PAMnet News
Debra Bailey More threads from the past quarter can be found in the PAMnet Discussion Archive at: http://listserv.nd.edu/archives/pamnet.html.
Looting & burning of Iraq's National Library Drew Burton, AMS, sent in other news reports from the Kansas City Star Web site, pointing out that Hammurabi's Law Code was housed in the Iraq National Museum.
Silvio Levy posted the account of the American and British government's reaction from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/dailybriefing/story/0,12965,935381,00.html, and mused, "I can't help imagining what our attitude would be if New York were bombed day and night for three weeks, then further destroyed by some of its own residents under the complacent gaze of the victorious invader—the Metropolitan emptied of its treasures, all hospitals paralyzed, everything that characterizes civilization going up in smoke."
Brian Simboli lamented about the lost Mesopotamian contributions to the history of mathematics and astronomy. Another cross-posting from PI-ALA, promoted the work of the International Committee of the Blue Shield which serves to protect cultural property in the event of natural and human disasters. It comprises representatives of the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Council on Monuments and Site (ICOMOS) and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).
APS March meeting, cited reference paper Brian Simboli wanted to make the point that "there might be a psychological propensity for accidental misprints to follow a pattern, according to which particular misprints are more likely than others." Simpoli later posted a message from one of the authors of the paper, Mikhail Simkin, and Simkin mentioned that "you might be interested in our most recent paper: "Copied citations create renowned papers?" http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0305150. Peter Boyce posted the citation to the article, http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0212043, and shares that "citation errors will not propagate in AAS journals." Boyce disagreed with the article's premise that "propagating a citation error implies that the author did not read the article," pointing out that "most people put together the reference list only after they have finished writing the article, months or years past when they would have read the papers at the beginning of the research project."
Travis C. Brooks, posted that SPIRES offers a service to authors of papers in high-energy physics; authors can submit their reference lists and Spires automatically extracts and check the lists for them. Brooks states, "As authoring tools become more common, more and more reference errors can be eliminated."
Patricia Kreitz posted that one physicist she worked with about a decade ago had worked for NSF, and they had documented a 15% error rate in author bibliographies. Krietz also pointed out the "famous" red deer study that is a classic example of mis-citing; a subsequent paper "reported the finding of the study erroneously and all subsequent citations continued the misunderstanding and quoted the red deer study to prove the opposite conclusion from what it truly intended."
Scott Warren doubts that the article is accurate, as the authors are "creating an idealized situation that bears only scant resemblance to the reality of writing and organizing research." Warren urges us to "look at it as a fun exercise with differential equations and not much more."
SFX and arXiv Browser-related problems accessing resources Matt Marsteeler reported that his institution has given up on proxy server technology and are currently using a virtual private network. They are also working with a new product called Shibboleth that might replace the virtual private network.
Molly White also has experienced problems, and reports that her library is switching to EZ Proxy this summer.
Pam Yorks reported that during beta tests of several new interfaces for INSPEC, Linux users complained that the Silverplatter WebSPIRS and OVID interfaces did NOT work well for them, although the Ei Village and AXIOM interfaces worked fine. Yorks also recommended trying the free internet browser Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org to resolve problems with proxy servers.
Virginia Smith recommended Opera, http://www.opera.com, as an alternative to IE and Netscape.
Jeremy Brown directed us to test the accessibility of sites by using a standards-compliant Web browser like Mozilla to test them. Brown also suggests using http header referrals to authenticate remote users. Also, Brown states that the best solution to solving the browser compatibility problem is to adhere to standards, http://www.w3.org. Brown adds that the "virtues of standard HTML (any flavor, including XHTML) is that there is no browser compatibility problem…and no separate version to be maintained."
Silvio Levy strongly states, "there is NO JUSTIFICATION" for Web developers to write code that requires a particular browser." When Levy signs a site license agreement or online access contract, he specifies that access must be available to any HTML-compliant browser, running on any standard operating system.
Steve Huston reports that Mac's now have built-in VPN support, and can use VPN over any existing connection (Airport, modem, Ethernet). He also suggests using FreeS/WAN for Linux problems.
Looting and burning of Iraq's National Library APS March meeting SFX and arXiv Browser-related problems
debrae@rice.edu
Liz Bryson informed us of Ross Shimmon's post from the Pacific Islands Association of Libraries and Archives, which provided information on the looting and burning of Iraq's National Library and National Archives following the destruction of most of the contents of the National Museum. The post also contained reports from the New York Times, quoting, "virtually nothing was left of the library and its tens of thousands of old manuscripts and books, and of archives like Iraqi newspapers tracing the country's turbulent history."
Bob Noel posted comments on a new article in the arXiv titled "Read Before You Cite" by M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury. According to the article, their estimate is that only about 20% of citers (researchers or faculty) actually read the original paper they're citing.
Jane Holmquist asked if anyone if anyone is using SFX, or another linking product, in conjunction with the arXiv preprint database. David Stern explains, "in order to implement SFX through arXiv you will need to configure arXiv as a Source in addition to a Target," http://www.sfxit.com. David Dallman and Jens Vigen posted information on the CERN Document Server, http://cdsweb.cern.ch. Their service links to about 500 different journal titles in physics, astrophysics, mathematics and technology and preserves the link to the preprint so that people without e-journal subscriptions are ensured access to the document.
Jane Holmquist posted a query to see if others were having problems accessing library resources because of a requirement of some products to use Internet Explorer's browser. The astrophysicists in her department use Linux and reported problems using the university's proxy server, notably, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Physica Scripta. Also, with Netscape 4.76 the Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics has experienced problems.
