---------------------- <> coordinated by Robert Kraft [23 July 1993 Draft, copyright Robert Kraft] [e-release via HUMANIST, IOUDAIOS, RELIGION, etc., 23 July 1993] [Religious Studies News 8.3 (Sept 1993)] [CSSR Bulletin 22.3 (Sept 1993)] [codes: ... titles, ... emphasis, /

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... levels of headings.] ---------------------- We are sitting on the front edge of a radical information explosion. If you don't understand or believe this, you are not an active participant on the electronic networks. In my automation optimism that aims at having OFFLINE write itself, I have been saving what seemed to me to be relevant bits of information from the various network discussion groups that I frequent (IOUDAIOS, MEDTEXTL, RELIGION, HUMANIST, etc.), throwing the items into a computer file ("folder") designated for the next OFFLINE column. After a bit of organizing, and lots of summarizing and reshaping, the results form the basis of this column. My appreciation goes to the various contributors, not all of whom could be given the credit they deserve in this abbreviated listing. More information on each item is always available, and quickly, if you have the tools and know how to use them. This is, after all, the "information age." Information Sources: Hardcopy Some people still read and produce "hardcopy" publications. Among such works is a relatively new newsletter that focuses on computer related topics of special relevance to the humanities, including religious studies, that can take you into far greater depth than is normally possible in OFFLINE. It is acronymed CARF, and comes to us out of Canada, at a fairly modest subscription cost (about $10 per year). A brief description by the editor follows, plus the main contents of the first three issues.

Introducing CARF, by Todd J. B. Blayone (cxfw@musica.mcgill.ca) The Computer-Assisted Research Forum: A NON-TECHNICAL Bulletin for Academics and Educators in the Humanities (CARF) was founded in 1992 by two McGill doctoral candidates-- Todd Blayone (editor), a student of early Christian literature and humanities computing, and Bruce Guenther (associate editor; Guenther@sask.usask.ca), a historian of modern Canadian religion. It is currently published three times during the year in Fall, Winter and Spring/Summer editions. Electronic "UPDATES" appear periodically on a number of humanities-related lists. CARF is neither a journal for the humanities-computing technician nor is it the product of a particular university computer center. Rather, CARF is an international, "popular" computing bulletin for the "average" humanities scholar-teacher and student, who are more concerned with "practicing their trade" than with MIPS, MHz, MBs and programming. CARF spreads its web across all areas of the humanities, and supports both PC (IBM and compatibles) and Macintosh platforms. Suggestions for articles and reviews, which can be sent via e-mail, are warmly received. (An invitation is extended to the experienced user, and scholar with special computer-related interests, to join with the editorial team as a reviewer or advisor.) CARF seeks to meet the essential, "real-world," computer- information needs of the intended reader. For the beginner, it presents "how-to" articles introducing technologies and resources relevant to humanities research. For the intermediate reader, more sophisticated articles dealing with a variety of important and stimulating issues are presented. All readers will benefit from a generous array of software and literature reviews including the "In Brief" column with news, short reviews and annotations. Pertinent advertising also is included. Articles are accepted from qualified writers on a regular basis. Contributors are asked to keep CARF's general orientation in mind (see above). CARF also accepts software-review queries. The ideal query highlights one's qualifications and the scope of the proposed review. For further information contact the editor or associate editor at the aforementioned Internet addresses, or write to: Computer-Assisted Research Forum c/o Todd Blayone Birks Building, McGill University 3520 University Street Montreal, PQ H3A 2A7 - Canada

Table of Major Articles with List of Contributors

Fall 1992 "Nodes, Modems and Bauds?: E-mail in Plain English," by Richard Hayes (Associate Professor of Comparative Religion, McGill University). "Bibliographic Programs Compared: Part One (Library Master, EndNote Plus and Pro-Cite for the PC)," by Todd Blayone. "Graphics-Mode Word Processors for the PC: ChiWriter 4.1 and Multilingual Scholar 4.0," by Harry Hahne (Lecturer in New Testament, Ontario Theological Seminary). "Making WordPerfect Multilingual: ScriptureFonts 1.1," by Todd Blayone.

Winter 1993 "Electronic Discussion Groups: A Virtual University," by Michael Strangelove (Publisher of The Internet Business Journal, University of Ottawa). "Bibliographic Programs Compared: Part Two (ProCite/Mac, EndNote Plus/Mac and Papyrus/PC)," by Todd Blayone. "Transparent Language: Perspectives on a Foreign Language Reading Tutor," by Antony Dugdale (Doctoral Candidate, Yale University) and Ursula Williams (Director of the Language Resource Center, University of Notre Dame). "Text Analysis: Part One. Bible-oriented Packages for the Macintosh (AnyText and macBible)," by Bob MacKenzie (Research Associate, McGill University).

Spring/Summer 1993 "Electronic Shakespeare: Making Texts Compute," by Eric Johnson (Professor of English and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Dakota State University). "FrameMaker: Desktop Publishing Power for the Humanist," by Karla Saari Kitalong (Academic Computing Specialist in the Department of Humanities, Michigan Technological University). "High-Tech Bible Study: PC Bible Programs with a Graphical User Interface (Bible Windows, BibleWorks for Windows, Logos Bible Study Software, TheWord Advanced Study System)," by Harry Hahne.

