and the developers - often a single individual will wear both hats
- is a good sign for the future. [Author's note: The BSI/ISO standard for
the programming language Pascal, in which I was heavily involved, benefited
enormously from similar interactions]. Unfortunately, the future is just
that! What can an enthusiast do today?

5. WAIS: Z39.50 for the Impatient - Just add information
The Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) is a development of work done by
Thinking Machines, who developed a parallel free-text retrieval system for
their Connection Machine - a massively parallel computer (Ref. 5). Using
this experience they initiated a project to demonstrate "how current
technology can be used to open a market of information services that will
allow a user's workstation to act as librarian and information collection
agent from a large number of sources" (Ref. 6). WAIS is made up of three
parts: servers, clients and the interconnecting protocol. The server is
responsible for the indexing and retrieval of "documents"; the client
provides the user interface; and the protocol, which is a variant of
Z39.50, is used to carry the queries and the responses.

WAIS is designed for use by ordinary computer users with expertise in their
own disciplines, so Thinking Machines decided that queries would be
formulated in pseudo natural language and refined using "relevance
feedback" (Ref. 7). A user interacts with the client to formulate a
question, which is translated by the client into the WAIS protocol, and
transmitted to the chosen server(s). On receipt of the query, the server
translates it into its own query language, and searches for documents to
satisfy the query. It then encodes the list of relevant documents into the
WAIS protocol and sends it back to the client, which displays the list for
the user, along with an indication of how relevant the server considered
each document to be. Typically each document is described by a "headline".
If the document were a newspaper article an actual headline would be used;
for Usenet news or email archives it would be the subject; in the limit,
the system may have to use a filename as the headline. The user may then
retrieve a document from the server, ask for other documents "similar to"
one already found, ask another question, etc.

The current implementation of WAIS uses simple queries rather than Boolean
queries. With a  simple query documents are scored by totally the postings
for each word in the query. Those documents with the highest scores are
taken to be the most relevant. When the user identifies a document, or a
part of a document that they consider to be relevant, they select it and
invoke relevance feedback. This takes the selected text as the set of words
which form a new simple query.

The need to support relevance feedback queries is the main reason for
differences between the WAIS protocol and Z39.50 (Ref. 8). Other
differences provide for the retrieval of parts of (large) documents, and
the retrieval of multi-media documents, i.e. documents other than text. In
WAIS a document is a block of data and a type. The client uses the type to
decide how to display the document. The different form of query introduces
two protocol changes: the query text is passed to the server unprocessed,
and the protocol is extended to allow a portion of a document to be
referenced, so that sections of a document can be marked as "relevant".
This latter change also allows for the retrieval of parts of documents.
Another requirement of the WAIS project was that the server be stateless,
i.e. it always deleted the result set after performing a search. The meant
that the Z39.50 PRESENT service is not used to retrieve documents. This is
overcome by requiring a server to a return unique document identifier for
each document as part of the search response. These identifiers are then
used by the client when specifying documents to retrieve.

Support for multi-media documents had a beneficial effect on the design of
WAIS itself. WAIS defines a special form of document known as a "Source".
This is a description of a database and how to contact it. It is a clients'
view of a database. By using databases of source documents, WAIS is able to
overcome some of the deficiencies in the current Z39.50 protocol. Each
server has an "INFO" database that is the database of the sources for all
the databases it supports. A small number of servers also offer a
"Directory of Servers" (actually, a directory of sources) database, which
provides information about all the WAIS databases available on the
Internet. These directories allow clients to search for useful databases,
and give information providers an opportunity to advertise the availability
of their data.

WAIS also uses a special form of document to describe a question. This
allows users to save a successful question for future use, email it to
others, or arrange for it to be submitted automatically on a regular basis
by the client software. If the database contains fixed information, e.g.
the Bible or the Koran, this would not be appropriate, but for some
databases it may be done daily, weekly, or monthly - depending on the
frequency with which the information in the database changes.

The availability of the WAIS source code has lead to a considerable amount
of international activity and development around the world in a very short
time. A number of institutions have created WAIS databases that can be
accessed over the Internet. More than two hundred and fifty different
databases have been made available on the Internet in less than a year.

