Evaluation of an Internet Document Delivery Service

An Internet-based Document Delivery Service (DDS) has been developed within the framework of the CNR ( the Italian Research National Council) Project BiblioMIME, in order to take advantage of new Internet technologies and promote cooperation among CNR and Italian university libraries. Adopting such technologies changes the traditional organisation of DDS and may drastically reduce costs and delivery times. An information system managing DDS requests and monitoring the temporal evolution of the service has been implemented, running on the local-area network of a test-site library. It aims to track number and types of documents requested and received, user distribution, delivery times and types (surface mail, fax, Internet), to automate repetitive manual procedures and to deal with the various accounting methods used by other libraries. Transmission of documents is carried out by means of an e-mail/Web gateway system supporting document exchange via Internet, which assists receiving libraries in retrieving requested documents. This paper describes the architecture and main design features of the e-mail/Web gateway server (the BiblioMime server). This approach permits librarians to continue using e-mail service to send large documents, while resolving problems that users may encounter when downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator sends the document as an attachment to the destination address; on fly the e-mail server extracts and saves the attachments in a web-server disk file and substitutes them with a new message part that includes an URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects by means of a user-friendly browser. We further discuss the data gathered during the triennium 1998-2000; this consists of about 5,000 DDS transactions per annum with 300 other Italian scientific and bio-medical libraries and commercial document suppliers. Use of the instruments described above allowed us to evaluate the performance of service “before” and “after” the use of Internet Document Delivery and to extract some critical data regarding DDS. Those include: a) libraries with which we have greater numbers of exchanges and their turnaround times; b) extraordinary reduction in costs and delivery times; c) the most frequently requested serial titles (allowing cost-effective decisions on new subscriptions); d) impact on DDS of library participation in consortia which allow user access to greater numbers of online serials

Can we protect ourselves from the virus plague?

Network communications represent an easy means for the soread viruses. Internet uses are constantly threatened by the spread of new viruses hidden in applealing objects such as jokes, games, chats, and e-mails ostensibly sent by friends. Although e-mail and www systems represent the main "open doors", floppy and CD disk are still minor "contributors". The damage provoked by infections can be very costrly for an organization\u27s time and resources and can become critical when it affects sensitive systems and data. A basic rule in computer security is to make frequent backups to avoid any kind of data destruction or corruption. Various countermeasures can be appplied to prevent infections, such as activating anti-virus SW, or setting filter rules on the e-mail server in order to discard dangerous files present in the message. Another important factor is the awareness of the problem: users must become familiar with both risks and elementary defense techniques (i.e. do not open executable files, disable automated macro activation, etc.). In this work we present data statistics of virus attacks revealed by an anti-virus SW activated on our e-mail server and discuss results in terms of virus types and temporal distribution. The work in organized into two parts. The first part includes a brief overview of virus types (parasitic, macro, etc.) and main defense techniques; the second shows the results of our experimentation

Procedure per l\u27aggiornamento automatico di liste di distribuzione

This work describes how we used mailing lists in order to support the communication between CNR people.Questo lavoro descrive come sono state utilizzate mailing list allo scopo di facilitare la comunicazione all\u27interno del CNR

Una proposta per il servizio di Posta Elettronica del CNR

A proposal for the CNR electronic mail serviceUna proposta per la ristrutturazione del servizio di Posta Elettronica del CN

EXPLORATION OF THE DESIGN OF A COMPLEX E-MAIL SYSTEM

The management of an Internet service involves a variety of aspects, ranging from the economic to the technical and organizational. Cost reduction, management simplification and improvement of service quality are the fundamental targets of every Internet service project. In geographically widespread organizations where numerous servers are used in order to implement distributed network services, both costs and human labor for maintenance and management are greatly multiplied. We believe that security and maintenance problems, and thus cost, could be reduced by transferring from a distributed to a centralized service. However, this choice would undermine the flexibility needed by local administrators in order to be able to administer their own services. This paper describes a hybrid service management model (partly centralized, partly distributed) and outlines the results we obtained by applying this model to the e-mail service of our organization