Other Similar Newsletters and Hardcopy Sources Previous OFFLINE columns have mentioned the excellent resources available both in larger volumes such as John Hughes' Bits, Bytes & Biblical Studies (Zondervan, 1987) -- and his Bits & Bytes Review -- and the Humanities Computing Yearbook series edited by Ian Lancashire (Oxford, 1988, 1991), as well as in newsletters such as Ontario Humanities Computing (Toronto), Computers and Texts (Oxford), REACH (Univ California at Santa Barbara), and the Newsletter of the Association for Computers and the Humanities. Still, at a variety of levels (local, professional, private), new resources continue to come to light. OFFLINE advisor and network guru Jim Marchand (Marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu) writes: I just received the excellent "UCLA Friends and Alumni of Indo-European Studies Newsletter," from Debbie Anderson: D. Anderson, Editor 2143 Kelton Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90025 ibardwa@mvs.oac.ucla.edu. It has, with other things, a fine list of e-projects in Indo-European Studies, including the Old Irish (CURIA), Dug's SEENET, Old Norse, Old English, Old High German, Gothic, Greek, Latin, Indic, Anatolian, and Indo-European in general. Another great source is Evelyn S. Firchow's International Annual Newsletter for German and Medieval Scandinavian Computer Research, now available in printed form from Germanic Notes and Reviews. We have to persuade Evelyn to put it online somewhere. Ditto Debbie.

Printed Books About the Internet While some of the following may repeat information noted in previous OFFLINE columns, it is also important to update and organize what is known, for old and new readers alike. Thus the following set of reviews has been appropriated from the "Articles Archive of CCNEWS, the Electronic Forum for Campus Computing Newsletter Editors on BITNET, a service of EDUCOM" (ccnews@EDUCOM.bitnet), and is entitled "Three Good Books on Using the Internet," by Susan Mathews (Berkeley Computing, Volume 3, Number 1 [January-February 1993]; contact avante@garnet.berkeley.edu) Crossing the Internet Threshold: An Instructional Handbook, by Roy Tennant, John Ober, and Anne Lipow, 134 pages, spiral bound, Library Solution Press, $45. Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's Guide, second edition, by Brendan P. Kehoe, 112 pages, paperback, Prentice Hall, $22. The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog, by Ed Krol, 376 pages, paperback, O'Reilly & Associates, $24.95. The worldwide Internet is a rapidly growing information resource. The information available is voluntarily supplied, uncataloged, and constantly changing. Explaining how to get started exploiting the resources of the Internet is not an easy task. It's an even more complex task to learn how to understand the Internet's purpose and how to make full use of it. Fortunately, there are several good books on these topics. These books are reasonably up-to-date, clearly written, and well-organized. If you read many computer books, you will realize that this is not faint praise. Each of these books has a different focus. The authors of Crossing the Internet Threshold are from the Library and the School of Library and Information Studies on campus. This book is intended as both an introductory handbook and an instructor's guidebook. It can be used in a course with a hands-on lab. Using only commands for electronic mail, remote login, and file transfer, the exercises cover many different Internet resources. Since the authors are librarians, most of the examples use library catalogs; there are clear references for further information. A variety of types of Internet services are covered by one page Fact Sheets in an appendix. This concise volume is well-aimed at the librarian or academic researcher. Zen and the Art of the Internet provides general but practical information. As you might guess from the number of pages, Zen and The Art of the Internet is concise as well as clear and lively. Kehoe tries to point you to the places where you can find up-to-date specifics; he includes enough examples to give you an idea of the variety of resources out there. This edition is slightly dated because it doesn't mention Gopher (see the previous article) as a way to access the Internet. Kehoe frequently describes the historical processes by which things on the network have come to be. Zen and the Art of the Internet is a good book to use when you already have access to the Internet, as many people at Berkeley do. It guides and challenges you to make creative use of the resources on the Internet. The Whole Internet is entertaining, and surprisingly non- technical in language, as well as comprehensive. No book can possibly cover all that is available on the Internet, but The Whole Internet covers most of the common tools and exhorts the reader to be imaginative in using them. The last part of the book is a catalog of selected resources on the Internet organized by academic discipline and presented in the style of the Whole Earth Catalog. While only a partial list, this catalog creates a vivid picture of the variety of information accessible on the Internet. To make full use of the Internet, you will need documentation for your specific computer, since the exact form of commands will vary. All three of these books are informative and useful--you may well want to read more than one of them. Crossing the Internet Threshold is available from Library Solution Press, 1100 Industrial Road, Suite 9, San Carlos, CA 94070. Zen and the Art of the Internet and The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog should be available in most local technical bookstores, but frequently have been sold out. You can order them from the Computer Literacy Bookshops, Inc., PO Box 641897, San Jose, CA 95164-1897. For more information, send electronic mail to info@clbooks.com. (You're already learning one of the amazing things you can do with the Internet.)

