ElAnt v1n2 - KEEPING IN TOUCH - Electronic Forums

ELECTRONIC FORUMS FOR THE CLASSICS (2)

Ian Worthington
e-mail: antiquity-editor@classics.utas.edu.au

In the first issue of Electronic Antiquity I gave a number of electronic forums and the like; since then others have been brought to my attention, and given that we are attracting new readers all the time, it seems best to repeat (and adapt) the information and integrate new material in an attempt to compile as thorough a 'list' as possible.

A large collection of Latin and Greek texts can be read through gopher or FTPeed from the CCT at Georgetown. Address: guvax.georgetown.edu . The directory is:
cpet_projects_in_electronic_text.
The latest editions of the Chronicle of Higher Education may also be read through the same gopher address.

Oxford Text Archive:
archive@vax.ox.ac.uk . From this address you can get the Shortlist, or you can get it from the Oxford VAX cluster as:
OOX$DOC:TEXTARCHIVE.LIST and
OX$DOC:TEXTARCHIVE.SGML
or from a listerver such as:
LISTSERV@BROWNVM (send the message GET HUMANIST FILELIST for details) or by anonymous FTP from the Internet site:
sable.ox.ac.uk (129.67.1.165) in the directory /ota The list is either a formatted file for display at a terminal or in a tagged form using SGML.

The invaluable Bryn Mawr Classical Review reviews books on Greek and Latin literature and Greek and Roman history, and has occasional notices (e.g. about conferences). To subscribe, write to:
listserv@cc.brynmawr.edu put nothing on subject line,then as a message:
subscribe BMCR-L your name

And now there is the new Bryn Mawr Mediaeval Review ( BMMR ), also of relevance to Classicists, the announcement of which follows:

EDITORS

Eugene Vance,
Romance Literature GN-60
University of Washington
Seattle WA 98195
vance@u.washington.edu

James J. O'Donnell,
Classical Studies,
University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia PA 19104-6305,
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

Managing Editor:
Paul Remley,
Department of English GN-30,
University of Washington,
Seattle WA 98195,
bmmr@u.washington.edu

We are proud to announce that Bryn Mawr Medieval Review, a sister publication of Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR), is now ready to receive subscription requests. Instructions below.

BMMR will publish timely reviews of current work in all areas of medieval studies, a field it will interpret as broadly as possible (chronologically, geographically, culturally, etc.). We are eager to develop a large and diverse stable of reviewers and to offer broad coverage of interesting current work from all over the world. To that end, we will be assisted by a distinguished editorial advisory board, who will themselves review for us and help us find additional reviewers; but expressions of interest from potential reviewers and of course from authors and publishers wishing to submit review copies will be welcomed by any of the editors listed above.

There will be no paper BMMR. Reviews will ship serially as they are ready. Once a month, a 'masthead' file will remind readers of the makeup of the editorial staff and contain concise instructions for subscribing, unsubscribing, back issues, and the like. (Back issues will be available by ftp and gopher [with WAIS indexing to facilitate searching] through the University of Virginia's library e- text service, as is already the case for BMCR.) There will also be a 'Books Received' file shipped monthly, with notes by books still unplaced for review -- to encourage qualified readers to volunteer.

'Classical' and 'Medieval' are not exclusive categories, and so some reviews in appropriate topics will be shipped to both BMCR and BMMR. To subscribe to both without duplication, readers will wish to enroll in the separate listserv for BMR-L (Bryn Mawr Reviews). The model used by BMCR and BMMR may well soon be extended further to other fields, and there will always be a BMR listing to allow subscription to all the sister publications at once, as well as individual subscriptions by sub-field.

There will also be opportunity for author's replies, discussion of earlier reviews, and well-conceived columns of opinion on the current medieval scholarly scene. At the editors' discretion, other informational material (e.g., conference announcements) may also be included.

We are happy to report that the following scholars have joined our ranks at the outset, to advise and guide us.

