Architects have varied and eclectic needs for information. Some types of information are needed repeatedly. Some types are needed only occasionally. A university branch library or a firm library attempts to handle the ongoing needs with in-house resources. As for the occasional need, space and financial considerations have necessitated a reliance on larger libraries, a situation which works with varying degrees of success.
So it has been until now. Now the Internet is starting to change the ground rules. I say STARTING, for several reasons. First, many libraries and firms do not yet have access to the Internet. Second, awareness of what is on the net is uneven, primarily because while the information on the Internet is growing dramatically, intellectual access to it is not. And third, the usefulness of net resources in toto has not been fully established. In fact, while there is a wealth of useful information on the net, there are also tremendous gaps in what can be found.
I would like to address the second area, that is, awareness of what is on the net that could be of use to us, grouped by type of information. This will be a whirlwind tour, with many sources mentioned and few described in detail. My objective here is to give you a flavor of the net's diversity, some specific net sites of interest, and a handle on where to start. The included list of Internet addresses will hopefully allow you to explore at your own speed, and to the depth you require.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Even small libraries have hundreds of periodical issues in their collections. Some libraries cannot afford the indexes needed to find that particular article someone is positive they saw last year or the year before in one of the issues almost surely in the library! Even those libraries with indexes will frequently be faced with queries relating to periodical issues which are more current than their indexes. Now, libraries accessing the Internet can retrieve citations to these articles. The Uncover service, operated by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL), offers a free index to about 17,000 journals, among which are the most prominent architectural journals. It includes the five journals identified in an AIA poll (reported in the AIA Memo, May 1991) as being most read by architects--Architecture, Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Engineering News Record, and Building Design and Construction--and of course many others. Uncover is a table of contents index, so for in-depth research it has obvious deficiencies, but for retrieving citations to articles about a particular architect or building it is quite adequate. Citations are added to the database within 48 hours of receipt of the issue.
In addition to Uncover's index, a new service called Uncover Reveal has recently been announced by Uncover. This service, also free, allows anyone with access to e-mail to specify journals for which they would like tables of contents when the journal issue appears. Uncover will send, by e-mail, the tables of contents of the journals selected. If, for instance, your firm specializes in building hospitals and medical facilities, but you cannot afford all the periodicals which may have relevant materials, you can use this method to monitor what is being written in the field. Document delivery can also be provided by Uncover -- but not for free! Providing the article is where Uncover makes its money, in case you were wondering how they managed to provide all these services without charge! The cost is $8.50 per article, plus copyright fees set by the publisher, and a fax charge if speed is of the essence.
In addition to Uncover, there are many other sites on the Internet to which you can turn for bibliographical information. In terms of specialized subjects, you may be interested in the Solar Energy Index at Arizona State University (which includes much more than solar energy, and indexes not just periodicals, but also reports, pamphlets etc.). The National Trust for Historic Preservation Library holdings are included in the online public access catalog (opac) of the University of Maryland College Park. While their in-house index to periodicals is not yet online, they anticipate it being available through the opac by the end of 1994. The Transportation Library at the University of California Berkeley is accessible on the Internet through Melvyl, and their periodical index is currently online.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: BOOKS
Several library online catalogs have already been mentioned, including Melvyl, the University of California Library catalog with links to many additional library catalogs. Other library opacs of special interest to architecture, accessible via the Internet, are the Avery Library, and the Library of Congress.
In addition to libraries, publishers are providing bibliographic information on the net, and purchasing information, too, of course! One World Wide Web site, maintained by Peter Scott at the University of Saskatchewan, contains catalogs from 41 publishers. In addition to the catalogs of individual publishers, several bookstores, including those at Stanford and University of California Irvine, have provided searchable databases of their stock -- probably a more productive approach, unless you are looking for a specialist publisher's offerings (e.g. O'Reilly's Internet books).
Another effective means of identifying bibliographic information is to consult a bibliography. We are just beginning to see these being provided on the net. One of the goals of the recently established web site, ArtSource, is to solicit bibliographies and library reference guides to include at the site. Several libraries have added bibliographies to their library gophers. The University of California Berkeley gopher section on architecture includes several useful bibliographies created by the librarians at the Environmental Design Library, including one on their video resources.
Perhaps I should take a moment to briefly explain the World Wide Web, since I have just mentioned two web sites, and will be mentioning more as I proceed. The World Wide Web is a hypertext/hypermedia environment on the Internet. Some web sites are still text only. Many web sites include images, sound, video -- in a word, media. If you can telnet, you can access the text portions of any web site, including those with media. To access media takes a higher level of technology. Images are viewable onscreen on the web, if you have a client such as Mosaic, a freeware product which you can download from the Internet. To use Mosaic, however, also requires a certain level of technology not available to many of us.
