Focus news
| Date | 01 February 1997 |
| Pages | 123-124 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045544 |
| Published date | 01 February 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
IFLA mirror site
The first mirror site of IFLANET is up and running,
hosted by the Institut de l'Information Scientifique et
Technique (INIST) in Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy,
France. It can be visited at http://ifla.inist.fr/. The site
is an exact replica of IFLA's Web site at the National
Library of Canada.
IFLA's aims are 'to represent librarianship in matters
of international interest; to promote the continuing
education of library personnel; and to develop, main-
tain and promote guidelines for library services.' With
the growth of Internet capacity problems, IFLANET
wanted to manifest itself for users outside the North
American continent. Leo Voogt, IFLA's Secretary
General said that this was a first step in making
IFLANET more accessible, and that 'we hope to
establish more mirror sites in the near future. We
expect this experience will be crucial in defining the
delivery of IFLA's services to the members of our
networked community.'
• • •
The Oregon Index of the Oregon State Library has
been moved over to a new Web-searchable search
engine.
Oregon Index has been voluntarily produced by staff
and volunteers from a number of Oregon libraries
since 1987, and is a selective index file to multiple
Oregon newspapers and Oregon-related articles in
other publications. The new Webbed index uses
Inmagic's DB/Text Webserver software and is free
and open for general public access: no username or
password is required.
The Inmagic search software uses form-based
tem-
plates to help search the database, similar to those
used for the Alta Vista and Lycos Web search
engines. The user can enter search conditions for
keyword,
subject, date, title/headline, author, publi-
cation title, or document number. There is detailed
online help.
• • •
Priming librarians for the Web
A Web primer for librarians that is kept on the site of
Ohio State University has been updated. It specifies
that 'it is not an in-depth HTML guide, but a general
introduction on Web resource creation.' The docu-
ment discusses basic concepts and terminology
associated with creating documents and resources
for distribution on the Web, describing newer
tech-
nologies briefly and providing references to other
resources. An interactive glossary of terms associat-
ed with the Web is also included.
Contents are: introduction; background; HTML;
hypertext links; uniform resource locators; graphics
and images; multimedia; HTML writing tools; design
considerations; portable document format (PDF);
dynamic documents; Java and ActiveX; future
con-
siderations; reference and resources; glossary. The
URL is http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/webdocs
.html.
• • •
Web serving for the non-technical
A Web server has been released designed to let
'non-techies' set up a server and publish Web pages
'in a matter of minutes': no knowledge of the
Internet, TCP/IP networks, Web servers or UNIX
required.
WebBox from WebBox Ltd is compact enough to fit
in a briefcase. It uses solid state memory, so has no
moving parts or software to install and configure.
Users connect the unit to the Ethernet hub and set
an IP address (two technical terms which users pre-
sumably are required to know) and the WebBox is
ready to serve Web pages. Pages can be created
directly on the WebBox or uploaded using a browser
interface.
WebBox can progress from static Web sites to sites
involving Javascript or complex forms, and the mak-
ers say it is fully scaleable to support business appli-
cations. In tests, it had a 360 Kb/second transfer rate
on 250 Kb files: it can handle 45 hits per second,
which the makers say compares well with most mid-
range servers costing many times the price. WebBox
costs £1650.
Contacts
INMAGIC
2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
MA 02140-1338, USA.
Tel:
+1 (617) 661 8124
Fax:
+1
(617) 661 6901
OREGON STATE LIBRARY
http://www.osl.state.or.us/oslhome.html
WEBBOX (UK) LTD
Borough House, Marlborough Road, Banbury,
Oxon OX16 8TH, UK.
Tel:
+44 (0)1295 269800
Fax: +44 (0)1295 269080
http://www.webbox.co.uk
FOCUS
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..libraries and
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The Electronic Library, Vol. 15, No. 2, April 1997 123
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