Patrick Geary, late of U. of Florida, now of UCLA (History), Stephen Jaeger, U. of Washington (Germanics), Herbert Kessler, Johns Hopkins (Art History), Seth Lerer, Stanford (English), Keven Kiernan, U. of Kentucky (English), Alistair Minnis, York University (Medieval Studies), Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins (French), Michael Solomon, Emory (Spanish), Robert Stacey, U. of Washington (History)

We expect that others will join our board shortly.

TO SUBSCRIBE to BMMR alone:
Send mail message to:
listserv@cc.brynmawr.edu
with nothing on the subject line and the single message line:
SUBSCRIBE BMMR-L Your Name

TO SUBSCRIBE TO BMMR and BMCR (new subscribers):
Send mail message to:
listserv@cc.brynmawr.edu
with nothing on
the subject line and the single message line:
SUBSCRIBE BMR-L Your Name

SPECIAL FOR current BMCR SUBSCRIBERS:
If you wish to subscribe to both, go ahead and send the message to:
listserv@cc.brynmawr.edu for BMR-L just described, but add a second line:
UNSUB BMCR-L.
If you are told you can't unsubscribe, please refer the error message to jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu -- this will happen most often to people who subscribed to BMCR some time ago from Bitnet addresses.

Discussion groups:

Classics Discussion Group:
carries news, views, and requests for information pertinent to mainly literary classical Greek and Latin things. To subscribe, write to:
listserv@uwavm.u.washington.edu
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe CLASSICS-L your name

Classics Bulletin Board:
carries views and requests for information pertinent to most areas of studies; oriented more for students than the CLASSICS-L discussion group.
To access, call through usenet:
sci.classics

Ancient History Discussion Group: carries news, views, and requests for information pertinent to the history of the Mediterranean. To subscribe, write to:
listserv@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe ANCIEN-L your name

The Archaeological Institute of America maintains an e-mail list on Internet. The list is open to all, whether members of the AIA or not. The list is open for discussion of any topic but is especially intended to foster discussion of technological issues among professionals. It is a moderated list; the moderator is Harrison Eiteljorg II. To sign up for the AIA list, please send a message to: Listserv@brynmawr.edu There should be only one line:
subscribe AIA-L your full name (no quotes)

Latin and Neo-Latin Discussion Group:
appears at present infrequently and sometimes in Latin. To subscribe, write to:
listserver@psuvm.psu.edu
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe LATIN-L your name

Medieval Text - Philology, Codicology, and Technology etc. this is a particularly lively and interesting discussion group and covers most areas of Medieval studies.
To subscribe, write to:
listserver@uiucvmd.bitnet
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe MEDTEXTL your name

Rare Books and Special Collection Forum: we've not seen this discussion group.
To subscribe, write to:
listserver@rutvm1.bitnet
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe EXLIBRIS your name

'UCLA Friends and Alumni of Indo-European Studies Newsletter'
Edited by D. Anderson, 2143 Kelton Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90025.
e-mail: ibardwa@mvs.oac.ucla.edu .
This contains amongst other things a list of e-projects in Indo- European studies, includingGreek, Latin, Indic, and Indo- European in general.

A number of groups and lists are of interest to philosophers (the following are fairly randomly extracted, and may/may not be of use to classicists, from a longer list kindly sent by Steven Clark of Liverpool University: please contact him for details of others: srlclark@uxb.liv.ac.uk ):

Noble Savages Philosophers Group:
seems to be very conversational and argumentative, many members are postgraduate students, not all of philosophy. To subscribe, write to:
listserv@earn.rpitsvm
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe NSP-L your name

Liverpool Philosophy Group:
discussion and conversation, along with job and conference announcements. To subscribe, write to Steven Clark:
srlclark@uxb.liv.ac.uk .