The developers, though fewer in number, have been equally active, producing
performance improvements, creating clients for a simple screen device
(VDU), MSDOS, Microsoft Windows and the NeXT computer, and creating a new
client for the Macintosh. These are in addition to the clients for
X-Windows and the Macintosh that were created during the original WAIS
development. The server code has been ported to a number of UNIX variants.
In addition, connections have been established between WAIS and a number of
the other resource discover approaches, e.g. World Wide Web and Gopher,
that are appearing on the Internet (Ref. 9)

6. WAIS v Z39.50

Today WAIS is available on the Internet, whereas Z39.50 is still in the
development laboratories, so anyone wanting to provide an information
retrieval service on the Internet has to use WAIS. In the not too distant
future one or more of the Z39.50 development teams is likely to make their
source code available in the same way that Thinking Machines did with the
WAIS source code. Then there will be a choice. When that happens there is a
considerable risk that the community will be divided between Z39.50/SR on
one side and WAIS on the other. The success of a non-standard variant
(WAIS) could undermine the acceptance of products adhering to the standard,
in the same way that Borland's Turbo Pascal reduced the acceptance of the
ISO Pascal standard. At present it seems that WAIS will become part of a
future revision of Z39.50, but that will not solve the problem unless the
systems can interoperate, i.e. work together. There is danger that Z39.50
will follow the path of many OSI standards in providing a number of
options. We will then need to have "Profiles" that identify particular
combinations of the options. Products will be produced that comply with a
particular profile, and only those products that comply with the same
profile will interoperate! Sadly , this "nightmare scenario" is already a
reality for the Open Systems community, e.g. the Open Systems (GOSIP)
profiles of the U.K. and U.S. governments are different.

We must all do what we can to prevent the dream becoming a nightmare.


7. A Fly in the Ointment?

There is another development that could threaten the dream of Internet-wide
information retrieval. Currently, those who need to access a variety of
information retrieval system have to cope with a number of different
command languages and their corresponding Boolean search notations. It is
this variety and its inconvenience that highlights the need for a standard.
However, the growing interest in, and importance of, information retrieval
is pushing the research that is producing totally different ways of
searching the growing volumes of computer-based information. Neither WAIS
(described above) nor Xerox PARC's Information Theater (Ref. 10) use
conventional Boolean search formulae. These sort of approaches are so
different that they could prevent interoperability if they became popular.

8. Conclusions

Z39.50 and SR offer the prospect of Internet-wide information retrieval in
the same way that Telnet and FTP provide host access and file transfer.
Whether this becomes a reality will depend on a number of factors including
the success of WAIS, and the willingness of ordinary users to adopt
information retrieval that is based in the use of Boolean search formulae
if alternatives are available that are easier to use.

References
1. Z39.50-1988: Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol
Specification for Library Applications, Bethesda MD,  National Information
Standards Organisation.

2. ANSI Z39.50 Version 3 Fifth Draft: available electronically.
3. ISO DIS 10162/10163 Documentation - Search and retrieve service
definition/Search and retrieve protocol specification.

4. Dempsey, L. (1991) Libraries, Networks and OSI, Bath, UK Office for
Library Networking.

5. Stangill, C. and Kahle, B. (1986) Parallel Free-Text Search on the
Connection Machine System, Communications of the ACM, 29 (12), 1229-1239.
6. Stein, R.M. (1991) Browsing Through Terabytes, BYTE, 16 (5), 157-164.
7. Rocchio, J.J. Jr, (1971) Relevance feedback in information retrieval. In
G. Salton (Ed.), The Smart System -- Experiments in automatic document
processing, Eaglewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice-Hall.

8. Davis, F. et al (1990) WAIS Interface Protocol Prototype Functional
Specification Version 1.5, Cambridge MA, Thinking Machines Corp.
9. Schwartz, M.F. et al (1992) A Comparison of Internet Resource Discovery
Approaches, Computing Systems 5.4 (also in WAIS Discussion Digest number
56).