Using the Internet to Exploit the Internet Enough about hardcopy. For those who have mastered some of the elementary aspects of Internet trafficking, and are not afraid to venture further, vast resources await. There follow some of the notes provided by Jim Marchand (see above) and reorganized for present purposes on "how to" and "where to" take advantage of this situation. [Note: "rfc" refers to "request for comment" electronic documents dealing mostly with the Internet.] Several people wrote me and said they did not know what all this ftp jazz means; ftp stands for `file transfer protocol', but it really just means ftp, something you use on a computer to retrieve a file from a remote location that permits ftp. Assuming that your machine/platform permits ftp on your side (you can find out by just typing ftp), you type ftp name of remote site. ... [further details below] As for URL (Uniform Resource Location), it has always been difficult to give addresses for ftp, and a new standard has finally been worked out. If you want to get Jean Polly's fine article on the NREN (National Research and Education Network; that's us, so to speak), it is available, among other places: URL:=ftp://mrc.next.cso.uiuc.edu/etext/etext93/nren210.txt. What this means is that the URL is in an ftp site; the ftp site (Project Gutenberg) is mrc.next.cso.uiuc.edu (type ftp mrc.next.cso.uiuc.edu), and it is located in the subdirectory etext/etext93 as the file nren210.txt. Type cd etext, cd etext93 then get nren210.txt, wait until it gives you the ftp prompt back, type bye, and voila. I frequently get questions as to where to go to find out about networking; guides are legion. A recent update to a golden oldie makes it one of the if not the best: Jerry Martin, There's Gold in Them Thar Networks!, or, Searching for Treasure in All the Wrong Places (Network Working Group rfc1402). Two other new internet sources of special interest are: Quarterman's list of "Recent Internet Books" (rfc1432) and the "Internet User's Glossary" (rfc1392), which ought to be of interest to those of us who are lost in the plethora (learned that from Howard Cosell) of terms thrown about by the adepts. All three of these are available for anonymous ftp from nis.nsf.net (or 35.1.1.48), in the subdirectory /documents/rfc. Just ask for rfc1402.txt, rfc1432.txt and rfc1392.txt. In a typical session: You type It says (sort of): ftp nis.nsf.net Name: anonymous OK or some such and asks for password your e-mail address Login accepted or some such cd documents Subdirectory change successful cd rfc Subdirectory change successful get rfc1432.txt I forget, but it tells you its working, then gives you an ftp> prompt bye Session terminated, or some such For our European members, and even for us Colonials, there is an excellent guide to internet tools put out by EARN. To get it, send a message to listserv@EARNCC.bitnet, with the message (no subject) GET NETTOOLS MEMO (it is also available as a PostScript file = GET NETTOOLS PS). Note that Internet World 4(3) (April, 1993) devotes its entire issue to the internet in Britain. For those of you who collect, as I do, network guides, the NORDUNET one is outstanding. You can get it by Gopher. I just downloaded the best bibliography on networking that I have seen: URL=ftp://zeus.rsch.oclc.org/pub/internet_resources_project/ report/appende.txt; all the other files are in postscript format. It leans towards library science, since it comes from OCLC: "The items on it were found through online searches on WILSONLINE Library Literature, LISA, WORLDCAT, and ERIC. In addition, electronic mail messages provided lead to computer files, as did articles and bibliographies." It is very good in giving precise ftp instructions. Current Cites [summaries of journal articles] is available from URL=ftp://ftp.lib.berkeley.edu/pub/Current.Cites; there are a number of files, well-labeled. This is a very good source, leaning towards library, with summaries of articles from a number of journals. Dana Noonan's Nnews is available from: URL=ftp://vm1.nodak.edu/nnews. There are a number of files, with various dates. I would get them all. Scott Yanoff puts out a great "Special Internet Connections". You can get it from: URL=ftp://csd4.uwm.edu/pub/inet.services.txt. You can subscribe to it by writing Yanoff@csd4.uwm.edu, but he's not always cordial. Another excellent keeping-up source is from John December, known as the December lists: URL=ftp://ftp.rpi.edu/pub/communications/internet-cmc. The following material from Judy Koren of the Technion Library System, Haifa (lbjudy@vmsa.technion.ac.il) moves into other realms of Internet manipulation, for our more venturesome users: 1) Recently announced: a file at mailbase.ac.uk that is supposed to give updated information on the state of our friendly network info. providers (Archie, Gopher, WAIS, WWW, etc.): ftp to mailbase.ac.uk, cd pub/nir, file is called nir.status.report and is about 8K *lines*. 2) Anyone who's got a PC with an Ethernet card can ftp a gopher client and bypass the local gurus if necessary. I think Minnesota U. even tells you how to get it. Telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu and login: gopher. If they don't tell you anything, ftp to the same place and nose around. Failing all else, and only as a last resort (the site is seriously overloaded) ftp to ftp.technion.ac.il, and there's a version of the U.Minnesota PC gopher client in the directory /supported or one of its subdirectories. It's a .zip file; PKUnzip is also in the /supported directory. Gopher has a reasonable .doc file. And while you're there, you can check my "personal" list of Internet resources in /pub/net/netinfo/net.resources.jk. It may be of some use. 3) Wide Area Information Service (WAIS): I don't know of a *nice* PC WAIS client. If anyone does, please tell! But SunSite has the nicest vt100 client I've seen: telnet to SunSite.unc.edu, login swais. (The advantage of nice vt100 clients is that you can do this from home with Kermit.) 4) Archie: I don't know of a PC Archie client since pretty well everyone runs Archie on some Unix or even VMS machine or other. In the bad old days (a year or so ago) we used to telnet to archie.funet.fi, and there are about 5 U.S. public-access Archie sites. Another fun idea is to access Archie through a gopher: SunSite has Archie and WAIS on their gopher (same computer as 3), login gopher; the beast's actual name is OGPHRE, clearly it's an anacronymic animal; also one of the most useful); but IMHO if you want WAIS, login swais rather than accessing via the gopher -- that WAIS client is really neat. 5) World Wide Web (WWW): clients are available by ftp to info.cern.ch (the Mother of the WWW), dir. pub/WWW/bin and then subdirectory according to machine; within these subdirs, the file WWW is a line-oriented client, Viola and Erwise are X-Windows; I'm not sure if there's a decent PC one; last time I checked, the only nice client was Viola and I don't have an X-Windows terminal so I'm still waiting. Personally, if I have to choose between a line-oriented WWW client and gopher, give me gopher every time. If you're on your own, you can run your own clients provided you have an Ethernet card. Nobody has yet come up with a Gopher, WAIS etc. client that will run on a PC and emulate a terminal so that you can gopher out via a modem/phone line from home. Not as far as I know, anyway. Electronic Lists, Journals, and other Publications Now that you know everything one might wish to know about using the Internet effectively -- or perhaps you are totally confused -- let me run quickly through some of the network listings from the past three months that may be of interest concerning information digests, new lists and electronic publications. At the level of general information about projects and products (similar to the hardcopy sources mentioned above), the Internet also has its sources -- some of which (like OFFLINE itself, and REACH) appear both electronically and (later) also in print. A relatively new (or perhaps, revitalized) endeavor in this regard by one of the founding fathers of humanities computing in the USA, Joseph Raben (jqrqc@CUNYVM.bitnet), is the electronic newsdigest SCHOLAR, from which a sample of the contents of the current issue ("to be distributed shortly") follows -- note that much of what SCHOLAR reports has been obtained in exactly the same way as the material in this OFFLINE column, from the Internet. Various book summaries, including Theodore H. Nelson, Literary: The Report on, and of, Project Xanadu, and Philosophy and the Computer, ed Leslie Burkholder. Notes on: the British National Corpus, a 1 million-word corpus of Modern British English for linguistic analysis; network resources for Islamic studies; the new catalog for the Oxford Text Archive; Greek and Hebrew biblical texts; guides to ftp and listservs; teaching foreign languages with facilities from the Internet; various software products; a project by Paramount Communications to combine books, movies, television and electronic technology. An article by Michel Lenoble on "La Tres Grande Bibliotheque and the Library of the Future" and reports on the text-oriented sessions at the Modern Language Associations's Annual Meeting and on a conference on Electronic Network Publishing. To receive the current release of SCHOLAR and information on retrieving similar items already in the database, send the following message to listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu: sub scholar your-full-name. You will receive instructions on how to retrieve any of the items or all of them in one package.

