FCN News 19 Aug 96


Don't read this by e-mail! Instead, read the hypertext version of this newsletter: <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/current.html>.

Contents:

Upcoming Events

        August 1996            September 1996
    S  M Tu  W Th  F  S     S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
                1  2  3     1  2  3  4  5  6  7
    4  5  6  7  8  9 10     8  9 10 11 12 13 14
   11 12 13 14 15 16 17    15 16 17 18 19 20 21
   18 19 20 21 22 23 24    22 23 24 25 26 27 28
   25 26 27 28 29 30 31    29 30

Local events of particular interest to FCN members (see also upcoming conferences below):

Electronic Journals

This one is a "must read" if you're interested in electronic journals or digital libraries -- the Final Report for the "Tulip" project, a major collaboration that ran from 1991 to 1995 bringing together publishers and 9 leading U.S. universities "to jointly test systems for networked delivery to, and use of journals at, the user's desktop." The final report includes some very pertinent comments on the service issues & economic realities of making the transition from print to digital libraries. See <http://www.elsevier.nl/homepage/about/resproj/trmenu.htm>.

Biology on the Web

This month's issue of NIH Review contains an extensive section discussing on line, particularly web based, resources in Biology, Biochemistry, and medicine. Not coincidentally given the rapid adoption of this new technology in such fields, last week's Science magazine (2 August 1996) also has a long section on biological databases on the web.

One extremely useful resource I found in the NIH journal was a selected list of online journals. Here's the NIH list, reprinted from their web page <http://www.nih.gov/science/journals/>:

Conferences and workshops, real and virtual

This is a selected and somewhat idiosyncratic list of upcoming conferences relevant to educational tech., both "virtual" (online) and traditional. For conferences that require physical travel, my emphasis is on conferences in the Northwest and on those I find personally interesting. The Educom and CAUSE calendars, <http://educom.edu/../events.calendar> and <http://cause-www.colorado.edu/information-resources/events.html>, contain a more extensive list of mainstream conferences.

Virtual conferences and tutorials:

Traditional conferences and workshops:

The Lighter side

Steve Gilbert, <mailto:gilbert@clark.net>, writes in e-mail to the AAHESGIT mailing list about his experiences last week at summer camp with his children:
This camp consisted of a few very primitive buildings and a lot of space in the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland (not far from Camp David), with about 100 campers (ages 8 to 15). . . .

About the third night it was raining and I decided to go from my tent to the "lodge" (one of the buildings with a waterproof roof, electricity and lamps) to read for a while before going to sleep. After I was settled in a comfortable chair, 4 of the counselors came in to the same room and began to play Scrabble. These four were in their late teens or early twenties, and were playing quite happily. After a while, I overheard them arguing about a word that one of them had just tried to use in the game. They couldn't all agree that it really was a word. After a few more minutes of discussion one suggested they use a dictionary. That lead to a search of the premises which failed to produce anything like a dictionary. Finally another one said, "Could we use the camp computer? Doesn't that have a dictionary or thesaurus?"

I hadn't realized there was a camp computer; but, of course, there was -- and in this building in a small room. The first Scrabble player went in, turned it on, found the word- processing package, tried the challenged word, and returned. She reported that the word was accepted by the computer. The game resumed.

Administrativa

The UO Faculty Consultants Network Newsletter is published (approximately) twice a month. If you have materials for inclusion in the newsletter you can send them to <mailto:jqj@darkwing>. This newsletter (as well as other FCN-related material) is available on line in <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/>.

last edit 8/19/96
by: JQ Johnson<mailto:jqj@darkwing> -- UO Knight Library