ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Internet Reviews

Sara Amato, editor Sara Amato is automated systems librarian at Central Washington University; samato@tahoma.cwu.edu

EFF Web—The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Access: http://www.eff.org.

As the issues of censorship and freedom of information on the Internet get more attention in Congress and in society, a good place to begin to explore those issues is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Web site. EFF describes itself as “a nonprofit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to online resources.” This site is essentially an archive of information containing just about anything to do with the topic of censorship and the Internet. It also offers general information on the EFF. The “Alerts” section is a large collection of recent news stories dealing with censorship, including full text of relevant legislation, as well as sound bites and video clips. The EFF also provides an archive of these documents (and those in related sites), allowing users to ftp items from an organized and indexed collection directly to their home computers.

The EFF Web page also provides access to the current edition of EFF’s newsletter, as well as back issues and an index. There are collections of information to be found under “Special Collections,” including “The Frontier Files Collections”; a best of the EFF; the online library of computers and academic freedom, featuring acceptable use policies; and collections of local and foreign computer crime laws. This site also makes available the archives of Computer Underground Digest E-Zine (CuD), an electronic journal that provides news on intellectual freedom and the Internet.

EFF provides links to other related sites, and to some unique addresses which might be hard to find elsewhere. These include the U.S. Library of Congress Legislation Server; a link to PGP Key Server at MIT (for PGP encryption of messages); and links to servers that provide anonymous remailing of messages (they work, I tried it). Links to sites dealing with “activism, computing, and nonprofit organizations” provide access to FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), the ACLU, and the NRA.

EFF-Web is an entertaining site, providing access to some obscure sources and occasionally straying into the bizarre. It is also well maintained and topical.—Doug Home, University of Guelph; dhome@uoguelph. ca

Paris Pages: A Collection of Everything Regarding the City of Light. Access: http://www.paris.org/.

Launched July 14, 1994, Paris Pages (PP) provides a wide array of information not only about the city, but also about France in general through excellent linkages to the growing number of France-related web sites. Many screens have French and English versions. A metro map, current opera and ballet productions, and a Paris events calendar (searchable by month) are some of its useful features.

Created by Norman Barth, a California oceanographer, PP also utilizes the talents of many others. The “How You Can Participate” page encourages readers to enrich the site with new projects. A French class at Pomona College recently contributed essays (in French) about La Belle Epoque.

PP is updated almost weekly with commentary on current topics such as strikes, how Paris commemorated VE day, and the presidential election.

The main screen is organized into four general sections (The City, Its Culture, Tourist Information, and Paris Kiosque) followed by numerous other sections, including Metro, Monuments, Museums, Schools, Bibliography, photos of French classes, Special Expositions (including the 1944 Paris Liberation and the artwork on “tickets of Paris”). A directory provides a comprehensive table of contents, What’s New lists additions chronologically by date, and Other Links connects to other web sites.

The strengths of Paris Pages are its size (over 1,000 pages), currency, continual additions, organizational features such as the Directory and What’s New sections, good design and layout, clear and easy-to-read documentation on how to navigate and participate, and its wealth of related webs about France.

The drawbacks are that it doesn’t have “everything” about Paris yet—e.g., hotel and restaurant listings are minuscule, a common failing of most city Web sites.

Paris Pages is highly recommended for all levels of French students to practice French in a new, fun way and learn about the city and country simultaneously. Faculty and others traveling to France should explore this site to see how Internet is changing the face of travel literature.—Lotte Larsen, Western Oregon State College; LarsenL@fsa.wosc.osshe.edu

The Humαn-Lαnguαges Page. Access: http: //www. willamette.edu/~tjones/Language-Page.html.

As resources on the World Wide Web proliferate, so do the pages that attempt to provide subject-oriented access to those resources. In most cases, such efforts are somewhat scattered, with many different pages providing more or less comprehensive, often overlapping lists of resources on a given topic. An exception is the Human-Languages Page (HLP), which is rapidly becoming known as the focal point for language-related information on the Internet.

HLP was created by Tyler Jones, a computer science student with an interest in languages and the World Wide Web. He began with a list of some 30 links and encouraged submissions of additional links from users. The page now includes over 300 links to information related to over 70 spoken, written, signed, or invented languages. It is a nominee for the GNN “Best of the Net” award for 1995.

Language and literature resources are grouped by language, ranging from Aboriginal languages to Yiddish and including such gems as a language tutorial in Tagalog and audio news in Greek. Links lead to dictionaries, language lessons (many include audio), news digests, periodicals, and language-related software. The English section includes a substantial number of resources for students and teachers of English as a second language, as well as specialized dictionaries and information about Old and Middle English.

A “Quick Jump” feature near the top of the page allows the user to jump to alphabetized sections of the language list and highlights interesting sections near the end of the page that might not otherwise come to the attention of the casual browser. For example, a section on multilingual resources contains a rich collection of resources embracing more than one language, including archives of non-English computer fonts and information on instruction in less commonly taught languages. Additional sections lead to online text collections, linguistics resources, and commercial sources for software and translation services.

The author’s goal is to include all sites that contribute to the understanding of a language or languages. Casting such a wide net has resulted in the impressive array of languages represented and the variety of resources; however, users should be aware that the quality of the linked resources will vary. In addition, the page is growing so rapidly (some 50 new links per month) as to become unwieldy. Within each language list there is no further breakdown by category, and the larger lists are becoming difficult to browse. Jones now plans to create a database of the entries which will be searchable by language and type of resource, allowing users to quickly zero in on the desired links.

Anyone with a casual interest in foreign languages will find something of interest here. Language students and teachers will find HLP indispensable, and librarians will like having quick and easy reference to dictionaries in a range of languages not usually represented on reference shelves.—Lori Robare, University of Oregon; lrobare@oregon.uoregon.edu