ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 102/C&RL News Internet Reviews Sa ra A m ato, editor CD now ! The In te rn e t M u sic Store. Access: http: //cdnow.com. CDnow! is a w eb site that provides listings and an or­ d e rin g fa c ility fo r o v e r 100,000 music CDs and cas­ settes. Encryption is available for credit card information. According to the information on the home page, CDnow! was scheduled to install T1 lines at the end o f Decem­ ber. In the meantime, it en­ courages users to access it via telnet (telnet://cdnow.com) for improved speed. The home page also advises that it sup­ ports Netscape, not Mosaic. I used telnet to look at this site, which worked fine. The CDnow! store is divided into rock, pop, jazz, country, other music, and classical music. Most o f my exploration was on classical music, but I did try the other as well. I used the Schwann Spectrum to compare listings in the Pop Store and the Schwann Opus to compare listings in the Classical Store. When you enter the Pop Store there are a number o f searching options and interesting links. You can type in an album title, artist’s name, or search by song title or record label. You can also select a link: modern rock, jazz, grunge, 70’s rock, artists featured in the current issue o f Pop magazine (also available online). You can see an album’s review and songlist and an artist’s biography when available. The Classical Store presents you with a menu selection o f search keys: composer, album title, work title, conductor, performer, label/catalog number. Once you select one, there are addi­ tional menu items that allow you to specify orchestra, performer, genre, or primary instru­ ment. All o f these can be combined. A comparison o f listings between CDnow! and Schwann varied in results. Schwann lists five titles for the Beastie Boys, while CDnow! lists 12. This includes titles that are listed as “unavailable,” as w ell as imports and singles. CDnow! lists three more Betty Carter record­ ings than Schwann does. For Branford Marsalis, Schwann lists two more recordings than CDnow! Sara Amato is systems librarian at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon; samato@willamatte.edu does. In general, CDnow!’s listings seem comparable to Schwann’s in the nonclassi cal area, less so in the clas­ sical. But most o f the key recordings do seem to be listed, and if the one you want is there you can go ahead and order it. CDnow! has some fea­ tures not a v a ila b le in Schwann: ratings from the All-Music Guide are given w h en available; you can search by song title, label title, conductor, and performer; all the tracks o f movie soundtracks are listed; and having bi­ ographies available is nice. Videos are listed as w ell as sound recordings. I thought this was a great feature, except that all the ones I hap­ pened upon are listed as “discontinued.” Searching for recordings under classical com­ posers is problematic. W here Schwann lists recordings by the title o f the work recorded, CDnow! lists them by album. I found it very difficult to find recordings o f Bach cantatas in CDnow!, as many o f them began with words other than “cantata.” On the whole, I think this site is worth a look, particularly if you know the recording you want. If you want to be sure you’ve seen all the recordings o f a particular composer, par­ ticularly classical, I ’d check the Schwann as well.— Betty Landesman, George Washington University; betty@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu IE E E C om pu ter Society Gopher. Access: gopher://inf0 .c0mputer.0rg/l1/. Computer Society Online is the gopher for the IEEE Computer Society. Virtually all o f the material on this gopher relates specifically to the Computer Society; it is not a general IEEE gopher. The gopher includes Computer Society con­ ference and journal abstracts, useful to advanced students and researchers in computer science and software engineering. Certain features such as committee rosters and membership informa­ tion will be o f interest mainly to current or pro­ spective Computer Society members. The con­ ference calendar includes non-IEEE conferences o f probable interest to computer scientists and, along with a section on calls for papers, may mailto:samato@willamatte.edu mailto:betty@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu gopher://inf0.c0mputer.0rg/l February 1995/103 be handy for both conference attendees and presenters. The IEEE Computer Society is a preeminent publisher in engineering-oriented computer science. It is the intent o f the gopher’s manag­ ers to continue adding current abstracts o f Com­ puter Society conference proceedings, maga­ zines, and transactions, even before they are printed. The abstracts begin for materials pub­ lished in mid-1993. A particularly complete and usable “About This Gopher Server” section appears as the first option on the main menu o f Computer Society Online. This section is recommended as an overview o f the scope and date coverage o f each o f the other sections. Additional informa­ tion is available by sending e-mail to help@ computer.org.— Genevieve Engel, University o f California; genny.engel@ucop.edu Sloυenija. Access: http://w w w .ijs.si/ slo.html. Mosaic and the other w eb browsers which take advantage o f graphics are a natural me­ dium for the growing number o f public rela­ tions resources for cities and countries avail­ able on the World Wide W eb (W W W ). Few sites, however, are as well-conceived and in­ formative as Slovenija. Not only does this site manage to boast the pride o f this country in a tasteful manner, but it also includes an abun­ dance o f information on everything from the country’s culture and recent history to permit­ ted blood alcohol levels for drivers. As a welcome relief from many home pages, graphics at this site are used cleverly to punc­ tuate the content, rather than overwhelm it. A small map showing Slovenija’s location in Eu­ rope precedes the simple opening: “this is Slovenija, on the sunny side o f the Alps. Young state, old culture, fantastic scenery.” In another paragraph, the sentence “The first impression o f the landscape: green, green, and still green” links to a picture o f a lush hillside vineyard. Although the home page does read like a travel brochure, the links at the end point to much more, including Slovenian information servers, s c ien ce in S loven ija, and a S loven ia n newsgroup. O f particular interest to tourists is a high- resolution interactive map— “the virtual tour­ ist”— which links to city information, ski resorts, spas, airports, caves, vineyards, and bordering countries. The symbols here are not always self- explanatory, but it’s a simple click to see what is behind them. Click on a neighboring coun­ try such as Croatia, and you jump to its home page, which links to a host o f other European sites on the web. Graphics at this third level are used more liberally to illustrate such places as the caves. But one may also access all o f these points quickly from the home page, and since there is so much text overall, this site may be more useful than many via Lynx. Under the general category, one may find country statistics, Slovenian currency, electric­ ity and television standards, and links to infor­ mation on national holidays and the climate. Assistance for travelers includes information on border crossings, contact phone numbers, work­ ing hours for banks and post offices, and tips for drivers, including speed limits. There are also links to language-learning materials, tradi­ tional food recipes, and Slovenian wine. In addition to information which might at­ tract tourists, this site also provides links to dozens o f information servers in Slovenija which are arranged by organization, protocol type, and subject. Some o f these are in Slovenian and, although most are also available in English, an ambitious person could use the searchable elec­ tronic Slovene-English, English-Slovene dictio­ nary to translate text. Most o f these servers de­ scribe (or advertise) scientific and technical activities in the country, both at the business and academic levels. But there is also a library link that connects one to several online cata­ logs available throughout the country. Deeper digging through links reveals that Mark Martinec, the system manager o f the Na­ tional Supercomputing Centre at J. Stefan Insti­ tute in Ljubliana, is largely responsible for this site. Further, the site is connected to EUnet Slovenija (part o f EUnet, a commercial network connecting Europe to the Internet) courtesy o f NIL Ltd., an Internetworking and consulting company. In general, this site is designed to appeal to the English-speaking tourist. There is, however, a wide range o f information to interest both the business person seeking new markets and the academic, especially those in the technical sciences. Students might use this site to find out about Slovenija itself and to communicate with som eone there through a link to a Slovenian newsgroup. For those who know little about Slovenija or even the networld in Eu­ rope, this site is rather an adventure.— Barbara Valentine, Linfield College mailto:genny.engel@ucop.edu http://www.ijs.si/ 104/C&RL News