ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 5 7 4 /C&RL News Internet R eview s Sa ra A m a to, editor NATO G o ph er. Access: go­ p h er://g o p h er. n ato . int or g o p h er:// marvin.stc.nato. int. Contact: scheurwe@ hq.nato.int. There is a surprisingly large variety o f inform ation avail­ ab le o n this g o p h e r from NATO’s Integrated Data Ser­ vice. A nyone interested in defense, security, or interna­ tional affairs in Europe will find this site valuable. It pro­ vides access to historical in­ formation o n NATO an d its developm ent, i addition to information on its current activities including its involvement in Bosnia. Organizational an d background informatio can be acquired from a n um ber of sources, in cluding a directory o f public inform ation offic ers, Basic Texts, th e NATO H andbook, an Factsheets o n specific aspects o f NATO. Infor m ation is supplied on an extensive range o NATO activities, from its seminars, colloquia fellowships, and scientific an d environm enta affairs to its military operations, including o p erations su p p o rtin g the UN in th e Balkans There are com m uniques, press releases, eve transcripts o f press conferences. There is a sur prising am ount o f historical information. Th g o p h er provides the text o f im portant do cu ments, starting w ith the NATO treaty and en d ing w ith the Partnership for Peace Agreement an d official ministerial com m uniques. O ne o f this g o p h er’s strengths is the othe European international organizations hosted o it. T hese include som e Atlantic Councils, Part nership for Peace Countries, an d the W ester E uropean Union an d its Assembly. The infor m ation contained in these resources varies con siderably; num erous papers dealing w ith East ern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and th defense o f W estern Europe can be found i these sections. While this go p h er provides a considerabl am ount of information, it does have tw o majo shortcomings. O ne, it can b e difficult to m ak a connection; it is generally better in the after n o o n o r at night, bu t there is n o clear pattern Sara Amato is automated systems librarian at Central Washington University; samato@tahoma.cwu.edu n , n ­ ­ d ­ f , l ­ . n ­ e ­ ­ , r n ­ n ­ ­ ­ e n e r e ­ . Efforts to reach the contact w ere unsuccessful. Second, related inform ation can be hard to find as it may be lo­ cated in a variety o f places. Despite these draw backs it still contains a w ealth o f in­ form ation an d is an excel­ lent resource for European affairs.—John K. Stemmer, Virginia Polytechnic Insti­ tute a n d State University; jstemmer@vt.edu H um an Rights G o p h e r. Accessv gopher g o p h er.h u m an rig h ts.o rg . URL: g o p h e r :// g o p h er.ig c.ap c.o rg :7 0 /ll/ig c. This g o p h er from the Institute o f Global Com­ munications (IGC), a nonprofit com puter net­ w ork an d Internet service, increases o ur access to hum an rights information an d is especially useful to those involved in education, journal­ ism, health, an d ecology. The main m enu b e ­ gins w ith five IGC com puter netw orks includ­ ing PeaceNet, EcoNet, ConflictNet, LaborNet, an d W omensNet. The netw orks provide d e­ scriptions to their service an d listings o f con­ ferences, new s bulletins, an d inform ation on issues o f concern to that particular network. As a m em ber o f any o n e o f the IGC netw orks you have access to all o f them. In addition, the IGC netw orks also have a presence on the World Wide W eb (WWW) at http://w w w .igc.apc.org/ . Following the five IGC networks, the main m enu continues w ith items o n publications, or­ ganizations, an d agencies, as well as other go­ phers and resources. There are entries for ed u ­ cation an d youth, race and ethnicity, health, an d other subjects that contain listings o f ser­ vices, resources, an d other netw orks, as well as explanations of various projects in that area. O ne especially interesting item o n the menu, u n d er United Nations & International Agencies, is INFOTERRA, w hich covers a w ealth o f infor­ m ation on environm ental concerns including resources available for research an d education, new s items, directories, and citations to eco­ logical docum ents. The subjects include acid rain, reforestation, rainforests, etc. It also lists upcom ing environm ental meetings an d publi­ cations. http://www.igc.apc.org/ mailto:samato@tahoma.cwu.edu September 1 9 9 5 /5 7 5 This site is well organized—n o small task considering the w ealth o f information avail able—an d a w elcom e compilation o f various organizations, agencies, and materials with a common purpose. It has grow n since I first saw it a m onth ago and will continue to grow as other like-minded groups join the effort. It will benefit educators, academics, and others con cerned with the health and w ell-being o f our planet.