Internet Scout Project
1999; American Library Association; Volume: 38; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-5242
AutoresKaren R. Díaz, Amy Tracy Wells,
Tópico(s)Web and Library Services
ResumoPromoting Resource Discovery for Research and Education Two summers ago, I visited Pergamum and Ephesus in modern day Turkey. As the second and third largest libraries in antiquity, built in the second century B.C. and A.D. 135, respectively, they were surpassed only by the library at Alexandria, in modern day Egypt, which was composed in part from Pergamum's collection.(1) Methods of organizing printed materials, from parchment to a newer technology known as paper, have been developed and refined over the course of two-plus millennium and counting. In contrast, search services such as Yahoo! and Alta Vista have been extant since 1994 and 1995, respectively.(2) While these search engines and others like them have strengths, their weaknesses are well known: a high percentage of nonauthoritative content mixed with quality content that, when indexed together, makes locating relevant information serendipitous at best. It is too late to go back and develop an Internet solely composed of material looted from our best libraries, but many of the traditional methods of collecting and organizing the information available can still be effectively applied in an electronic environment. The Internet Scout Project (http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/), a National Science Foundation (NSF) (www.nsf.gov/) project housed in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is charged with promoting resource discovery to aid the U.S. higher research and education community, specifically the scientific and engineering community. To that end, the project is focused in three principle areas: (1) identification of quality Internet resources; (2) subsequent resource description; and (3) the development of a distributed resource network. All of its products and services are free and freely accessible. Its audience has grown to include the private sector and the general public as well as individuals outside of the United States. Internet Resource Directory Net-happenings, the Scout Report, and Subject-Specific Scout Reports Since 1993 and 1994 respectively, Net-happenings (http://scout.cs.wisc. edu/caservices/net-hap/index.html) and the Scout Report (http://scout. cs.wisc.edu/index.html) have been identifying electronic resources. Net-happenings is a K-12-oriented daily announcement distribution service for Internet resources, software, conferences, newsletters, etc. It is distributed via e-mail, the Web, and a Usenet newsgroup (comp.internet.nethappenings) and reaches more than twenty-five thousand people daily. The Scout Report identifies research and educational resources as well as network tools and then describes each resource in critical detail. The Scout Report is available via e-mail and the Web. In 1997, in response to direct requests from users, the Internet Scout Project began to publish three subject-specific Scout Reports: the Scout Report for Science and Engineering, the Scout Report for Business and Economics, and the Scout Report for Social Sciences. Each of these reports targets resources in a given discipline, covering new publications such as books, journals, and reports; conferences; calls for papers; grant announcements; and updated data sets along with other useful sites for researchers. Designed to provide the most current disciplinary information, they are distributed on a biweekly basis. These Scout Reports are also available via e-mail and the Web. In all, the Scout Reports reach more than one hundred thousand people weekly. Scout Report and the Subject-Specific Scout Reports Methodology The Scout Report and subject-specific Scout Reports have a managing editor and production editor as well as a team of master's and doctoral students who select, annotate, and compose/compile those reports related to their area of study. Other Internet Scout Project staff also assist by writing seventy-five to one hundred word annotations for one or two resources per week. …
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