BUSINESS INFORMATION
There are several spots on the net which contain pointers to a wide variety of business sources, and thus provide entry to the incredible amount of business information now on the Internet. These include gophers at Babson College, and at the University of Missouri St. Louis, as well as the Economic Bulletin Board at the University of Michigan gopher. There is also a web site (Finweb) which provides access to economic and financial information at various sites throughout the Internet, including web sites, which gophers generally do not do.
Some of the titles which you will find at these locations are: The U.S. Industrial Outlook (of particular interest is the predicted demand for construction and construction materials in 1994), the Small Business Administration Industry Profiles (including construction), the International Business Practices Guides (addressing joint ventures, taxes, regulatory agencies, etc.), the U.S. Budget for 1995, Department of State travel advisories, foreign exchange rates, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, U.S. Census information, and much much more!
Much of this business information is published by the government. Tsang and Austin's Guide to Government Business and Economics Sources, which you can find at the University of Michigan Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Research Guides, is an excellent introduction.
You might also be interested in reading some issues of the Internet Business Journal. Its focus is the use of the Internet for doing business, and one of its features is the Internet Advertising Review.
EMPLOYMENT AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
The Commerce Business Daily is on the net, but there is a fee for the full text. You can search without charge the last day's listings, and the last ten days listings, and come up with tantalizing glimpses of what is there in the form of partial one-line titles of the announcements. I haven't investigated the cost for full access to CBD online. However, I did come across an offer by a company called SmartDocs Data Services, to create a custom Commerce Business Daily according to your criteria. The service would also take care of ordering any bid packages you might want. This service is free until May 30, at which time they anticipate charging between $5 and $15 per month.
Other sites offering news of employment and funding opportunities are the U.S. AID gopher, which lists procurement and business opportunities; the Chronicle of Higher Education job ads; and the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. Many of these are included in the collection of grants resources at the RiceInfo gopher. Additional gopher collections can be identified through gopher-jewels, which lists the best gopher sites in each of many subject categories, including grants.
LEGAL/LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION
The Library of Congress is a good place to start for this kind of information. You will find at MARVEL (LC's gopher) the status of current legislation, copyright law, members of Congress, Supreme Court decisions -- for a start. Of interest, too, is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which can be found at the Library of Congress and at many other sites. In fact, the Cornucopia of Disability Information gopher contains the ADA, along with accessibility guidelines, and a good deal more on this topic.
Another site with a good collection of legal materials is the Cornell Law School gopher and web site. Included at this site are hypertexted versions of selected laws, including trademark law, commercial law, patent law, and copyright law. Another feature of this site are the full-text documents in foreign and international law.
GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES
Many agencies have set up their own Internet sites. Some have been referred to above. In addition to those, the Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, National Technical Information Service, National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Archives Center for Electronic Records, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and national labs such as Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley are on the net. Collections/pointers to these gophers and other government agency sites or documents can be found at many sites, including the Library of Congress and the University of California Santa Cruz.
The quality and amount of data varies from agency to agency. At the least, you can expect directory information. Amongst agencies going a step or two beyond that are the EPA and OSHA. The EPA provides access to its library holdings, and the EPA Futures Studies gopher provides full-text material, including a report of the AIA workshop on sustainable architecture held October 1993. OSHA has also made full-text documents accessible. What one must remember is that what is not there today, may well be there tomorrow, and visa versa unfortunately!
GENERAL REFERENCE
There is no doubt that this is one of the strengths of the Internet. It puts a wide range of ready reference tools at your fingertips! Many of these tools you can find at site after site. To name just one location which offers a good collection, I would suggest the Virtual Reference Desk at the University of California Irvine. There you will find an acronyms dictionary, the CIA World Factbook (searchable), Webster's and the American English Dictionary (searchable), foreign currency exchange rates, the geographic name server, zip code directory, Roget's Thesaurus, area codes, weather information, and links to other gophers and information about the Internet itself (such as e-mail addresses, and directories of electronic forums).
SPECIFICALLY ARCHITECTURE
Thus far I have covered general resources which I think can be of use to architects, and the architectural library. There are specific architecture sites on the Internet as well. At this stage, however, they are more readily likened to a patchwork quilt than a carefully woven tapestry.
Nonetheless, there are a couple of starting points if you would like to explore the architecture sites. I have compiled a guide to resources in architecture and building which is available at the University of Michigan Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Research Guides (a revised version will be posted by the end of May). This guide is being converted to html hypertext format by Mary Molinaro, and will soon be available at ArtSource -- so you can go to that one site and choose each place on the list in turn, without the grief of inputting each address one by one. The gopher of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota has created links to most of the architecture and architecture school gophers in my guide (in addition to gophers the guide includes, web sites, library catalogs, indexes, image collections, government documents, ftp sites, electronic journals, and full-text sources).