A List for Ancient Near East, announced by Charles E. Jones (Research Archivist - Bibliographer, The Oriental Institute; CE-Jones@uchicago.edu or CEJo@midway.uchicago.edu) ANE@oi.uchicago.edu is an unmoderated list for discussing subjects relating to the ancient Near East, from the Indus to the Nile, and from the beginnings of human habitation to the rise of Islam. All requests to be added to this list should be sent in email to majordomo@oi.uchicago.edu with the one-line message: SUBSCRIBE ANE

A List for Jewish Studies, announced by A. J. Hyman (AJHyman@UTOROISE.bitnet) I am very pleased to announce the creation of a new e-mail list called JEWSTUDIES, made possible by the nice folks at NYSERNET. The list will be moderated but open, so please sign-on today using the normal SUBSCRIBE command to the LISTSERV at ISRAEL.NYSERNET.ORG Similarly, recent efforts have been made to organize and maintain an ABSTRACTED e-INDEX to JEWISH PERIODICALS. A list of potential journals to be reviewed has been compiled and now you have the opportunity to vote on which journals you would like to see reviewed. To receive a ballot send a post requesting a ballot to AJHyman@oise.on.ca or AJHyman@UTOROISE.bitnet instructions will be included.

On ATLA Interest Groups, from Marti S. Alt (Association of Theological Libraries in America; MAlt@magnus.acs.ohio- state.edu) ATLANTIS is our electonic conferencing facility, accessed by sending a message to listserv@ HARVARDA.bitnet with the message: SUBSCRIBE ATLANTIS Name.

New Library of Congress Resources: LOCIS and LC MARVEL The Library of Congress Information System (LOCIS) is now available over the Internet. The telnet address is: locis.loc.gov (140.147.254.3). LOCIS includes over 15 million catalog records and over 10 million records for other types of information: federal legislation, copyright registrations, Braille and audio, organizations, and selected foreign legal materials. Searching hours are (all times USA eastern; closed national holidays): Monday - Friday: 6:30am - 9:30pm Saturday: 8:00am - 5:00pm Sunday: 1:00pm - 5:00pm Printed manuals will be available for sale later this summer and very soon via ftp (ftp seq1.loc.gov /pub/LC.Online). There will be a LOCIS Quick Search Guide and a LOCIS Reference Manual. Internet: LCOnline@seq1.loc.gov Not so much a "publication" as a means of access to LC electronic releases is the experimental "Library of Congress Gopher, LC MARVEL." The Library of Congress Machine-Assisted Realization of the Virtual Electronic Library (LC MARVEL) is now available over the Internet. LC MARVEL uses Gopher software and is therefore most easily accessed from another Gopher server or by using a PC-based Gopher client (thus avoiding usage restrictions) and pointing to marvel.loc.gov (140.147.2.15) PORT 70. Although direct telnet access is available (telnet marvel.loc.gov, login: marvel), it is not encouraged since only 10 simultaneous external connections will be supported initially. The goal of LC MARVEL is to serve as the Campus-Wide Information System for the Library of Congress' staff and additionally to offer service to the U.S. Congress and constituents throughout the world. Please address all comments and reports of any technical problems to LCMarvel@seq1.loc.gov.

Journal Contents for Arethusa, from editor John Peradotto (SUNY-Buffalo; clajjp@UBVMS.bitnet) Contents listings for all twenty-five volumes of Arethusa are now available online from the Johns Hopkins University Press. To download the file, ftp to jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (128.220.2.5) and navigate to JHU_Press/zjournals/AREindex. Journals' prepublication materials in the Hopkins online database are also now accessible via gopher. To reach them, tunnel to Other Gopher and Information Servers/North America/usa/maryland/Johns Hopkins University/University Press/zjournals. Files of interest to classicists include contents and/or abstracts of Arethusa, The Journal of Early Christian Studies, and The American Journal of Philology. Please direct any questions to Susan Lewis, Johns Hopkins University Press, SueLewis@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu.

The Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture (EJVC) An ambitious endeavor to explore electronically the dimensions of the new "virtual culture" is the EJVC, edited by Ermel Stepp (Marshall University; m034050@Marshall.wvnet.edu) and Diane (Di) Kovacs (Kent State University; DKovacs@kentvm.kent.edu), among a host of others. To access this material by telnet, ftp byrd.mu.wvnet.edu login anonymous password: users' electronic address cd /pub/ejvc type EJVC.INDEX.FTP get filename (where filename = exact name of file in INDEX) quit To access through LISTSERV: Send e-mail addressed to listserv@KENTVM.bitnet or listserv@kentvm.kent.edu (Internet) Leave the subject line empty. The message must read: GET EJVCV1N4 CONTENTS Use this file to identify particular articles or sections then send e-mail to listserv@KENTVM or listserv@kentvm.kent.edu with the command: GET where is the name of the article or section (e.g., author name) and is the V#N# of that issue of EJVC The History-On-Line Project, or H-Net, from Richard Jensen (Professor of History at U of Illinois in Chicago; campbelld@APSU.bitnet) One of the new electronic developments that OFFLINE has tried to track is "H-Net," for the online study of history. Interesting things continue to happen in that context, although there is not room here to reproduce the detailed electronic description entitled "HISTORY ON-LINE: The H-Net Planning Document" (version 8.0, May 11, 1993) by Richard Jensen (director; u08946@UICVM.bitnet; voice: 615-552-9923) and Wendy Plotkin and James Mott (associate directors), which can be obtained by request from the Department of History, University of Illinois, Chicago, 60680; u12923@UICVM.bitnet, u12923@uicvm.uic.edu (Internet); tel (615) 552-9923, fax (312) 996-6377. Brief excerpts and summaries will have to suffice to capture the current status and potential of this ambitious model undertaking (see also the earlier reports in OFFLINE 40-41): H-Net is a project of the History Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago, to assist the history profession to go on-line and make use of the remarkable advances in computers in recent years. H-Net is focussing on two aspects: TRAINING and NETWORK COORDINATION/INTERACTION. A major H-Net project, starting in 1993-94, will be an electronic "bulletin board" system open free to all historians in the US, and across the world. Technically, H-Net will operate in two modes ("Internet" and direct telephone access), such that any historian with a personal computer (IBM compatible or Apple Mac) and a modem can connect to it (also a "dumb" terminal linked to campus computer). Most will connect through their campus computer system via Internet. Others can phone us long-distance. (We will ask NEH to fund an 800 number for first sign-on.) H-Net, begining in February 1993, has created a guide to several dozen network-based history conferences (several each on ancient history, medieval, Russian, Chinese, western Europe, US, and methodology; see the list in OFFLINE 41). In addition, H-Net is already sponsoring some new lists (see below for details), and discussions are underway about various other lists including Southern, Diplomatic, Jewish, Labor and Rural history. Suggestions are welcome. Beginning in fall 1993, H-Net will set up discussion groups for professors and teaching assistants who teach the large survey courses. H-Net does not plan to publish an on-line journal (the Australians have CLIONET, and the Canadians have ONLINE MODERN HISTORY REVIEW) but is exploring the possibility of publishing major 19th century primary sources (as well as contemporary Polish newspapers and magazines) on inexpensive CD-ROM, together with very high powered indexing software. H-Net boards will be affiliated with the international "History Network," a coordinating council that supplies technical advice. The whole project will be operated as a model that can be emulated in other disciplines. It will itself look to other models such as the bulletin board of the American Philosophy Association and the HUMANIST discussion group (see Willard McCarty, "HUMANIST: Lessons from a Global Electronic Seminar." in Computers and the Humanities (1992) 26:205-22.) We will keep logs and "how-we-did-it" guides, and will be delighted to help anyone with their technical questions. H-Net will be offering one-day training workshops at history conventions and at history departments across the country. It has been endorsed by the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association, and has received funding from the American Council of Learned Societies. SUNY Binghamton, U of Houston, Stanford and Austin Peay State U (Tennessee) have invited us to give training workshops to their history faculty and graduate students in 1993-94.

H-Net Announces 13 Scholarly Lists in History (June 25, 1993) H-Net is sponsoring a series of electronic discussion groups or "lists." Each list is moderated by a historian and has a board of editors. The moderators control the flow of messages and reject those unsuitable for a scholarly discussion group. The primary purpose of each list is to enable historians easily to communicate current research and teaching interests; to discuss new approaches, methods and tools of analysis; to share information on access to library catalogs and other electronic databases; and to test new ideas and share comments on current historiography. Most of the lists have no chronological or geographical limits. The H-Net lists in operation by mid July 1993 are: H-Urban Urban history H-Rural Rural and agricultural history H-Women Women's history H-Diplo Diplomatic history, foreign affairs, international relations HOLOCAUS Holocaust studies; anti-semitism; related themes of modern history H-South US South H-CivWar US Civil War H-LatAm Latin American History H-Law Legal and Constitutional history H-Ethnic American ethnic & immigration history by July 4: H-AmStdy American Studies H-Ideas Intellectual history IEAHC-Net American colonial history; sponsored by Institute of Early American History & Culture at Williamsburg Other lists are being discussed; to volunteer as editor or member of an editorial board, please send a note to H-NET@UICVM.bitnet. Anyone can join any of the h-lists by sending this message to listserv@UICVM [bitnet--try this first] or to listserv@uicvm.uic.edu [Internet] sub [listname] [yourname], [yourschool] -- e.g. sub H-Urban Leslie Jones, Northern Vermont U sub xxxxx John Jones, Northern Vermont U To post an announcement to all the H-Net lists, send an email copy: by Bitnet to H-NET@UICVM or by Internet to H-NET@uicvm.uic.edu or by CompuServe to >Internet:H-NET@uicvm.uic.edu or send a fax copy to (312) 996-6377, care of H-Net. Each list will publish book reviews. To volunteer as a reviewer send a note to the editor at @UICVM.bitnet (for example, H-Urban@UICVM or H-LatAm@UICVM). To submit books for review, or for other paper correspondence, write to H-Net room 723 SEO Dept of History m/c 198 851 S Morgan St Chicago IL 60607-7049 [our phone is: 312-996-3141 our fax: 312-996-6377] Miscellaneous Software Information Information about software is present almost everywhere on the Internet discussion groups (see also above on CARF). New programs are announced, and sometimes reviewed. Information on extant software is requested, updated, referred to, supplied. Much of this is quite ad hoc, but sometimes more comprehensive or general treatments appear, or are announced, as well. For example, Michael Fraser (Department of Theology, University of Durham, DURHAM DH1 3RS, England; M.A.Fraser@durham.ac.uk) is compiling a survey of software in religious studies and has circulated a questionnaire to gather information. The results will be made available through the Internet. Please contact him for further details. There is also an announcement from Gregory Bloomquist (GBloomq@acadvm1.uottawa.ca) that software reviews are about to become a reality on the AIBI-L(ist) that is dedicated to the Bible and computing.

