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

Computer virus e posta elettronica: una guida per l\u27utente

Today the Internet is a valuable source of information as well as a powerful communication medium, with undoubted social and economic benefits, however it also poses some security risks. Viruses may hide in email attachments or in apparently innocent applications directly downloadable from the Internet. In this work we give an overview of virus types and main defense techniques

MessageVerify: un sistema per la verifica automatica della firma digitale

Today many services can be requested via network by sending an electronic message to the service provider. If the data is coded in syntax \u27understandable\u27 to computers, it is possible to automate its interpretation, elaboration and storage, thus speeding up data processing and reducing human error. Digital signature can be associated with Internet messages in order to guarantee sender authentication, message integrity and non-repudiation of origin. The verification process of incoming digitally-signed messages is usually performed by the e-mail client, on behalf of the end-user. However, if digital signature is applied to data subjected to automatic elaboration, in order to maintain the abovementioned benefits it may be convenient to automate the verification process as well. The idea is to implement the verification process in the e-mail server rather than the client. In this paper we describe our experience designing and implementing software to automate the verification of digitally-signed messages and web forms in order to simplify the registration of Internet domains under the .IT Top Level Domain

Integrated Network Service Manager: un sistema per la gestione integrata di servizi di rete

Cost reduction, simplified management, security and quality of service are fundamental targets when designing network services. Large organizations, which require great flexibility, often implement distributed services leading to the high cost of managing multiple servers. Transferring services from a distributed to a centralized model can reduce costs considerably. However, this choice could limit the freedom of peripheral administrators to manage their own services. We believe that the best solution is to strike a balance between the centralized and the distributed model: i.e., a hybrid management system, partly centralized, partly distributed. The idea is to centralize system configuration, maintenance and monitoring while distributing administrative tasks, typical of peripheral organization units, via web-based interfaces. We call this approach \u27Centralized Management with Delegated Administration\u27. In this report we describe INSM (Integrated Network Services Manager), a system for managing e-mail and DNS services, based on the CMDA model

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

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

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 new technology into italian certified electronic mail: a proposal

Over the last decade, an increasing number of Certified E-Mail systems (CEM) have been implemented in Europe and worldwide, but their diffusion and validity are mainly restricted in a national arena. Despite the effort of European Union (EU) that recently defined a specification for guaranteeing interoperability of CEM systems between Member States, its adoption has not be not yet fuelled, mainly since any CEM system receives a legal value by its State legislation. It is difficult to extend the legal value of CEM security mechanisms, e.g. receipts with timestamps which are considered evidences and legal proofs in disputes that may arise from different Parties inside a State, unless a common political and legal agreement will be created. At this aim, recently EU introduce the new Regulation on Electronic Identification and Trust Services (eIDAS), to address this issue. We believe that the first step for encouraging a more large adoption between communities is to implement CEMs using standard worldwide recognized solutions.In this paper we propose a technical evolution of the Italian CEM, called Posta Elettronica Certificata (PEC) moving from a close mechanisms to the adoption of a more standardized, distributed solution, based on DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec). This proposal would have a minimal impact on the legislation, restricted to the annex that defines PEC technical rules.

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

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