SunSITE — possibilities for Africa
| Pages | 379-382 |
| Date | 01 April 1995 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045393 |
| Published date | 01 April 1995 |
| Author | Dianne Leong Man,Glenda Myers,Tarun Pranjivan |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
SunSITE —
possibilities for
Africa
Dianne Leong Man and Glenda Myers
University of
the Witwatersrand
Library,
P/BagX1,
Wits
2050,
South Africa
Tarun Pranjivan
Computer
& Networking
Services,
University
of
the Witwatersrand
Abstract: This
paper describes the
challenges faced
by the University
of the
Witwatersrand
(Wits) in bringing
First World
technology to the
Third World that
still
exists in
rural and
much
of
urban
southern
Africa.
Although SunSITE
technology is simply that
of a World
Wide Web server
or FTP
site,
opportunities
are now
ripe for
Wits
to place
some
of its
priceless academic resources within
reach
of
the community at
large.
The story
of
the
Taung skull
discovery and
subsequent important anthropological discoveries
around
the Sterkfontein caves
is just
one example
of
what has essentially been
'hidden'
at
Wits for
years.
Additional
academic expertise
in
areas such as constitutional
law or primary
health care delivery can now also be
shared,
and will
be
of
considerable benefit to
those
responsible for
implementing Reconstruction
and Development
Programmes
(RDP).
As South
Africa
once more resumes its
rightful place in
the
family of
nations,
SunSITE Africa will
be able
to
provide
Africa
north
of the
Limpopo,
as well
as
the
rest
of
the
world,
with readily-accessible information and
research unique to this country but long hidden
behind
the barriers
of sanctions
and
apartheid.
1. Introduction
SunSITE (Sun Information
and
Tech-
nology
Exchange) originated with
Sun
Microsystems, California as a means
of making available free access of hy-
pertext material over
the
Internet. The
hardware for all SunSITEs is donated
by Sun Microsystems to a university
of its choice. Each SunSITE aims to
provide easy access to public domain
software
on
the Internet, to act
as a
re-
pository for Sun and key government
information, to promote development
and research
of new Internet
tools,
and
to archive material of
general
interest
including
music
and multimedia
expo-
sitions. There are currently fourteen
SunSITEs worldwide, including two
in the
USA, four
in
Asia,
four in
North-
ern
Europe,
two
in Eastern
Europe and
one in South
America.
The fourteenth
is in South
Africa.
The first SunSITE was set up in
1992.
This is SunSITE USA at the
University of North Carolina at
Chapel
Hill,
and
is
the model on
which
other SunSITEs
are
based.
It acts as
re-
pository for US government
informa-
tion such as reports of committees,
presidential addresses, etc. and has
many other
interesting features
such as
weather and multimedia exhibits. In
addition,
it is the WWW server for
the
university
itself.
The first African
site,
and
the only
one
at the
moment,
SunSITE Southern
Africa,
is housed at the University of
the Witwatersrand
(Wits).
SunSITE
Southern Africa is in an initial test
phase, running on a SPARCserver
1000 supplied by Sun Microsystems.
Wits is one of a growing number of
universities outside the USA to host a
SunSITE installation in recognition of
the high academic reputation it has
earned.
This paper describes
the
challenges
faced by Wits in drawing together in-
formation
on Africa which
is currently
available on World Wide Web sites in
Southern
Africa,
and also making its
own academic resources available to
the
world at large.
2.
Sun
technology
Sun Microsystems uses SunSITE as a
customer support service by allowing
SunSITE administrators
and Sun
users
worldwide
to
share
information.
Prob-
lems can be discussed and diagnosed
via Sun-related newsgroups such as
Sun Administrators News, Sun An-
nouncements
News,
Sun
Applications
News and Sun Fixes News. In
addi-
tion,
Sun announces its new develop-
ments via Sun's Technical White
Papers, Sun
Flash,
Sun Spots Ar-
chives, etc. SunSITE therefore serves
as a creative and useful public
rela-
tions tool for
the
company.
3. SunSITE applications
The information on SunSITE
South-
ern Africa has been categorised to al-
low for easy loading and retrieval by
subject matter such as Conferences,
Research,
Health,
Media and Culture,
Politics and Law,
Tourism,
Weather,
etc. Links have been made to various
WWW sites
housing
this information:
for instance, Media and Culture has
links to the daily news briefings from
the African National Congress, the
SABC and the Weekly Mail and
Guardian.
SunSITE
is also the
WWW
server for Wits and is used to provide
general information
on
the university,
its departments
and
faculties
and
its li-
braries.
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 4, August 1995 379
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