Colleagues,
This is your chance to influence the contents of a new UK information
support service.
The UK Mirror Service (UKMS) <http://www.mirror.ac.uk/index.html> exists
to maintain and make available to UK academics copies of extensively used
information from sites elsewhere in the world. It does this both to speed
up access for UK users and to reduce the load on overseas network
connections (especially to the US). Currently it contains mainly software
archives, which reflects its beginnings as the HENSA software archives,
but wishes to mirror other forms of information of use to the UK academic
community. It already mirrors non-software archives like Project
Gutenberg.
I will be attending a meeting of the UKMS Steering Group next week as the
JUGL representative and I would like to take suggestions with me for sites
or collections to be mirrored.
Can anyone suggest collections of information that the UKMS could usefully
mirror? These might be full text archives (like Project Gutenberg), other
large text databases, statistical information, image collections, etc. The
collection must be non-commercial and should be large enough to be of
interest to a significant number of UK academics. A small collection, or
one that is only used by a few academics, would be considered if mirroring
it would significantly affect the amount of traffic on the international
links, for example a database of early movie clips or large image files. A
smaller collection would also be considered if it made a currently slow
but important service more useable.
Don't be shy! All suggestions are welcome.
Please e-mail me with the name of the service, its main URL and reasons
why it should be mirrored.
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions,
Regards,
John Smith,
(JUGL Committee member)
The Templeman Library,
University of Kent at Canterbury.
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