10. Clarkson, M.A. (1992) The Information Theater, BYTE, 17 (12), 145-152.


A.M.Addyman, Dept of Mathematics and Computer Science,
University of Salford, Salford, UK
AMAddyman@uk.ac.salford.mcs

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                          REVIEWS AND EVALUATIONS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           CDSENTRY - AN EVALUATION
               by Morag Watson, University of Birmingham, UK

The University of Birmingham received an evaluation copy of CDSENTRY from
Attica Cybernetics in the early summer 1992 for installation on its CD-ROM
network. CDSENTRY is intended to be a CD-ROM network manager and offers a
number of features including customizable front menu screens, end user
security, application license monitoring and metering, and summary usage
statistics.

We were interested in this because we had been looking for some time for
software packages which would provide us with a more user-friendly
interface to the CD-ROM network or which would permit us to gather
statistics on the usage of CD-ROMs on it.

INSTALLATION

The software consists of three files which must be copied to a directory on
the network file server to which all users have read/write/create access.

A file called NET.INI must then be created: this tells the system which
databases are loaded, the optical drive on which an applications is
located, the commands necessary to start a database,  and also sets any
assigned access limits. It is also used to create the menu for the user
interface.

The CDSENTRY command must then be added into the login procedure. This
command line has parameters for user name, optical server name, file server
name and the path for the NET.INI file.

e.g. CDSENTRY U=LIBUSER1 O=OPTICAL 1 F=MAIN_LIB_CDSERVER N=NET.INI

This was all fairly straight forward and described in the manual. The final
instruction in the manual was to set an ENVIRONMENT variable PSATION to an
unique value for each user. Unfortunately the manual failed to describe how
to do this or where in the batch files to place it.

The software requires 40k of RAM to run satisfactorily which is substantial
in view of the fact that many CD-ROM packages now require at least 512K.


MANUAL

The manual was a very short, uninformative document from which some vital
information was omitted, including the supervisor password. Attica
Cybernetics had to be contacted to obtain this. The password then turned
out to be Fred, and unchangeable which obviously has security implications.

SOFTWARE FEATURES

STATISTICS

The package was able to collect statistics of usage for each database,
maximum number of concurrent users and total users of each database over
the given period.  It is also possible to determine how long the database
was accessed, and minimum and maximum access times.

This information is of a similar standard to that now available with
Opti-Net 2.00 and is thus fairly basic.

A major problem with this statistics gathering was that it had to be
initialised and the statistics recorded elsewhere each day. There seemed to
be no way to allow the statistics gathering to run attended over a long
period of time.

CUSTOMISABLE MENUS

The package comes with customisable menus. This allows you to design a two
line title for the menu screen, and then set the menu item for each CD-ROM
database using the NET.INI file described above. Menus can be over one
screen in length: movement between them is achieved by pressing the N (for
"next") or P (for "previous") keys.

The menus are colourful and do make the user interface more attractive.

SUPERVISOR FUNCTIONS

The Supervisor has access to specialised functions, accessible from any
workstation, e.g. statistics logging, generating reports. It is also
possible to set the system up to restrict users access to DOS and also stop
users using the CTRL, ALT, DEL sequence to warm boot the PC if you so
require.

PRICE

The quoted price was 595 Pounds Sterling which is a lot of money for a
package with doesn't offer a lot more than is currently available with
Opti-Net 2.00.

SUMMARY

We had hoped that this package was going to meet our needs for a user-
friendly user interface that would the service more attractive to users and
also produce meaningful statistics that we could then use to inform the
future development of the network. Unfortunately we don't feel that this
package does this in a way that justifies the price of  595 Pounds and we
therefore will not be purchasing it.

