ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 190/C&RL News Internet Reviews Sara A m ato, editor Baltics O n lin e. Access: http://www.viabalt.ee/ Baltics Online is a high- quality site for Baltics-spe cific new s and a lim ited amount o f business informa tion. This site is operated in Talinn, Estonia, but appears to be highly stable, as op posed to many Eastern Eu ropean Internet sites. Most o f the information included in this source comes from either the Baltic News Ser vices or the Press and Infor mation Department o f the Ministry o f Foreign Affairs o f the Republic o f Estonia. N ew s is posted at a variety o f times throughout the day and is fairly comprehensive, but very politi cally oriented. This is not a location for human interest stories, and the Estonian News section may be considered to be the official govern ment news source. Keep this fact in mind as you read such sections as Business Informa tion. While I assume that the news included at this site is a translation o f the news included in Estonian sources, there is little question that the amount o f information included in the daily reports indicated some level o f editorial deci sion-making. Since the site seems aimed at the United States, there is some lingering question in my mind about the level o f coverage. The Baltic Business Weekly is also posted at this site, and this is a fine publication for those con cerned with information on business-related topics in these states. For example, the current cover story o f this publication deals with the reorganization o f the Latvian government, a subject that got very little press in the U.S. All things considered, this is a fine source for news on the Baltic region, and is recom mended highly because o f the lack o f informa tion available in other commonly accessed news sources.— John Small, Central Missouri State University United States Departm ent o f the Trea sury. Access, http://www.ustreas.gov/ The Department o f the Treasury is the latest branch o f the U.S. government to make an ap Sara Amato is automated systems librarian at Central pearance on the Internet. The popularity o f the World W ide W eb (W W W ) and easy access to browsers has re sulted in what seems like a competition among depart ments to advertise their pres ence. Like many other gov ern m en t d ep a rtm en ts, Treasury comes with a large, bright graphic and som e other interesting bells and whistles. The user is imme d iately presen ted w ith a c o lo r p h o togra p h o f the Treasury Building at night, below which are hypertext buttons in the form o f four gold coins labelled: W h o’s Who, Treasury Bureaus, Trea sury Services, and What’s New. The W h o’s W ho area is a glossy presenta tion with photographs and biographies o f top Treasury officials. It is a large file— more than 100K— but there is an alternative text version available. More relevant to the average user are the remaining three areas. Treasury Bureaus is a link to the homepages o f the 12 Treasury bureaus. Unfortunately, as o f this writing, most o f these pages contain only the bureau’s mission statement along with a picture and biography o f the bureau chief. Moreover, even these introductory pages have been constructed with differing degrees o f at tention. Mission statements vary from the ver bose to the seemingly ironic (m y favorite is the Bureau o f Public Debt whose mission is “to borrow the money needed to operate the Fed eral Government and to account for the result ing public debt”). N ot su rprisingly, the Treasury bureau homepage containing the greatest amount o f information is that o f the Internal Revenue Ser vice (IRS). I have some natural hesitation at the very idea o f bestowing superlatives on the IRS, but it is clear that some forethought as to what constitutes usable public information has gone into the planning o f this site. The homepage is linked to four file areas: Tax Forms and In structions; Frequently Asked Questions; Where to File; and Where to Get Help with Your Taxes. The last three are text files that provide useful, but not crucial, information. The first file, Tax Forms and Instructions, is, on the other hand, an exceedingly helpful compendium that sub-Washington University; samato@tahoma.cwu.edu http://www.viabalt.ee/ http://www.ustreas.gov/ mailto:samato@tahoma.cwu.edu March 1995/191 divides into three areas: a very long list o f tax forms, a searchable index o f tax forms, and finally, inform ation o n the A d o b e A crobat Reader, a freely available software package that allows a user to v ie w and print tax forms from a W W W browser such as Mosaic or Netscape. The A dobe