Subject: email address book coming online

From: [email-masked] (Steven Bachrach)
Date: Fri, 27 May 94 15:27:19 -0500

The NIU Gopher/Web site announces a new service for the chemistry 
community:

The Chemistry e-mail address directory

This service acts as a phone book listing information provided by 
members of the community. Since locating current addresses, phone 
numbers, fax numbers, and email addresses is frequently difficult 
and time-consuming (and requests for such information clutters 
mailing lists), we have developed a directory service specifically
targeted to provide this information for the chemical community.

There are two specific features of a good directory service: ease 
of data entry and search capabilities. We believe we have a system 
that addresses both issues. Data entry should be very simple and 
format free. Towards that end, data is entered by sending an email 
message to [email-masked] with the subject line 
ADD. The body of the message can be anything, in any format. 
A typical entry might contain your name, address, phone and fax 
numbers, email address and perhaps a brief description of your 
research interests (or whatever you want, just don't make it too 
long). Entries can be deleted or revised as needed (full 
instruction follow below). The program will store your address in a 
file that has your computer identity 
(i.e. [email-masked]).

Searching the database is accomplished using WAIS. WAIS is a 
database engine that indexes all words in a file. This is the 
reason we can use format free data entry. Access to the search tool 
is provided by our gopher and www pages. Once you have entered the 
search section, just enter a search term (like a person's name or 
university) and the program will return a list of files that 
contain that term. Simply select the file of interest and it will be 
displayed for you. 

We are now soliciting data entries, so if you wish to be listed, 
please send in your info to [email-masked]. 
The searching utility will come online on Tuesday May 31. You can 
then connect via gopher (hackberry.chem.niu.edu port 70) or WWW 
(http://hackberry.chem.niu.edu:70/0/webpage.html).

*************************************************************
Instructions:
        The NIU Chemistry Directory Manager is a program to automatically
manage user's requests to be added to, or removed from the NIU Chemistry
Directory.  To use the Directory Manager, all you need to do is mail it
a message.  The 'Subject:' line of the message you send tells the
Directory Manager what to do.  The Directory Manager recognizes the
following commands on the 'Subject:' line:

    ADD     -  Adds the message (without headers) as your entry in the
               NIU Chemistry Directory.
    DELETE  -  Deletes your entry from the NIU Chemistry Directory.
    DEL     -  Same as DELETE.
    REPLACE -  Replaces your existing entry in the NIU Chemistry
               Directory with the new message (without headers).
    REP     -  Same as REPLACE.

The commands may be in upper or lower case, or a mixture of the two.
For example, 'add', 'Add', 'aDD', etc. are the same as 'ADD'.

It is important to note that 'your' entry is specific to the account
that your message was mailed from.  For example, if you 'ADD' your
entry by mailing from one account, then log into a different account
and try to 'DELETE' your entry, you will get a message stating that
'your' entry does not exist.

Although this means that it is permissible for you to have more than
one entry in the NIU Chemistry Directory, it is recommended that you
only have one.  You will find that it is much easier to keep your
information 'up to date' if you only have to change it once.
*****************************************************************
If you have problems or questions, please contact the directory
administrator at:
        [email-masked]

Thanks and we hope you find this convenient and helpful.

Steve

Steven Bachrach				
Department of Chemistry
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, Il 60115			Phone: (815)753-6863
[email-masked]			Fax:   (815)753-4802