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The Forum > Article Comments > Academia online > Comments

Academia online : Comments

By Andrew Leigh, published 3/7/2006

The Internet is rapidly becoming the world’s library: academics should be ensuring their book is on the shelf.

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Andrew,

You are incorrect when you talk about the Inetrent being switched on in 1989.

If you mean the internet as a packet switched network it was alive and well years before.

During the early years of the then DARPA net, about the mid-1970s, a few Australians made spasmodic connections to it via a dial-up service offered by the then Australian Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC).

Within Australia, from the mid-1970s onwards, Robert Elz at the University of Melbourne, and Prof. Bob Kummerfeld and Piers Lauder at the University of Sydney ran the very successful Australian Computer Science network (ACSnet, whose echoes are still reverberating in the form of the .oz.au domain). For interstate links, ACSnet used the other major network in Australia at the time, the X.25-based CSIROnet. (This was eventually sold off by the CSIRO. It operated for a time as a commercial service, and was gradually converted into a conventional, closed 'value-added network' or VAN).

In the early 1980s, a permanent Australian email connection to what was by then ARPAnet was established by Kummerfeld, Lauders and Elz. In the mid-1980s, Geoff Huston at ANU contributed an email gateway from the ACSnet mail delivery system into the VAX/VMS systems that had dominated University computer installations following their first implementation at Mt Stromlo in 1978. In 1984, the Top Level Domain (TLD) .au was delegated to Robert Elz, at Melbourne University.

Mail and news spread widely through the university and research communities in the mid-1980's. There were various attempts to set up a broader university network through that decade. One that nearly came to fruition was a Digital-assisted effort, SPEARNET, in 1985-86.

I know I was there.
Posted by Steve Madden, Monday, 3 July 2006 11:45:22 AM
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With most universities developing e-print databases, accessable to the web more and more content will find its way online
Posted by Zephyrus, Monday, 3 July 2006 4:37:07 PM
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There is a list of Australian research repositories at AuseAccess - http://leven.comp.utas.edu.au/AuseAccess/pmwiki.php?n=Activity.AustralianRepositories

These provide open access to pre-prints, post-prints and related materials and are often a service provided by the institutions' libraries to their research communities.
So by all means, go to the library to get access to those "clever papers" but as more content is loaded to repositories it will more often be a virtual visit to the Library.

Institutional repositories are indexed by Google, Yahoo and other search engines or if you want to limit your searching only to reseach repositories - try Oaister - http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ or Research Now - http://researchnow.bepress.com/
Posted by Peta_H, Wednesday, 5 July 2006 5:22:08 PM
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Yeah, unfortunately Andrew's otherwise worthwhile contribution was rendered unintentionally funny by his opening statement that the internet was switched on in 1989.

He probably lost 90% of his readers at the first sentence.

For that glaring error, let me issue on behalf of propellor-heads all over the world, a great big "revise and resubmit" to Andrew!

The second mistake is that it wasn't Robert Elz who switched it on. It was Al Gore. :-D
Posted by Mercurius, Monday, 10 July 2006 1:38:32 PM
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I agree fully with Andrew - and fortunately because I was unclear about exactly who switched what on and when, he didn't lose any credibility for me. I consider it a rather frustrating dichotomy that scholarly work that is submitted with Internet referencing is still frowned upon - unless one has accessed the University search engines. These search engines and data bases are, of course, expensive, and can only be accessed if you are attached to a University. So it appears that even those universities who encourage internet usage still do so on an elitist basis.

Personally, because my field of study is rather rare, I try every avenue I possibly can for information - but am unable to cite many of the sites I access.

As to libraries falling into disuse - I see nothing to support this theory at my own University which, in fact, is currently adding yet another library to campus. Many students'research leads them to pay sites so they end up back in libraries after all.

So yes - roll on the day when information is freely available to all and more academics move a modem into their ivory towers and engage in dialogue with those outside. Perhaps some who resist this are afraid that knowledge is power, and feel threatened?
Posted by Romany, Tuesday, 11 July 2006 9:55:01 AM
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