Morag Watson
Deputy Systems Librarian
Main Library
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

Email M.I.WATSON @ UK.AC.BHAM


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                    FORTHCOMING EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


24 Nov. 1992:      CD IMPACTS '92: A one day seminar on the impacts and
                   applications of CD information media Venue: Church
                   House Conference Centre, Dean's Yard, Westminster,
                   London  Further details: Alison Francis, British
                   Library R & D Dept., 2 Sheraton Street, London.  W1V
                   4BH, UK. Tel: +44 (0)71 323 7053 Fax: +44 (0)71 323 7251

7-8 Dec. 1992:     Conference: Internet & Libraries  Venue: Wyndham
                   Franklin Plaza, Philadelphia, PA, USA  Further details:
                   Meckler Conference Management, 11 Ferry Lane West,
                   Westport, CT 06880, USA  Tel: 1-800-635-5537 or
                   +1 (203) 226-6967  Fax: 1-800-858-3144  or
                   +1 (203) 454-5840  Email: MECKLER @ JVNC.NET

8-10 Dec. 1992:    Online/CD-ROM Information 92 Venue: Olympia 2, London.
                   Further details: Jean Mulligan, Learned Information
                   Ltd., Woodside, Hinksey Hill, Oxford OX1 5AU, UK Tel:
                   +44 (0)865 730275


Please send details of any similar events for inclusion in the next edition
to:-
Caroline Moore, Library Information Technology Centre, South Bank
Technopark, 90 London Road, London SE1 6LN, UK  Email: LITC @
UK.AC.SBANK.VAX



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
             HOW TO GET COPIES OF INFORMATION NETWORKING NEWS
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     this list, simply send a request to CD-ROM-NETWORK-REQUEST @ UK.AC.JNT

2)   the CDROMLAN @ IDBSU mailing list: to join this list send a message to
     LISTSERV @ IDBSU containing the single line "SUBSCRIBE CDROMLAN
     Yourfirstname Yourlast name" eg. "SUBSCRIBE CDROMLAN Alan Smith"

3)   on the BUBL Bulletin Board in the UK: to access this service:-
     - from JANET, connect to GLA.BUBL  (or 00007110004011)
     - from IXI: connect to 20433450710511
     - from Internet: telnet to SUN.NSF.AC.UK, login: janet, hostname:
          uk.ac.glasgow.bubl

     The POST facility may be used to email copies to your mailbox: read
     section A9 for instructions.

4)   back copies are available by ftp from the LIBSOFT archive at the
     University of Western Ontario, Canada. To access this archive:-

     a)   FTP to HYDRA.UWO.CA (129.100.2.13)
     b)   Login as ANONYMOUS, and give your email address as a password.
     c)   Type CD LIBSOFT to change to the LIBSOFT directory.
     d)   Type GET + filename to retrieve the file you want (GET
          INFNETNEWS3.TXT for this issue)
     e)   Type CLOSE to close the connection
     f)   Type QUIT to leave the FTP software.


The filename for this issue is INFNETNEWS3.TXT.

Any other distribution lists or archive sites who would like to disseminate
or archive copies of INFORMATION NETWORKING NEWS, please contact Richard
Gartner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (GARTNER @ UK.AC.OX.VAX).


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              EDITORIAL BOARD
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

INFORMATION NETWORKING NEWS is produced by the UK's CD-ROM and Information
Networking Group: its editorial board comprises:-

-    Richard Gartner, Bodleian Library, Oxford, OX1 3BG UK
          Tel: +44 (0)865 277060  Email: GARTNER@UK.AC.OX.VAX

-    Michele Shoebridge, Main Library, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston,
               Birmingham, B15 2TT UK Tel: +44 (0)21 414 5835
          Email: M.I.SHOEBRIDGE@UK.AC.BHAM

-    Doug Moncur, Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York
               YO1 5DD UK Tel: +44 (0)904 433815 Email: D.MONCUR@UK.AC.YORK

-    Paul Leman, Computing Service, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
          Email: CS1PJL@UK.AC.SHEFFIELD.PRIMEA


Any contributions for future issues should be sent to any member of the
editorial board. Suggestions, comments etc, are most welcome. Any archive
site or distribution list requiring copies, please contact Richard Gartner
at the above address.

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                                NEXT ISSUE
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The next issue of INN is due out in February 1993. We hope to include a
feature on the implementation of Adonis at Aston University, and one on the
Silverplatter Electronic Reference Library beta tests.

A good deal of interest was sparked off by Edmund Sutcliffe's article in
Issue 1 on using PC-NFS for CD-ROM networking: we would be very interested
to learn of anyone else's experiences with this approach.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU