Email Experts; Librarians: AIDS Treatment News Seeks Expert Advice
We are looking for experts in two different areas who could volunteer to give us some technical pointers--probably through a few phone calls or email exchanges.(1) Email compatibility. We are quite familiar with email, and know how to send text-only messages with a short line length so that everybody can receive them correctly. But most people do not send email that way. At the upcoming 12th World AIDS Conference in Geneva (June 28 to July 3) and elsewhere, we will need to provide practical advice on dealing with issues like: different line lengths, software packages, file formats, and relevant standards which are in common use around the world; international alphabets; how to assemble a useful set of file translators (including non-proprietary ones) to read attached files produced by various applications and emailed to lists with no regard to how the recipients' software will read them; under what circumstances are email messages likely to be lost; and other problems such as spam, censorship by governments, maintaining confidentiality, and service providers which charge for each message received.
Also, as a future project, we want to investigate the possibility of reporting about AIDS with a controlled vocabulary, for automatic translation into many different languages.
(2) Library outreach. We need help in developing outreach to get AIDS Treatment News into libraries--public, university, corporate, and other. We have had no organized marketing to libraries before, and our presence there is poor. We need to know how libraries place orders, what their financial, seasonal, and other constraints are, what listings, catalogs, or Web sites we should appear in, how we should advise library users who want their library to carry AIDS Treatment News, etc.
(3) Database research advice. For over ten years we have used Dialog Information Services (now The Dialog Corporation) for specialized searches; it was expensive but we paid only for what we used. This month Dialog begins charging a minimum bill of $75 per month ($900 per year), so we need to find alternatives. This is a good time to review and update our entire database search strategy.
The information most important to us--AIDSLINE/MEDLINE, and Web sites and searches--is already available without charge. We need strategies for occasional specialized searches--especially for finding available databases, and working with an affordable information broker when necessary.
If you can help us in any of these areas, call or email John S. James, 415-255-6259 or jjames@aidsnews.org.