If you want to simply hit the high spots, you can access the architecture sections of the gophers at Rice and at Calpoly. There is, however, considerable overlap, as is typical of gophers in all subjects. For instance, both point to ArchiGopher, Archpics (Carnegie Mellon's index to architectural illustrations in books), Architronic (the one architecture electronic journal), and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice (an architecture school gopher, with information about the school, about Venice, and, in Italian, about the research of its illustrious faculty).
Let's look at ArchiGopher, since it figures prominently in many of the architecture sections of gophers organized by subject, and since it is representative of earlier approaches to providing architecture images on the Internet. ArchiGopher, which might be termed an "image" gopher, since that is basically all that is there, was one of the first architectural gophers. It created a great sense of anticipation when it first came up in 1993. It contains about 90 images -- not very many really. It is not growing significantly. It is an admirable pioneering effort, but the advances being made today in image collections on the net are on World Wide Web sites, not gopher sites. The Australian National University has put up 2500 images of classical architecture of the Mediterranean Basin (unfortunately it is only available for xmosaic users). The University of Virginia Digital Image Center of the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library has put up images from an architecture history class, on Renaissance and Baroque architecture in France and Italy (mosaic is necessary to make viewing these feasible). Both are great resources. In addition, 8000 images from the UC Berkeley slide library are accessible over the net, but only with xwindows, a commercial software.
As impressive as these resources are, in terms of images they represent a mere fraction of what is possible and desirable. Someday -- how soon? -- we will have images from the full corpus of architecture work, a prospect to stir the imagination!
It will also take some time for the appropriate technology to be available to the "masses". Many of us do not have mosaic or xwindows. Many of us do not have machines powerful enough to handle them if we did!
The patchwork of architecture resources on the Internet is composed primarily of information from individual institutions. The information is often useful in proportion to your interest in that institution. Examples include the gophers of the Technical University of Eindhoven, and the Netherlands R & D Consulting Center TNO. More and more schools of architecture are making their course descriptions accessible on the net (several of these are listed in my guide; if you are interested in a particular school you can go through the gopher hierarchy to that school and see what is available).
Another class of gophers state their intentions to provide documents, but at the moment all that is provided is a mission statement and links to other sites. An example of this type is the ICARIS gopher (Integrated CAD in AEC Research Information Server).
On the other hand, there are also more substantive initiatives being undertaken. The Rice Design Alliance, for instance, has this spring sponsored a series of lectures on the virtual city, and posted the full-text of those lectures to their web site. The Daedalus gopher at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has text of six papers produced by the Centre for Design, as well as information on their research projects and a directory of the participants in the Cooperative Network of Building Researchers. The H-URBAN discussion list moderators are including substantial materials in postings, as well as "conversation." They have posted and archived papers, bibliographies, book reviews, and journal tables of contents.
CONCLUSION
There is much of interest to architecture on the Internet. It is difficult to understand how we could have a situation of information overload, and information deprivation at the same time, but that seems to be what's happening! The scene is constantly evolving, however, and as more and more people become involved in the process, we may see some dramatic leaps in terms of both quality and quantity of information provided.
Even now, at this stage of development, the Internet brings a wealth of resources within reach of the keyboard, and links each of us with colleagues and experts through email and discussion lists such as ARLIS-L and AASL-L.
ADDRESSES OF SITES MENTIONED ABOVE
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Uncover: telnet database.carl.org [choose Uncover. To exit type //exit]
Arizona State's Solar Energy Index: telnet pac.carl.org [choose other library catalogs, then Arizona State]
National Trust for Historic Preservation Library: telnet victor.umd.edu [choose pac, vt100, UMS Campus Library Catalogs/UM College Park] (Index to periodical literature coming soon!)
