Institute
of Government Library
Live
from the Internet - Need a Push?
Library
News/Member News
Institute
of Government Library
Live
from the Internet - Need a Push?
Library
News/Member News
http://ncinfo.iog.unc.edu/library/index.html
The Institute of Government Library is located in Room 030 of the Knapp Building on the UNC-CH campus, telephone 919/966-4139 or 919/966-4172. Hours of service are 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday, except holidays.
The Institute of Government Library serves the research needs of faculty of the Institute. In addition, the library provides services to state and local government agencies, other libraries, scholars, and the general public. The Library welcomes public use of its facilities and endeavors to offer the widest possible use of its collections consistent with their preservation and with its obligation to serve the Institute of Government and state and local government officials.
Staff: Alex Hess, Acting Librarian; Marcia Lobacz, Acting Assistant Librarian; Ann Anderson, Library Assistant; and student assistants.
Collections: IOG information services and collections support the instructional and research programs of the Institute. The Library contains 14,872 bound volumes, approximately 800 periodical subscriptions, and more than 20,000 pamphlets relating to law, public administration, state and local government, and related subjects.
The UNC-CH online catalog contains entries for roughly 65 percent of the holdings of the Institute of Government library. Many state and local documents, other reports and papers, and material cataloged prior to 1976 in the Institute library are not listed in the online catalog. Please ask for assistance to locate material acquired earlier than 1976. Other catalogs are accessible only in the Institute library.
Services: Library staff are available to assist researchers in the use of the catalogs and reference materials, to refer readers to other bibliographic sources and other libraries, and to aid in locating material not easily found. A self-service copier is available to serve researchers in the library. The cost is ten cents per page. Cash, checks and UNC accounts are accepted.
--Alex Hess and Geneva Holliday
Four flavors of push:
Push technology, simply defined, is the delivering of information from a server to the desktop at specified times. This gives the appearance of the server delivering information to you automatically without your asking. The content is available via channels. Like TV channels, these push channels give specific information. Some popular push channels are ABCNews, CNN, CNNfn, and Disney. Push programs, or clients, keep track of and know when to have the information from the channels delivered.
Push clients come in four varieties that meet specific needs of users.
1. Application Distributor - Programs such as Marimba's Castanet will deliver applications to end-users. In the future, you may receive an upgrade for a software program through this method.
2. Content Aggregators - PointCast fits this category as a provider of information and news directly to the desktop. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and Netscape Communicator 4.0 also have this capability.
3. Platform Providers - These programs are similar to content aggregators, but the user buys the infrastructure to deploy the content. Programs, such asBackWeb, charge a fee for the service, but the end user has complete control of the content passing through the network.
4. Real-time Data Transfer - This is the most expensive flavor of push, however it is the most guaranteed method of delivering information in a timely fashion.
Three types of push technology:
1. Pure Push - This method beams information out over airwaves. Anyone with a receiver may view the content.
2. Selective Pull - The content is resides on servers owned by companies, such as PointCast. The client asks for selected information and updates which is delivered by the server.
3. Distributed Push/Pull - Push clients learn where channels are located from central servers which keep an index. They then pull the information directly from the original channel server.
Using push on your desktop:
If you have downloaded Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape Communicator 4.0, you are set to experience push. Active Channel (Microsoft) and Netcaster (Netscape) allow the user to subscribe to channels. Once subscriptions have been set, information from these channels is brought to your desktop through the Active Channel and Netcaster software. The pages are automatically updated as new information is posted. When you initially download each of these programs, you are prompted to set up your subscriptions. You can wait until a later time to set this up on your browser.
PointCast, the leader in the push arena, is a program which resides on your hard drive. It provides content in two ways. The first way is via a window set to the channel subscriptions you chose. By clicking on the channel of interest, the latest information is then presented. The second way is via a screen saver. PointCast actually becomes your screen saver, displaying information from your selected channels randomly. If an article of interest appears, you may click on the article and have it brought up in the PointCast window. PointCast has also joined with InteliHealth, a joint venture of Aetna US Healthcare and Johns Hopkins University, to create PointCast Business Network Healthcare Insider.
Push technology has come a long way since its beginnings in 1996, and it already has its share of advocates and critics. The technology has great potential for future applications, and it will definitely be around for a long time to come.