INTRODUCING TRANSPARENT WEB CACHING IN A LOCAL AREA NETWORK

The term \u27transparent web caching\u27 refers to cache technology in which web traffic is automatically intercepted and redirected toward one or more cache servers. The redirection of web data can be accomplished using L4 switches or routers. Being completely transparent to the user (no browser configuration is required) the service can be easily implemented and turns out to be scalable and fail-safe. This work presents the results of our experimental use of transparent caching technology in a simple network environment. We focus on the impact this technique could have on network performance, with all its benefits and problems, as well as its effects on end users. The analysis is based on data gathered in an operative network during a two-month period

Experience in implementing a Document Delivery Service

In this paper we propose an integration between electronic mail and web services for people such as library operators who need to send large files to Internet users. The proposed solution permits librarians to continue using the e-mail service to send large documents, but at the same time overcomes problems that users can encounter downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator sends the document as an attachment to the destination address, on fly the e-mail server extracts and saves the attachments in a web-server disk file and substitutes then with a new message part that includes the URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects using user-friendly browser

Evaluation of an Internet Document Delivery Service

An Internet-based Document Delivery Service (DDS) has been developed within the framework of the CNR ( the Italian Research National Council) Project BiblioMIME, in order to take advantage of new Internet technologies and promote cooperation among CNR and Italian university libraries. Adopting such technologies changes the traditional organisation of DDS and may drastically reduce costs and delivery times. An information system managing DDS requests and monitoring the temporal evolution of the service has been implemented, running on the local-area network of a test-site library. It aims to track number and types of documents requested and received, user distribution, delivery times and types (surface mail, fax, Internet), to automate repetitive manual procedures and to deal with the various accounting methods used by other libraries. Transmission of documents is carried out by means of an e-mail/Web gateway system supporting document exchange via Internet, which assists receiving libraries in retrieving requested documents. This paper describes the architecture and main design features of the e-mail/Web gateway server (the BiblioMime server). This approach permits librarians to continue using e-mail service to send large documents, while resolving problems that users may encounter when downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator sends the document as an attachment to the destination address; on fly the e-mail server extracts and saves the attachments in a web-server disk file and substitutes them with a new message part that includes an URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects by means of a user-friendly browser. We further discuss the data gathered during the triennium 1998-2000; this consists of about 5,000 DDS transactions per annum with 300 other Italian scientific and bio-medical libraries and commercial document suppliers. Use of the instruments described above allowed us to evaluate the performance of service “before” and “after” the use of Internet Document Delivery and to extract some critical data regarding DDS. Those include: a) libraries with which we have greater numbers of exchanges and their turnaround times; b) extraordinary reduction in costs and delivery times; c) the most frequently requested serial titles (allowing cost-effective decisions on new subscriptions); d) impact on DDS of library participation in consortia which allow user access to greater numbers of online serials

Progetto Biblio MIME

The Document Delivery Service (DDS) allows libraries to exchange papers from scientific serials or other types of documents, on the basis of user requests. An Internet-based Document Delivery Service has been developed within the framework of the CNR (Italian National Research Council) Project BiblioMIME, in order to take advantage of new Internet technologies and promote co-operation among CNR and Italian university libraries. Adopting these technologies changes the traditional organisation of DDS and may drastically reduce costs and delivery times. This Report describes the project activities (year 2001)

A New Technique for Deep in situ Measurements of the Soil Water Retention Behaviour

In situ measurements of soil suction and water content in deep soil layers still represent an experimental challenge. Mostly developed within agriculture-related disciplines, field techniques for the identification of soil retention behaviour have been so far employed in the geotechnical context to monitor shallow landslides and seasonal volume changes beneath shallow foundations, within the most superficial ground strata. In this paper, a novel installation technique is presented, discussed and assessed, which allows extension of the use of commercially available low-cost and low-maintenance instruments to characterise deep soil layers. Multi-depth installations have been successfully carried out using two different sensor types to measure the soil suction and water content up to 7\u2009m from the soil surface. Preliminary laboratory investigations were also shown to provide a reasonable benchmark to the field data. The results of this study offer a convenient starting point to accommodate important geotechnical works such as river and road embankments in the traditional monitoring of unsaturated soil variables