University of California Berkeley Transportation Library (part of the Melvyl catalog): telnet melvyl.ucop.edu
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: BOOKS
The Avery Library, Columbia University: telnet columbianet.columbia.edu
Library of Congress: telnet locis.loc.gov
Scott's list of publishers: http://jester.usask.ca/~scottp/publish.html
Stanford Bookstore: telnet melvyl.ucop.edu [forward through the screens until you reach the list with Stanford, type Stanford, type select stanford bookstore]
University of California Irvine Bookstore: http://bookweb.cwis.uci.edu:8042 or gopher gopher.cwis.uci.edu [choose departments, then books]
University of California Berkeley, Environmental Design Library bibliographies: gopher infolib.lib.berkeley.edu [choose research databases and resources by subject, then architecture]
ArtSource: http://www.uky.edu/Artsource/artsourcehome.html
BUSINESS INFORMATION
Babson College business collection: gopher vaxvmsx.babson.edu [choose business resources]
University of Missouri St. Louis business gopher: gopher umslvma.umsl.edu [choose library, then subjects, then business. Some of their business resources are in the government documents section -- choose library, then government documents]
Economic Bulletin Board at the University of Michigan: gopher una.hh.lib.umich.edu [choose social science resources, economics, economic bulletin board]
Finweb: http://riskweb.bus.utexas.edu/finweb.htm
Tsang and Austin Guide to Government Business and Economics Sources on the Internet: gopher una.hh.lib.umich.edu [choose inetdirsstacks, then business and economics by Tsang and Austin]
Internet Business Journal: gopher gopher.fonorola.net
EMPLOYMENT AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
Commerce Business Daily: gopher cscns.com [choose Special -- Commerce Business Daily]
SmartDocs Data Services for the CBD: send mail to cbdnews@netcom.com
U.S. AID Procurement and Business Opportunities: gopher gopher.info.usaid.gov
Chronicle of Higher Education: gopher chronicle.merit.edu [choose ads]
Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance: gopher marvel.loc.gov [choose government information, federal information resources, information by agency, general information resources]
Rice grants gopher: gopher riceinfo.rice.edu [choose subjects, then grants]
Gopher-jewels selection of grants gophers: gopher cwis.usc.edu [choose other gophers, gophers by subject, gopher jewels, grants]
LEGAL/LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION
Library of Congress gopher: gopher marvel.loc.gov
Cornucopia of Disability Information gopher, including ADA: gopher val-dor.cc.buffalo.edu [choose government documents to retrieve the ADA]
Cornell Law School gopher or web site: gopher fatty.law.cornell.edu or telnet fatty.law.cornell.edu, login:www or http://www.law.cornell.edu
GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES
Environmental Protection Agency: gopher gopher.epa.gov
EPA Futures Studies gopher: futures.wic.epa.gov
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: gopher ginfo.cs.fit.edu
National Technical Information Service: telnet fedworld.gov
National Science Foundation: gopher stis.nsf.gov
Oak Ridge National Laboratory: gopher jupiter.esd.ornl.gov or http://jupiter.esd.ornl.gov
Lawrence Berkeley Lab: http://www.lbl.gov
Library of Congress collection: gopher marvel.loc.gov
University of California Santa Cruz collection: gopher scilibx.ucsc.edu [choose the community, then guide to government]
GENERAL REFERENCE
University of California Irvine Virtual Reference Desk: gopher gopher-server.cwis.uci.edu
SPECIFICALLY ARCHITECTURE
Brown's Guide to Internet Sources in Architecture and Building: gopher una.hh.lib.umich.edu [choose inetdirsstacks]
University of Minnesota gopher links to gophers mentioned in the Brown guide: gopher gumby.arch.umn.edu
Rice collection of architecture sites: gopher riceinfo.rice.edu [choose information by subject area, then architecture]
Cal Poly collection of architecture sites: gopher library.calpoly.edu [choose subject guides, then architecture]
ArchiGopher: gopher libra.arch.umich.edu
Archpics: telnet library.cmu.edu, login: library, ESC 2 to change databases
Architronic: subscribe by sending message to listserv@kentvm.kent.edu, or view on various gophers including the one at Rice (gopher gopher.saed.kent.edu), or ftp from zeus.kent.edu (login: architecture, password: archives)
Istituto Universitario di Architettura: gopher gopher.iuav.unive.it
Australian National University images collection: http://rubens.anu.edu.au
University of Virginia Digital Image Center: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/class/arh102/
SPIRO, the UC-Berkeley slide collection: xhost pflueger.ced.berkeley.edu, then telnet or rlogin to pflueger.ced.berkeley.edu. At the prompt enter "netspiro". When prompted for the name of your x window display, enter in this format: your.machine.full.address:0
Technical University in Eindhoven: gopher gopher.tue.nl [choose Information Servers Technishe Universiteit Eindhoven, then Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning]
Netherlands TNO Organization: gopher gopher.tno.nl [choose Information about the TNO Organization, then Building and Construction Research]
ICARIS gopher: gopher gopher.fagg.uni-lj.si
Rice Design Alliance Virtual City lectures: http://riceinfo.rice.edu/ES/Architecture/RDA/VC/VirtualCity.html
Daedalus gopher: gopher daedalus.edc.rmit.edu.au
H-URBAN: H-URBAN@uicvm.uic.edu
ARLIS-L: ARLIS-L@ukcc.uky.edu
AASL-L: AASL-L@unllib.unl.edu
**Note: several addresses in the format starting "http://" have been given above. For those without web browsers, you can access those sites by telnetting to fatty.law.cornell.edu, login as www. Then type g [for go] and the address. For example, to get to ArtSource:
Material appearing in Architronic may be distributed freely by electronic or any other means, providing that any such distribution is without charge (unless for purposes of cost recovery by interlibrary loan services) and that Architronic is acknowledged as the source. However, no article may be reprinted in any publication without the explicit written permission of the author(s). This statement must accompany all distributions of Architronic, whether complete or partial.