Bibliographical Software (see also above under CARF) Jim Marchand summarizes information from Vivienne Romani in Current Cites about the following articles dealing with bibliographical software: Stigleman, Sue. "Bibliography Formatting Software: An Update" Database 16(1) (February 1993):24-37. "The bibliography formatting field is now crowded with 52 programs" including Pro-Cite, Endnote, Biblio, each described and listed in this article. Stigleman, Sue. "Papyrus: Good Bibliographic Value at a Reasonable Price" Database 16(3) (June 1993):82-87. By making a plea to developers to create more flexible bibliographic software, Stigleman provides us with more than a review of this bibliographic formatting software package and its CD-ROMs importing functions, its Boolean searching capabilities, and its word processors support. Marchand then adds that an older survey (now somewhat out of date) by Sue Stigleman is still available from uhupvm1.bitnet: write to listserv@UHUPVM1.bitnet with the message GET STIGLEMA PRV1N1.

Biblical Studies Software and Foreign Lanugage Fonts Of special interest to those working with biblical materials is the release of the updated Bible Windows 2.1.1 by its developer John Baima (Silver Mountain Software, 1029 Tanglewood, Cedar Hill, TX 75104; Voice/Fax (214) 293-2920 john@ling.uta.edu). Among other things, the new features enhance Bible Windows' ability to search and print the grammatically analyzed Greek New Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, and Septuagint. The program has two macros for Word Perfect for Windows so that texts can be properly pasted into a document and has special code to work around defects in AmiPro 3.0. It also includes a utility to transfer Greek and Hebrew texts and search results to Nota Bene 4.x (Lingua). A utility to transfer Greek and Hebrew texts and search results to Word Perfect for DOS (plain WP and WP with Scripture Fonts) is now in testing (any Bible Windows users who want to test this utility are encouraged to send us email). Updates from 2.0 are free via email (Zipped and XXENCODED) or $15 via mail. In this connection, Bob Webb (RLWebb@max.cc.uregina.ca) mentioned that for word-processing in Hebrew in DOS one might also consider Notabene version 4 with the add on package, Lingua. While Notabene is not an easy package to learn, it is extremely powerful, and designed for use primarily by academics rather than professionals; that is, it has built within it a bibliographic module, a text retrieval module (use it to index megabytes of your own notes, for example), three levels of footnotes, as well as on-screen Hebrew, Greek, and Cyrillic. Notabene is now being marketed and upgraded by The Technology Group (which also produced XYWrite--the original engine used by Notabene). Their phone number is 1-800-969-6922; fax: 1-410-576-1968. There is also an Internet listserve available for users of Notabene to help each other: contact listserv@vm.tau.ac.il to subscribe to "NotaBene" the list (or listserv@TAUNIVM.bitnet). Similarly, this note from Jay Treat (University of Pennsylvania; JTreat@ccat.sas.upenn.edu) concerning Macintosh software may be of interest: Three good sources for Hebrew, Greek, and English scriptures are CCAT (University of Pennsylvania), Linguist's Software, and Zondervan Electronic Publishing. CCAT supplies text-files, fonts, and utility programs for manipulating them in various ways. Linguist's Software provides texts formatted (with fonts) for MacWrite or MS Word. Zondervan provides MacBible, a program for fast searching of biblical texts (with fonts for Greek and Hebrew). MacBible supports word-wrap for Hebrew. The UBS3 Corrected edition of the GNT has recently been made available by CCAT and is under production by MacBible. I expect Linguist's Software to have it very soon also. For word processing that allows you to mix RTL and LTR languages, I recommend the Hebrew version of Nisus from Paragon software. At some point in the near future, we should see WorldScript I for System 7.1, which will allow RTL (right to left) word processing to mix freely with LTR word processing in many Macintosh programs. Jay Treat has also supplied the following information about his own "Transcribe" program, a Mac utility that makes systematic changes in text-files and saves the result in new text-files (e.g. it facilitates performing a long series of search-and- replace substitutions, or turning TLG references into forms readable by human beings, or reformatting text to appear in a font that maps characters differently). Transcribe 2.91 is now available by anonymous ftp on ccat.sas.upenn.edu. under /pub/mac/tscribe. In gopher, look under "CCAT Software Archives and Related Material from Elsewhere" and then under "Macintosh software." The program's file name is "tscribe.sit.hqx". There are three associated files in the same place. The "patterns" file contains preset choices for various kinds of transcriptions: e.g., from TLG beta code to SMK or SuperGreek fonts. There are also two versions of the full documentation files: one in MicroSoft Word and one in MacWrite format. (Another similar freeware tool for the Macintosh is called PARADIGMA, by Espen Aarseth at the University of Bergen.) Ed Wright (University of Arizona; EDWright@ccit.arizona.edu) comments on instructional software for Biblical Hebrew and reports: I have recently been recruited by a company in Seattle to help in creating a computer-based course in elementary BH, ie. first year. The few things I have seen or used are noted below. Marc Brettler and Bill Schniedewind of Brandeis have a program for the Mac that provides vocabulary and parsing for several passages (mostly Gen and 2Sam as I recall). It is directed to students in second year who need to brush up a bit on vocab and verbs. Meged International Corp., 415 West Maple, Kalamazoo, MI 49001- 3642 offers "Hebrew Wordmaster" (for reviewing vocabulary) and "Hebrew Tutor Text" (which I have not yet used). Davka Corp., 7074 N. Western Ave. Chicago, IL 60645 apparently has some educational programs, but I have no first hand acquaintance with them. Finally, regarding multilingual tools for the Mac, M. A. Salih (MSalih@clus1.ulcc.ac.uk) reports that at The School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, an Apple developer site, they are using WinText for Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese etc., which is QuickTime compatible (for those interested in Multimedia). The WorldScript component, including a Middle East Font (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew) has also become available recently. (He also mentions a program called RAV KTAV for Hebrew, which one user considered relatively cumbersome.)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software, reported by Christopher Bader (CB@xis.xerox.com) with a response from Jim Marchand [Bader] The University of Nevada has just completed an independent evaluation of the following vendors of high-end OCR systems: Caere, Calera, Cognitive Cuneiform, CTA, ExperVision, Ocron, Recognita, and Xerox Imaging Systems. On top were Calera, ExperVision, and XIS (my employer) with a statistically insignificant differences between the top three. [Marchand] I have reviewed most of the OCR programs on the market, including Calera, Perceive, Recognita, ReadRight, Kurzweil Discover, TypeReader and Optopus. I feel that OmniPage Pro [from Caere], combined with an HP scanner, performs best, and I am supported in this by MacUser (Jan. 93), PCMag (July 92), PCSources (July 92), and Computer Shopper (April 92), among others. I haven't seen XIS ScanWorX, but if the independent evaluators put Calera and ExperVision ahead of OmniPage Pro, they must have been doing something quite strange.