Push Technology Companies
PointCast - http://www.pointcast.com
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 - http://www.microsoft.com
Netscape Communicator 4.0 - http://www.netscape.com
BackWeb - http://www.backweb.com
Marimba - http://www.marimba.com
Recommended Readings
Dunn, Julie and Sean Dugan. "The push metamorphosis," InfoWorld
20:4 (January 26, 1998); pp. 80-87.
Karpinski, Richard and Rich Santalesa. "Making push work for you,"
NetGuide 4:6 (June 1997); pp. 68-95.
"PointCast creates a new health care edition of push network," Internet
Medicine 2.10 (November 1997); pp. 1,3.
--Lynn Eades
Larry Alford attended the SOLINET Annual Directors Meeting on April 30 and May 1 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Janet Flowers attended an EBSCO Seminar on "Integrated Information Management: Trends and Technologies" on April 29th.
Dr. Joe Hewitt attended the meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) held April 14 and 15 in Arlington, Virginia.
Betty Meehan-Black was appointed a member of the Library Literacy Committee. She has also been elected to a three year term on the Faculty Council.
Mike Van Fossen revised two topics for the second edition of "Pathway Services Browse Topics" for the Government Printing Office. These are subject guides to U.S. government information on the Internet. Mike’s topics are "Foreign Affairs of the U.S." and "Latin and South America." They are available at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/dpos/pathbrws.html.
Health Sciences Library
Carol Jenkins served on a site visit reaccreditation team for SACS, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, at the University of Texas. Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, March 22-25.
The Association of North Carolina Health Sciences Libraries (ANCHASL) was held Friday, April 17 in Greenville at the Brody Medical Building, East Carolina University. The program included advanced PubMed Training and classes on Drug Information Resources and Health Statistics. Linda Frank, Martha Bedard, Barrie Hayes, and Diane McKenzie attended. Bridget Loven presented a session on "Finding Health Statistics" at the meeting.
Margaret Moore has assumed the position of Head of User Services Department within the Health Sciences Library. The User Services Department is a combination of what are now called Education Services and Reference and Access Services.
Law Library
Lolly Gasaway is the recipient of the third annual Marta Lange/CQ Award. This award was established by the Law and Political Science Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries in honor of its former chair. The $1000 award is funded by Congressional Quarterly. It honors distinction in law and political science librarianship. The award will be presented in June in Washington D.C. The award letter indicated that the award committee was "impressed by [Lolly's] ability to address and engage a wide variety of audiences in person and in print, drawing on a wealth of expertise and experience in a number of complex law-related subjects including, but not limited to, copyright, women in the law and sexual harassment."
North Carolina Collection
Jerry Cotten gave a program on photographic preservation for the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society in Wilmington on March 29.
Planning Library
Linda Drake attended the annual conference of the Council of Planning Librarians in Boston from April 3-7. This concludes her service on the CPL's Executive Committee.
BIBCO
On April 1-3 UNC catalogers Brenda Ambrose-Fortune, Hsi-chu Bolick, Anita Booth, Linda Brett, Joe Collins, Ed Davis, Roberta Engleman, Lynn Holdzkom, Page Life, Celine Noel, Carol Pekar, Frieda Rosenberg, Debi Schledorn, Jill Shires, Lisa Smith, Doug Stewart, Betty Waynick and Margaretta Yarborough took part in preparatory BIBCO training sessions. BIBCO is the whole-record component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), analogous to the NACO authority component of the PCC in which the Academic Affairs Library has participated since May 1995. New records contributed by UNC to OCLC through the BIBCO program have the same stature as records generated by the Library of Congress, as do existing records upgraded by UNC to BIBCO standards. UNC's BIBCO trainer was Kate Harcourt, who is Asst. Head in charge of Original and Special Materials Cataloging at Columbia University. Margaretta Yarborough is UNC's local liaison to the program.
Joseph Collins
NEH Grant
UNC has received a $111,000 grant for "North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920," from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant, which will begin January 1, 1999 and end December 31, 2000, will provide funds for the Library to digitize 200 slave narratives. It will add these titles to its database, Documenting the American South (DOS). Patricia Buck Dominguez is Principal Investigator; Natasha Smith, Project Manager; and William L. Andrews, E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, is Series Editor. The grant was awarded "extremely high marks," according to spokespeople at NEH.
Pat Dominguez
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