ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Internet Reviews

Sara Amato, editor

CDnow! The Internet Music Store.Access: http://cdnow.com.

CDnow! is a web site that provides listings and an or- dering facility for over 100,000 music CDs and cas- settes. Encryption is available for credit card information. According to the information on the home page, CDnow! was scheduled to install T1 lines at the end of Decem- ber. In the meantime, it en- courages users to access it via telnet (telnet://cdnow.com) for improved speed. The home page also advises that it sup- ports Netscape, not Mosaic. I used telnet to look at this site, which worked fine.

The CDnow! store is divided into rock, pop, jazz, country, other music, and classical music. Most of my exploration was on classical music, but I did try the other as well. I used the Schwann Spectrum to compare listings in the Pop Store and the Schwann Opus to compare listings in the Classical Store.

When you enter the Pop Store there are a number of searching options and interesting links. You can type in an album title, artist’s name, or search by song title or record label. You can also select a link: modern rock, jazz, grunge, 70’s rock, artists featured in the current issue of Pop magazine (also available online). You can see an album’s review and songlist and an artist’s biography when available.

The Classical Store presents you with a menu selection of search keys: composer, album title, work title, conductor, performer, label/catalog number. Once you select one, there are additional menu items that allow you to specify orchestra, performer, genre, or primary instrument. All of these can be combined.

A comparison of listings between CDnow! and Schwann varied in results. Schwann lists five titles for the Beastie Boys, while CDnow! lists 12. This includes titles that are listed as “unavailable,” as well as imports and singles. CDnow! lists three more Betty Carter recordings than Schwann does. For Branford Marsalis, Schwann lists two more recordings than CDnow!does. In general, CDnow!’s listings seem comparable to Schwann’s in the nonclassical area, less so in the clas- sical. But most of the key recordings do seem to be listed, and if the one you want is there you can go ahead and order it.

Sara Amato is systems librarian at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon; samato@willamatte.edu

CDnow! has some fea- tures not available in Schwann: ratings from the All-Music Guide are given when available; you can search by song title, label title, conductor, and performer; all the tracks of movie soundtracks are listed; and having bi- ographies available is nice. Videos are listed as well as sound recordings. I thought this was a great feature, except that all the ones I hap- pened upon are listed as “discontinued.”

Searching for recordings under classical composers is problematic. Where Schwann lists recordings by the title of the work recorded, CDnow! lists them by album. I found it very difficult to find recordings of Bach cantatas in CDnow!, as many of them began with words other than “cantata.”

On the whole, I think this site is worth a look, particularly if you know the recording you want. If you want to be sure you’ve seen all the recordings of a particular composer, particularly classical, I’d check the Schwann as well.—Betty Landesman, George Washington University; betty@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

IEEE Computer Society Gopher.Access: gopher://inf0.c0mputer.0rg/l1/.

Computer Society Online is the gopher for the IEEE Computer Society. Virtually all of the material on this gopher relates specifically to the Computer Society; it is not a general IEEE gopher.

The gopher includes Computer Society conference and journal abstracts, useful to advanced students and researchers in computer science and software engineering. Certain features such as committee rosters and membership information will be of interest mainly to current or prospective Computer Society members. The conference calendar includes non-IEEE conferences of probable interest to computer scientists and, along with a section on calls for papers, maybe handy for both conference attendees and presenters.

The IEEE Computer Society is a preeminent publisher in engineering-oriented computer science. It is the intent of the gopher’s managers to continue adding current abstracts of Computer Society conference proceedings, magazines, and transactions, even before they are printed. The abstracts begin for materials published in mid-1993.

A particularly complete and usable “About This Gopher Server” section appears as the first option on the main menu of Computer Society Online. This section is recommended as an overview of the scope and date coverage of each of the other sections. Additional information is available by sending e-mail to help@ computer.org.—Genevieve Engel, University of California; genny.engel@ucop.edu

Sloυenija. Access: http://www.ijs.si/ slo.html.

Mosaic and the other web browsers which take advantage of graphics are a natural medium for the growing number of public relations resources for cities and countries available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Few sites, however, are as well-conceived and informative as Slovenija. Not only does this site manage to boast the pride of this country in a tasteful manner, but it also includes an abundance of information on everything from the country’s culture and recent history to permitted blood alcohol levels for drivers.

As a welcome relief from many home pages, graphics at this site are used cleverly to punctuate the content, rather than overwhelm it. A small map showing Slovenija’s location in Europe precedes the simple opening: “this is Slovenija, on the sunny side of the Alps. Young state, old culture, fantastic scenery.” In another paragraph, the sentence “The first impression of the landscape: green, green, and still green” links to a picture of a lush hillside vineyard. Although the home page does read like a travel brochure, the links at the end point to much more, including Slovenian information servers, science in Slovenija, and a Slovenian newsgroup.

Of particular interest to tourists is a high- resolution interactive map—“the virtual tourist”—which links to city information, ski resorts, spas, airports, caves, vineyards, and bordering countries. The symbols here are not always self- explanatory, but it’s a simple click to see what is behind them. Click on a neighboring country such as Croatia, and you jump to its home page, which links to a host of other European sites on the web.

Graphics at this third level are used more liberally to illustrate such places as the caves. But one may also access all of these points quickly from the home page, and since there is so much text overall, this site may be more useful than many via Lynx.

Under the general category, one may find country statistics, Slovenian currency, electricity and television standards, and links to information on national holidays and the climate. Assistance for travelers includes information on border crossings, contact phone numbers, working hours for banks and post offices, and tips for drivers, including speed limits. There are also links to language-learning materials, traditional food recipes, and Slovenian wine.

In addition to information which might attract tourists, this site also provides links to dozens of information servers in Slovenija which are arranged by organization, protocol type, and subject. Some of these are in Slovenian and, although most are also available in English, an ambitious person could use the searchable electronic Slovene-English, English-Slovene dictionary to translate text. Most of these servers describe (or advertise) scientific and technical activities in the country, both at the business and academic levels. But there is also a library link that connects one to several online catalogs available throughout the country.

Deeper digging through links reveals that Mark Martinec, the system manager of the National Supercomputing Centre at J. Stefan Institute in Ljubliana, is largely responsible for this site. Further, the site is connected to EUnet Slovenija (part of EUnet, a commercial network connecting Europe to the Internet) courtesy of NIL Ltd., an Internetworking and consulting company.

In general, this site is designed to appeal to the English-speaking tourist. There is, however, a wide range of information to interest both the business person seeking new markets and the academic, especially those in the technical sciences. Students might use this site to find out about Slovenija itself and to communicate with someone there through a link to a Slovenian newsgroup. For those who know little about Slovenija or even the networld in Europe, this site is rather an adventure.—Barbara Valentine, Linfield College