From Software to Standardization and Back: TEI and TSI One of the frequent items on the networks is discussion of electronic encoding standards, with special focus on the implementations of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) being developed by the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative, with its own discussion list TEI-L; subscribe through listserv@UICVM.bitnet). One hope is that with sufficiently sophisticated and robust standard coding, we will see the development of more and better software to handle such coded data. Indeed, a new endeavor to facilitate the development of such software is now in the planning stages -- a TSI (Text Software Initiative). The primary contact person for the TSI proposal is Nancy Ide (Vassar; Ide@vaxsar.vassar.edu). Newly Available Data We cannot pause long on this subject, which occupies much space on the nets. The Georgetown database of databanks is still a good place to look for guidance (see OFFLINE 40 for details), as is the Oxford Text Archive catalogue (also described in OFFLINE 40). One of the earliest electronic text projects is now available on CD-ROM (Roberto Busa's Latin Aquinas materials; contact ccsmi@imicilea.cilea.it for further information). Some other dataclips of note: MEMD = The Medieval and Early Modern Databank is now only available through Prof. Rudolph Bell, Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University, Van Dyck Hall, College Avenue Campus, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903. It is not available through RLIN as was originally planned. ADMYTE = Archivo Digital de Manuscritos y Textos Espannoles is coordinated by Charles Faulhaber (UC Berkeley; CBF@athena.berkeley.edu) and is intended to be an ongoing project for medieval Spanish texts. To date one disk has been released with digitized images and e-text of 45 early printed books in spanish (1481-ca. 1520), including all four of the Latin-Spanish dictionaries printed before 1500. The second disk will be released at the end of the summer with another 64 e-texts along with bibliographical data bases of medieval Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan literature and several analytical tools. DILS & LTIMSS: Sarah Larratt Keefer, the "mad liturgist" from Trent (SKeefer@trentu.ca) announces that the DILS canticle textfiles, such as they are, and the LITMSS (liturgical MSS) database, with all its current warts, are nevertheless available to anyone who has ftp or gopher facilities. The textfiles are in ASCII with SGML, and my delimiters are noted at the beginning of each file for editorial conversion. Via anonymous ftp: they are available from (blaze.trentu.ca) which is 192.75.12.200 I.P. number, in /pub/DILS. Via gopher, they're available from (blaze.trentu.ca port 70) and look under "Faculty Publications" for "DILS (Professor Keefer's work)." The LITMSS file is binary; the textfiles are ASCII. There are two readme files, one for the DILS textfiles, and readme.litmss, on the database. RABBINICS: Alan Cooper (ACooper@UCBEH.bitnet) makes the following recommendation regarding "computerized rabbinics": The best buy in a CD-ROM rabbinic corpus is the Judaic Classics Library Third Edition from Davka, phone 312-465-4070 or fax 312-262-9298. The price is $549, and it includes the entire basic rabbinic corpus, including both Talmudim. The third edition improves over the second by adding the Tosefta and Tannaitic midrashim. There are also many later writings on the CD, including Maimonides' Code, the Zohar, some commentaries, ethical writings, etc. If one requires only the Babylonian Talmud, that has been available from Davka on CD-ROM for only $49.95. The "limited edition" CD also includes the Bible with Rashi's commentary, as well as Rashi's Talmud commentary. Both CD's come with adequate search-and- retrieval software, and searches can be saved to files that are easily importable into any word processor that can convert Hebrew ascii to its own format (Word Perfect Hebrew, for example). Maps and Images One of the cutting edges of current discussion is the increasingly sophisticated "digitization" (i.e. capturing like electronic photographs) of various materials. A highly influential new tool is the "Kodak CD-ROM" for photographs, which will now become a major element in the LUNA project announced by the Getty Trust and Kodak: Concentrating on practical imaging solutions, LUNA Imaging Inc. will offer digital imaging services and electronic publications to the academic community worldwide. Michael Ester, director of the Getty Art History Information Program, will move from his position to become president of LUNA Imaging on September 1, 1933. As its first project, LUNA will produce a digital archive of several thousand drawings from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation collection at Taliesin West that will be available for use and research at the Foundation in the coming year. At the same time, the Getty Art History Information Program is establishing an information and standards organization for digital imaging in the visual arts as a separate, parallel effort. As interest in and enthusiasm for electronic imaging expands and many different projects develop, this organization will serve as an international forum for scholarly and technical groups to explore key issues, establish standards, and use publications and training to reach a wider audience.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Most of us can make use of good maps. Computer cartography continues to move ahead, as the following postings illustrate: James Marchand (Marchand@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu) points out that the field we are talking about is called GIS (Geographical Information Systems), and that it is huge, covered well, but only partly by the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping. The soon to be standard in the field is David Forrest, ed., Geographical Information Systems (John Wiley & Sons, 1992), but it is expensive (ca. $350). Software is also expensive, though there are some low-end products, such as PC-Globe (or MacGlobe). There is a nice review in the October, 1992 issue of Computer Shopper (p. 834). Some products are: AtlasPro from Strategic Mapping, Inc., San Jose, CA -- MapInfo from MapInfo Corp., Troy, NY -- Azimuth from GraphSoft, Ellicott City, MD -- GeoCart from Terradata Corp., El Segundo, CA (the last two being drawing software). GeoQuery of Naperville, IL is often spoken of highly; it is a MAC product which I believe has been ported to the PC. There are some excellent and quite expensive programs for the UNIX platform. I have been told that the Swedes are putting their Economic Map on computer. Two European car manufacturers now offer road maps on CD-ROM. Similarly, Juris G. Lidaka (Lidaka@WVNWVSC.bitnet) reports that there is a shareware program called VERSAMAP (= vmap120.zip, ftp oak.oakland.edu, directory pub/msdos/geography or mapping) which comes with a world map that can be zoomed in on and whose maps can be saved in a standard graphics format (DOS based). For more detail, it can use the PC version data from the CIA's Micro World Data Bank II (= mwdbii-.zip, ftp csn.org in the directory COGS.Mapping). After that, of course, just about any graphics program could be used to fill in details or otherwise edit. The former is on 2 disks (and the latter on 5) available from The Software Labs / 100 Corporate Pointe / Suite 195 / Culver City CA 90231 / USA. (800) 569-7900.

