Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[matusiak <dave AT matusiak.org>]

hey InterNetWorkers --

I'm glad that Sil brought up the amazing Project Gutenberg (33 years 
strong) and the issue of access to reading/research materials.  It 
gives me the perfect opportunity to plug a valuable statewide service 
that *you already pay for*.

Are you a NC citizen, student and/or taxpayer?  Are you a proud 
card-carrying Library patron?  Would you like access to "complete 
articles from over 9,000 newspapers, journals, magazines, and 
encyclopedias, indexing for over 20,000 periodical titles, and access 
to over 22,000 electronic books"?

If the above apply to you, then you might be interested in NC LIVE.  
North Carolina Libraries for Virtual Education (NC LIVE) was conceived 
in 1997 in order "to level the playing field so that rural isolation, 
community or institutional financial constraints, and limited local 
library resources are not barriers to accessing information."  < 
http://www.nclive.org/about.phtml >

NC LIVE is for everyone in North Carolina.  The only real restrictions 
to the service are:

  * you must use NC LIVE in a library (state, local, university, or 
community college) *OR* you must speak with a Reference Librarian in 
order to get a remote access password (which allows you to access NC 
LIVE from your home).

  * you are not supposed to share remote access passwords with other 
folks (especially those outside North Carolina).

  * NC LIVE materials and service are not to be used for expressly 
commercial purposes (i.e. if your company wants access to the 
materials, then they should contact the vendor to price out licensing).

Beyond these simple restrictions, a whole new world of free information 
is waiting at your fingertips.  Some of my personal favorite resources 
include:

  * Communication & Mass Media Complete
  * Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
  * InfoTrac Custom Newspapers -  broad selection of local and 
international papers. Includes full text of: The New York Times (the 
past 365 days), The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, The Greensboro News 
& Record, and many others.
  * Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers - An in-depth 
analysis of current, best-selling fiction providing details about the 
complexities of these carefully selected titles.

For those of you looking for eBooks (a la Gutenberg) the netLibrary 
holdings of NC LIVE offer 22,000 reference, scholarly, and professional 
books in full text.  There is a lot more available than I could 
possibly list, including all sorts of medical, scientific, 
health-related and legal information.  And thanks to the hard working 
programmers at NC LIVE, there is now a way to apply your search terms 
to multiple databases.  The indexing spider program (called "EZ 
Search") will find results for your search terms across all vendors 
that have the Z39.50 information retrieval protocol enabled on their 
collections.

The NC LIVE staff even took the initiative to release the EZ Search 
software as a piece of GPL Open Source Software, in case any of you 
need to implement Z39.50 searching in your organization.  < 
http://www.nclive.org/ezsearch_info.phtml >

Has this convinced you to check out NC LIVE?  If not, consider that 
many famous and glamorous people around NC use it regularly.  Paul 
Gilster of the Raleigh News & Observer has even mentioned keeping a 
browser tab open to NC LIVE to assist with his research.  All you need 
to know is the URL < http://www.nclive.org/ > and to perhaps have a 
remote access password handy.

I would be happy to answer questions related to NC LIVE to the best of 
my ability.  Have a good Wednesday and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

dave m.