Search results

The French, and increasingly French libraries, are online on the networks. French print publishing is in trouble. Online full text is one of the promising developments in the forefront of network development. Despite some small but stubborn problems such as copyright and pricing, online full text may represent a way out of their problems for the publishers. One new Minitel service and the general direction of the largest French publisher may indicate an impending marriage of the two sets of problems, and of their possibilities.

The French are becoming world leaders in networked information. The key to this development is the immediate access to the general public provided by their national Minitel system. New networked libraries are being built, existing libraries are going online, and the crisis‐ridden French publishing industry is looking to networked information for its salvation. The French approach to networking offers interesting lessons for the Internet, not least because the French approach may ultimately be considered more attractive than the Internet′s for developing networked information in Asia and elsewhere

The Minitel videotex system has been a success in France, connecting millions of people to information services of every description via their home telephone system. It has been examined by both information specialists and business people to determine the reasons for its unique success. But, how many librarians outside of France know about the information available on Minitel and use this tool in their work? Assuming that those librarians who use the Internet and participate in library‐oriented discussion lists are the most likely at least to be aware of Minitel and its services, the author queried the participants of two discussion lists, LIBREF‐L (reference librarians) and PACS‐L (computer service librarians), to find out if anyone outside of France is using Minitel in the library environment. This article will trace the history of Minitel and will conclude with the results of the informal Internet survey, along with some suggestions for exploration of Minitel services.

A national multi‐gigabit‐per‐second research and education network known as the National Research and Education Network is to be established by 1996, according to the High‐Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102–194) passed in December 1991. Commonly known as the NREN and referred to as the “information highway,” this electronic network is expected to provide scientific, educational, and economic benefits for the United States and to serve as the basis for an all‐encompassing National Information Infrastructure available to all citizens. The idea of the NREN began in the late 1960s in the Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the development of ARPANet, the first packet‐switching network. This evolved into the Internet, or Interim NREN, after the National Science Foundation (NSF) linked its national supercomputing centers with the NSFNet. The NSFNet is to be the technological backbone for the NREN, which will continue the networking begun by the Internet. Initially, the NREN is intended to interconnect researchers and resources of research institutions, educational institutions, industry, and government in every state.

Imagine being able to call up television news reports in whatever order you choose and then request further background information. Citizens of Washington DC should be able to do this from late this year, via a scheme arranged by Bell Atlantic and ABC TV News.

Technology Update is a new feature in Online and CDROM Review, freshly researched for each issue by editorial staff at Learned Information. Its aim is to keep our readers right up to date with trends in search‐related hardware and software on the international market. In this first feature, we first consider four factors that are bound to influence the price/performance of CDROM drives during 1993. Then we give a round‐up of what four major manufacturers have to offer at the time of our going to press.

The Thirteenth Online Meeting was held in New York on 5–7 May 1992. Here, Online Review's Managing Editor, Simon Atkinson, offers the second of two sets of abstracts of selected papers. The first set appeared in the June issue of Online Review (page 165).

In September 2015, VW had admitted to United States regulators that it had deliberately installed “defeat devices” in many of its diesel cars, which enabled the cars to cheat on federal and state emissions tests, making them able to pass the tests and hit ambitious mileage and performance targets while actually emitting up to 40 times more hazardous gases into the atmosphere than legally allowed. The discovery had prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to halt final certification of VW’s 2016 diesel models, and VW itself had halted sales of its 2015 models. As fallout from the defeat devices developed, VW posted its first quarterly loss in more than 15 years, and its stock plummeted. Top executives were replaced, and VW abandoned its goal of becoming the world’s largest automaker. Stakeholders around the world had been asking since the scandal broke: “How could this have happened at Volkswagen?”

Dynamic assessment in the educational setting has been shown to offer many benefits for students with speech and language disorders. This chapter highlights the benefits of dynamic assessment and describes the limitations of static assessments. Because dynamic assessment can be implemented in many ways, three scenarios have been designed to provide an overview of some of these variations. Scenario 1 includes a graduated prompt approach for assessing abilities in the production of speech sounds using a standardized dynamic assessment. Scenario 2 includes a graduated prompt approach for assessing the linguistic skills underlying spelling errors. Scenario 3 includes a test-teach-retest approach for determining the presence of language impairment in students who speak a nonmainstream dialect of English. Suggestions for goal setting and increasing dynamic assessment applications for students with speech and language disorders are presented.