D-Lib Magazine
March 1996

ISSN 1082-9873

Clips and Pointers

Five professional societies and publishers of scientific and technical information (American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Elsevier Science, and IEEE) have adopted a Publisher Item identifier (PII) to provide unique identification of documents for all items published on or after January 1, 1996. A four-part document explaining the principles, structure, format, assignment, and other relevant background can be found at http://www.elsevier.nl/info/epstand/pii.html.

SISAC, the Serials Industry Systems Advisory Committee, was formed 1982 at the invitation of the Book Industry Study Group, to develop standardized computer-to-computer formats for serials. The Committee also offers a venue for the serials industry to discuss and resolve mutual concerns. The committee first devised a standard method to identify individual parts of serials publications, resulting in the Serials Item and Contribution Identifier (SICI), as stipulated in ANSI/NISO Z39.56 (1991). Since then, the SISAC Bar Code Symbol has also been adopted. SISAC now concentrates primarily concentrated on the development of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions for the serials industry. For further information, see http://www.infor.com/bisg/sisac.html

eLib, the UK national digital library effort, has posted more than 40 flyers, covering their programs in access to network resources, digitization, document delivery, electronic journals, publishing on demand, supporting studies, and training and awareness. Each flyer contains project descriptions and points of contact (http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/elib/flyers/).

World Wide Arts Resources maintains geographically-organized lists of on-line museums ( http://www.concourse.com/wwar/europe_museums.html). Each entry identifies the name of the museum, contains a pointer to the web site, and summarizes the contents, including whether or not the site contains images of items in the collections. The site also provides a forms-based invitation to users to submit additional museum sites for inclusion.

The WebMuseum (http://sunsite.nus.sg/louvre/) features a mix of text and graphics, organized around artists and themes in art history. The selection of images included in the on-line exhibit is based on the subject rather than on ownership or existing physical collection. The site offers electronic access to rare and fragile items, such as Les très riches heures du duc de Berry, which is no longer open to the public; provides links to relevant sections in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1994); and includes a index of artists and glossary of terms. WebMuseum offers musical selections, accepts contributions to its collections, and has established an experimental newsgroup.

The Getty Center for Education in the Arts has established ArtsEdNet ( http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/StartUp.html), which is devoted to supporting arts education for grades K-12. The site includes teaching tools (e.g., curriculum development aids); information on professional development; a library of on-line resources including images, and discussion groups organized around a proposed art study curriculum.

A multi-year project, the Variations Project at Indiana University addresses a number of networking issues associated with multimedia information delivery, including sound, graphics, and text (http://www.music.indiana.edu/variations/). The project proposes to deliver compact-disc quality digital audio and full-motion video across building, campus (Indiana University--Bloomington) and inter-campus (including Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis) networks. It will also result in the digitization of information objects associated with music, such as musical scores and associated texts. An on-line prototype of the user interface allows users to browse by course reserve lists or by searching the university's catalog by author, title, subject, and ISBN.

The British Library's Electronic Beowulf Project consists of a database of digital images of the Beowulf manuscript and related manuscripts and printed texts, including reconstruction of portions of the text based on fiber-optic and ultraviolet technologies ( http://www.bl.uk/access/beowulf/electronic-beowulf.html). A selection of the image files is Internet-accessible, including examples of the reconstructed text. Associated with the Electronic Beowulf Project is GRENDL (Group for Research in Electronically Networked Digital Libraries), a team at the University of Kentucky that is developing software to create hypertext links among related images in the archive (http://www.bl.uk/access/beowulf/grendl.html).

The VRML Repository maintains numerous examples of applications of VRML (virtual reality modeling language) to architecture and art as well as to other domains, such as astronomy, chemistry, and geography, where the analog representation has traditionally been three- dimensional ( http://www.sdsc.edu/SDSC/Partners/vrml/examples). Also included in these examples are VRML tools and a search engine for VRML sites. Access to VRML browsers can be found at http://rosebud.sdsc.edu/SDSC/Partners/vrml/software/browsers.html

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