Acrobat Reader comes in Mac, W in dows, and Unix versions. I retrieved it via ftp and within 15 minutes had dow nloaded, con figured, and used the reader to print a tax form on my local printer. This is certainly an effi cient use o f technology although it must be admitted that using this service does require possession o f som e fairly sophisticated tech n o lo g y (d ir e c t In tern et c o n n e c tio n , W e b browser, laser printer, etc.). O n the other hand, as an indication o f w here the future o f tax forms and electronic filing might be proceeding, this serves as an interesting experiment. Treasury Services provides information re garding a number o f Treasury Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) including the IRS.BBS, the Cus toms BBS, and a link to the Treasury Electronic Library files on FedW orld. It also contains in fo rm a tio n a l file s o n th e D e p a rtm e n t o f Commerce’s Economic Bulletin Board, the Fed eral Reserve BBS, the Minneapolis Federal Re serve BBS, and others. This w h ole area w ou ld be im proved if there w ere m ore actual access links rather than blurbs on, for example, the Federal R eserve B u lletin B oard; h o w e v er, FedW orld is the on ly site that can, at the m o ment, be reached via telnet access. W hat’s N ew presents bulletins o f Treasury Department activities. At the moment, informa tion typically available includes reports o f the latest auction o f 13-week bills or the total O c tober savings bonds sales. Unfortunately, w h en I last accessed this file on January 3, 1995, the files had not been updated since N ovem ber 29, 1994. In conclusion, this is an interesting and well- constructed site. It does require som ewhat so phisticated technologies to use, though; people whose only W eb access is through text-based browsers such as Lynx w ill not be able even to view the tax forms. Since taxes still appear to be inevitable, any methods that aid the process are to be com mended.— Keith Morgan, Massa chusetts Institute o f Technology; kamorgan@ mit.edu LABSTAT— Bureau o f L a b o r Statistics Data S erver. Access: gopher://stats.bls.gov or hopi.bls.gov; ftp://stats.bls.gov. Owner: U.S. Department o f Labor, Bureau o f Labor Statis tics. The Bureau o f Labor Statistics (BLS) provides data to businesses, the general public, and g o v ernment agencies through a variety o f formats including print, com puter tapes, telephone, electronic bulletin board, and even mailgram. Since January 1994 the BLS database, known as LABSTAT, has been available through the Internet via gopher and anonymous ftp. There are future plans for W orld W id e W eb access. LABSTAT presently provides current and historical statistical data for 26 surveys and na tional indicators such as the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index. For each sur ve y there are documentation files that include a brief description, table structure, and data base elements. All data are in ASCII text format (tab delim ited) and can be directly imported into a w ord processor, database, or spreadsheet program. Also found in LABSTAT are news releases that provide current survey-specific informa tion as w ell as special reports related to labor, such as “Displaced Workers During the Early 1990s.” Current surveys and news releases are released individually according to set sched ules. The news release database is W AIS in dexed and searchable by keyword. Historical data are presented in a coded for mat and is found under “time-series.” The coded time-series data can be disconcerting and a bit intimidating to the uninitiated. There are, h o w ever, corresponding files containing keys that interpret the codes. I f users have specific ques tions there are BLS contact phone numbers for each survey. A phone call to the Consumer Price Index contact number was promptly answered and I was given useful information in a courte ous manner. There is also a help desk avail able online. Some o f the time-series files are quite large and unwieldy. For instance, the “Summaries” file for the Consumer Price Index—All Urban Consumers is over nine megabytes! Y ou may want to use anonymous ftp to dow n load the larger files once you have perused the files you need with gopher. Not having to deal with com pressed files is an advantage as long as you are a very patient person. Business librarians needing current and his torical BLS data all in on e place should visit this g o p h e r,— Robert L. Battenfeld, South hampton College Library, Long Island Univer sity; rbatten@sunbum.liunet.edu gopher://stats.bls.gov ftp://stats.bls.gov mailto:rbatten@sunbum.liunet.edu 192/C&RL News