by Matthias Kaun
At our last EASL meeting in Zurich we decided EASL shoud have its own
WWW (World Wide Web) Homepage.
After this meeting Thomas Hahn and myself discussed the problems of WWW and
their requirements (having had no previous experiences in HTML-
format
I noticed that this format was very easy and simple to write) and started to
create a "first step homepage" located in Heidelberg.
Web sites are local collections of hypertext documents from institutions (like
EASL), individuals, companies etc. These hypertexts are accessible to all -
and the WWW is the name for all hypertext publicly available on different
servers worldwide connected through the Internet. Hypertext is a special
concept that enables you to present different texts and information which are
connected through links.
All you need to be able to read and use this several information is a special
browser which allows you to see everything on your computer screen. What a user
can see in detail depends on the browser s/he is using and the settings s/he
has chosen in those programs. If your computer can't handle the newest HTML-
format you will not see anything. But most WWW-browsers
are freeware so it is easy to copy a new version of, for example "Netscape" or
"Internet Explorer" from the net.
The mechanism of the projected EASL WWW-Homepage
is two-fold:
1. EASL members may on the one hand make their own information available on the
WWW. On the other hand they are welcome to inform us about WWW-pages
of their own and any other new and important WWW-pages
they have found on the net which they feel should be added to our EASL- Homepage.
What will you find on the EASL-Homepage?
The concept contains the following ideas:
1. Introduction to EASL with founding dates and general information
2. Membership Directory with names and addresses arranged by country
3. Various links to local WWW-ssite of EASL-members
4. A link to CJKLIB mailing list: messages have been stored in log-files
on the mailserver in Heidelberg
5. Links to several available internet resources dealing with China, Hong Kong,
Japan, Korea and Singapore.
This part of EASL-
Homepage
connects to libraries with Chinese holdings in Europe, USA, Australia and Asia
and to other library organisations like CEAL and the East Asian Library
Resource Group in Australia and others.
There are more links to texts, bibliographies, databases etc. online available
through the net.
Another part of the homepage will give you links to universities in East Asia,
newspapers and journals online (for example the Renmin ribao or Huazhai
wenxuezhai),
You will find information about online bookdealers (and also a list with
antiquarian bookdealers specializing in East Asian materials written by David
Helliwell, Marc van der Meer, Hubert Delahaye and Thomas Hahn), online
dictionaries, software and CD-
ROM-
directories. One page will connect you to texts helping you to read Chinese/Japanese and
Korean on the internet.
This last part of EASL-
Homepage
is more difficult to maintain because it is a collection of links to several
different servers in the world., So if you know of any changing URL, please
send us a short note, since we cannot check all these links every week. The
idea behind the implementation of all this diverse information was to create a
relay station for our use in Europe so that we do not have to connect to one of
the big and great WWW-
sites
of CEAL or others. EASL-
Homepage
cannot replace these sites but could become a useful complement in the meaning
of a relay station for the use in our libraries.
In order to make this service as effective as possible, we would like to ask
all members to actively participate in providing us with information on related
material.
Matthias Kaun
Kiel University, Germany
kaun@sino.uni-kiel.de
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