History and Philosophy of Science:
To subscribe, write to:
listserv@ukcc.uky.edu
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe HOPOS-L your name

Philosophy and Religion:
A group at Harvard seems to be meeting with a favourable press; for information write to:
religion@edu.harvard.harvarda

Michael Fraser of the University of Durham (UK) kindly sent the following two:

Ancient Text Analyis Discussion Group:
A forum for the scholarly, informal and polite discussion of the social worlds behind and within the texts of antiquity, including those of the Hebrew bible, early Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism and all the literature associated with the Graeco-Roman world. To subscribe, write to:
listserv@acadvm1.uottawa.ca
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe CONTEX-L your name

1st Century Judaism and Christianity:
A highly active discussion list, with many international scholars amongst its subscribers; particular interests of the list are the works of Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. To subscribe, write to:
listserv@yorkvm1.bitnet
put nothing on subject line, then as a message:
subscribe IOUDAIOS your name

Papyrology list:
To subscribe write the following message to:
listserv@igl.ku.dk
subscribe papy <your name>
The machine will automatically note the address you are writing from and will send you a confirmation including a list of commands to get access to whatever material may accumulate on the listserver like e.g. lists of addresses. To send messages for circulation the address is:
papy@igl.ku.dk
To stop your subscription write the following message to:
listserv@igl.ku.dk
signoff papy <your name>

The table of contents for many Classics journals can also be called up electronically via the mighty TOCS-IN list. The following full details have appeared elsewhere:

TOCS-IN: Tables of Contents of Interest to Classicists
Bob Kallet-Marx and Philippa Matheson

This announcement has four parts:
1) General, and call for help
2) Imminent update of TOC files
3) New: Gopher access
4) Reminder: ftp access

1) TOCS-IN, the project to put on-line current tables of contents of interest to Classicists, has now been in operation for a year. [To receive a brief description of the project, read our informational file, available by gopher or ftp: (3) or (4) below.] We are slowly but steadily increasing the number of journals we can cover: We now have tables of contents of 88 journals for 1992 (2102 articles), and our 1993 files are growing apace (599 articles from 49 journals). We must stress, however, that our hopes to improve coverage are still dependent almost entirely on volunteer help. A subsequent message will list the journals which we would like to cover if people are willing to take on the small burden of entering the TOCs of 1 or 2 annually and sending them on to Bob Kallet-Marx ( RKALLET@HUMANITAS.UCSB.EDU or @HUMANITAS.BITNET). One of the virtues of TOCS-IN is speed (relative, of course), and certainly this would be especially well served if someone at the publishing end of some of the desiderated journals would kindly send us TOCs around the time of publication.

2) A general update of the TOC files is scheduled for the weekend of July 3-4th. Those of you who are familiar with the contents of the last set of TOC files and wish to see only what is new should look at 'new92.toc' and 'new93.toc' (where additions are stored until, at the time of a general update, they are sorted into the appropriate files) before their contents are emptied and distributed at the beginning of next week.

3) Gopher: The TOC files can now be retrieved by the menu- driven gopher program. Those of you who are put off by ftp, or wish only to browse without cumbersome preliminaries, will find this a very handy means of access. That is, if Gopher is available to you: find out by typing 'gopher' after you login, and see whether anything happens.

A very convenient menu for Gophering TOCS-IN has been set up at the U. of Pennsylvania, thanks to J. O'Donnell:

Aim your gopher at 'ccat.sas.upenn.edu' (on some mainframes you can type 'gopher ccat.sas.upenn.edu' at the command line) and choose '8.' from the first menu ('Electronic Publications and Resources'), then '10.' ('Journals in Classics'). [Note that on the second screen you will also find the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (2.), articles from the upcoming issue of TAPA (19.), and also lots of other material of interest to humanists.]

Once you have chosen '10. Journals in Classics', you will be offered '1. info.toc' (which allows you to browse inform.toc), and '2. tocs-in/' the directory on epas.utoronto.ca, where all the toc files are stored. Choose 2., and browse any file (by selecting the file and typing return) or use any of the other functions available in your gopher program. These may include downloading (on some gophers, type 'D', then choose the method of transmission, e.g., kermit, from the dialog box, and finally set your PC to receive when prompted), saving the file to your mainframe account (type 's'), or sending the file to yourself by e-mail (view it, quit, and type 'm').

Three caveats
a) The gopher menus for TOCS-IN at Penn are still experimental and may be modified.
b) gophers differ: the procedures for retrieving the files may be quite different through your gopher.
c) some gophers 'guess' that the archXX-X.toc files are binary (they are marked <PC Bin> in one) -- ignore, they are all normal ascii text files.