Integration of Internet Access to Graphic Images Finally, the increase of digitally available materials on the networks, including from the Library of Congress, has produced the following items. As Joann Zimmerman (art history, University of Texas at Austin; jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu) notes, the Chronicle of Education from 7 July 1993 (A23ff) discusses a freebie called MOSAIC, which seems to be a click-mouse-on- highlighted hypertext link in World-Wide Web materials (texts & pictures), incorporating some kind of links to do both telnet & ftp stuff, plus gopher & who knows what else. Although it is presently an X Windows item (and available somewhere by ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu), Mac and DOS Windows versions are expected this fall. The XWindows version is a delight. It is indeed a Swiss Army Knife-like combination of telnet, gopher, archie and veronica, all wrapped up in a very nice interface. We all recall the Vatican on-line exhibit emanating from LoC; some marvelous person created a series of hypertext links, with some nice text, organizing what had seemed to be a fearsome collection of acronyms and viewers into a lovely easy-to-navigate presentation complete with thumbnail views of all the images, which you could then click on and get the whole thing. In addition, Michael Greenhalgh of one of the Australian universities has provided a snapshot of his ongoing projects in digitizing art and architecture: a collection of Roman sarcophagi and the like, pictures of I.M. Pei's architectural efforts in Hong Kong, and the beginnings of an image collection for a local museum. Both of these may be accessed from the XMOSAIC "home page," which has a pointer to a bunch of demos of everything from fluid dynamics animations to portraits of Elvis to the aforementioned art, with excursions into Usenet science fiction discussions archived in Sweden along the way. Those of you with access to a Unix box and X, give it a whirl. In response to Joann's posting, Steven C. Perkins (The John Marshall Law School; pl0124@psilink.com) notes that DOS Windows users can get much of the functionality of XMOSAIC (which is now available by ftp from qdeck.com /pub/dvx/ports/apps/xmosaic.zip) with CELLO, an all-purpose Internet browser which incorporates WWW, Gopher, FTP, Telnet, and News clients along with the ability to use many other services through gateways. CELLO beta version 0.6 has been released by developer Thomas R. Bruce (Research Associate, Cornell Law School; tom@law.mail.cornell.edu) and is available for anonymous ftp from fatty.law.cornell.edu in the /pub/LII/Cello directory. Be sure to get the DIS, the VIEWERS and GSWIN. These will allow you to get audio, image and postscript files. You have to use the DISTINCT TCP driver, which restricts access to educational users only. Check with your network Guru. CELLO also has some multimedia demo files on its home page. Further information may be obtained from cello@fatty.law.cornell.edu. Afterword: Exhortation to the Confused and/or Intimidated If you did not already know most or all of these things, and have made it this far, congratulations. It will not have been easy going. Still, these are directions in which our information and communication worlds are moving with unparalleled rapidity, and even to become exposed to the terminologies and variety of applications constitutes a step (or perhaps several) in the right direction. Next you need to try some of these things out. Most people will probably be intimidated by much of it, but if that is your situation, grit your teeth, find whatever help you can, and experiment. Ask for advice, both locally and remotely -- enough addresses have been provided above to destroy the easy excuse "I don't know where to turn" (assuming, that is, that you can use e-mail). Once you begin to get the "feel" of how these thing work, it will become easier to exploit them, little by little. Try. You may like. <-----> Please send information, suggestions or queries concerning OFFLINE to Robert A. Kraft, Box 36 College Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104-6303. Telephone (215) 898- 5827. Internet address: Kraft@ccat.sas.upenn.edu (please note that the previous BITNET address is no longer operational). To request printed information or materials from OFFLINE, please supply an appropriately sized, self-addressed envelope or an address label. A complete electronic file of OFFLINE columns is available upon request (for IBM/DOS, Mac, or IBYCUS), or from the HUMANIST discussion group FileServer (BROWNVM.BITNET). //end #42//