—Emily S. Chasse, Central Connecticu State University; Chasse@ccsua.ctstateu.edu NSF Meta Center Com putational Science Highlights. Access: http://w w w .tc.cornell edu/Research/MetaScience/. Other addresses h ttp ://w w w .u ca r.ed u /docs/M etaSoft; http: / / w w w .ncsa.uiuc.edu/SC M S/M etascience/ H o m e/w elcom e.htm l; h ttp ://p sc in fo .p s c e d u /M e ta C e n te r/M e ta S c ie n c e /w e lc o m e . html; h ttp : / / w w w .sd sc.ed u/M etaS cience/ w elcome.html. This W eb site is the collaborative effort of five National Science Foundation (NSF)-sup p orted supercom puting centers: the Cornell Theory Center (CTC), National Center for Atmospheric R e s e a rc h (NCAR), N a tio n a l C e n te r fo r Supercom puting A pplications (NCSA), Pitts burgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), an d San Diego Supercom puter Center (SDSC). Its aim is to serve as a distributed repository o f multi media science reports and articles, including graphics, sounds, an d video animations, with appeal to a nontechnical audience. More spe cifically, the collection contains descriptions o selected research projects that have u sed the NSF’s supercom puting resources. A February 1995 NSF press release noted report topics rang ing from “simulating the behavior o f cancer genes” to “Comet Shoemaker-Levy’s impact on Jupiter” to “high-resolution anim ation o f the general circulation o f the North Atlantic.” The supporting NSF installations use a shared, au tom ated indexing system, allowing each con tributing center to develop and maintain its own documents, but allowing each site access to all c o n trib u te d d o c u m e n ts th ro u g h k e y w o rd searches an d browsing. Exploration o f Compu­ tational Science Highlights revealed that it does con­ tain som e very impressive resources and features, in­ cluding sound (all reports ­ ­ t . : . ­ ­ ­ f ­ ­ ­ contain images), an d som e excellent video ani­ mations (which, due to size, may be slow to dow nload even to a 486 PC). Librarians will no doubt appreciate both the classification o f re­ ports by the NSF’s Fields o f Science codes. Re­ ports seem to include standard fields—many of them hot links—for researchers’ nam es and affiliations, hardw are and software used, sub­ ject key w ords, references, acknowledgm ents, credits, and related material available on the Web. This site has som e w eaknesses. The first is that it is simply confusing. There are five dif­ f e r e n t URLs, c o r r e s p o n d i n g to th e fiv e supercom puting centers, and one o f these links (to NCAR) has already moved. And w hile the MetaCenter claims to provide “a unified national resource,” searchers will find that their results vary from site to site. O ne site show ed 128 ar­ ticles available, while others show ed 167. These num bers also reflect the lack o f breadth o f sub­ stance o f the database. The creators do state that Computational Highlights describe “some o f the (NSF’s) 10,000 scientific research pro­ jects,” and, in fact, the 167 articles found w ere all that are indexed and available at this writ­ ing. So, w hile the records in the collection are individually very rich, the collection itself is still quite small, containing just highlights. Finally, there are some problem s with the hom epages’ design. O ne is invited to brow se by field o f science o r key word, but clicking on highlighted text sends o n e to a dead-end list o f information at the San Diego site (which is often dow n), w hereas clicking on a high­ lighted button with the same label provides one w ith a successful connection to additional hy­ pertext information at the Cornell site. It’s u n ­ clear w hat the different search options are su p ­ posed to offer, and w hy they are inconsistent. D evelopers h o p e for future enhancem ents to the Computational Science Highlights, includ­ ing n ew contributors and full-text search/in dexing o f articles. The MetaCenter has the p o tential to be an outstanding source of science data with som e adjustments to its organization an d interface, an d a b o o st o f n ew records to its database.—Judith Matthews, Michigan State University; matthews@msupa.pa.msu.edu ■ mailto:Chasse@ccsua.ctstateu.edu http://www.tc.cornell http://www.ucar.edu/docs/MetaSoft http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SCMS/Metascience/ http://pscinfo.psc http://www.sdsc.edu/MetaScience/ mailto:matthews@msupa.pa.msu.edu