4) Here is a reminder of how to obtain the TOCS-IN files by ftp. In the file 'inform.toc' is a brief description of the project and the structure of the files.

If you have an internet address and can use interactive ftp, give the command 'ftp epas.utoronto.ca.' Then during the login process give 'anonymous' for your user name, and your full e- mail address as the password. Then give the following commands:
fftp> cd pub/tocs-in
ftp> dir
ftp> get inform.toc
ftp> quit

If you have a BITNET or EARN address, the Princeton bitnet ftp server will do it for you. The data will be sent to you in the form of e-mail messages. Send a mail message to BITFTP@PUCC, with no subject and no signature, containing these commands, each on a separate line.
FFTP epas.utoronto.ca NETDATA
USER anonymous
CD pub/tocs-in
DIR
GET inform.toc
QUIT

The 'dir' command produces a list of the files available and the 'get inform.toc' command will get you a file with a list of the journals available and the most recent issue of each in the archive. When you know which files you want, omit the 'dir' command from the instruc- tions above, and change the 'get' command to get the files you want. E.g., 'get cla92-1.toc cla92-2.toc arch92- 4.toc rlne92-2.toc' You can have more than one get command in each session/message, or use 'mget' to specify multiple files: e.g., 'mget *.toc' or 'mget cla*.toc'.

Note: ftp can do various translations of the data from one machine tto another. To find out about the available ftp commands: on internet type the single word 'ftp' as a command and type '?' at the ftp> prompt; on bitnet, send a message to BITFTP@PUCC with the single word 'HELP' in it, and you will be sent a list of the available commands and what they do.

1) Update of TOCS-IN files, including new TOCS. 2) A friendlier Gopher. -------------------------------------------------------------

1) A general update of the Table of Contents files has taken place, and the contents of the 'new92.toc' and 'new93.toc' files have been distributed into the appropriate subject files. After a most encouraging response to our call for volunteers of last week, the 'new92.toc' and 'new93.toc' files now contain new tocs for the Annual of the British School at Athens ,_ Antike Kunst , Chiron ,_ Klio , Parola del Passato , Papers of the British School in Rome and_ Revue des Etudes Grecques , for which we warmly thank R. Kaster, M. Kerr, M. Muchow, and G. Whitaker.

2) In addition, improvements implemented by J. O'Donnell in the CCAT gopher system have prompted us to add some information files in the tocs-in directory. The following new files will be found, intended for browsing with gopher:

File_sizes_and_dates A directory with all tocs files with date of last change for a quick check of what additions have been made since the last time you looked. Information_on_tocs (Simply a copy of inform.toc) Where_will_I_find... List of all the journals alphabetically by their abbreviations, with an indication of which files to find their tocs in. Quicker than browsing inform.toc.

For instructions on how to get the tocs, see the last TOCS-IN announcement or send e-mail to rkallet@humanitas.ucsb.edu or amphoras@epas.utoronto.ca .

TAPhA and Arethusa are producing electronic preprints in advance of the appearance of the 'hard copy' journals. For further information contact James O'Donnell:
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

Johns Hopkins University Press reports that several journals (including AJPh ) may also be obtained electronically; for information contact Susan Lewis:
suelewis@jhuvm.hcf.jhu.edu

On electronic publishing, two books (discussed in bmcr 4.2.1.) are to be noted:

A. Cummings et al., University Libraries and Scholarly Communication: A Study Prepared for the Mellon Foundation (Washington, Association of Research Libraries: 1992)

Ann Okerson (ed.), Visions and Opportunities in Electronic Publishing: Proceedings of the Second Symposium (Washington, Association of Research Libraries: 1993)

If anyone has information on other groups and lists petinent to Classics and Ancient History, please let one or both of the editors know at e-mail: antiquity-editor@classics.utas.edu.au .

COPYRIGHT NOTE: Copyright remains with authors, but due reference should be made to this journal if any part of the above is later published elsewhere.

Electronic Antiquity Vol. 1 Issue 2 - July 1993
edited by Peter Toohey and Ian Worthington
antiquity-editor@classics.utas.edu.au
ISSN 1320-3606