The MICAT-L Archives

[Walter Henry <whenry@lindy.stanford.edu>]

The MICAT-L archives are now in place in Conservation OnLine (CoOL),
though I'll probably continue to work on enhancements throughout the
fall, and you should expect occasional disruptions of service
especially over the next few weeks.

There are two access methods:

** GOPHER **

Gopher to palimpsest.stanford.edu and select
  Browse by Subject
    Objects and Materials
      Musical Instrument Conservation and Technology
        Musical Instrument Conservation and Technology

(yes this is a little redundant; it's to set aside room for files and
and other MICAT related materials).
        
An alternate path is:
   Browse by form of issue
      Mailing lists
        Musical Instrument Conservation and Technology
        
In this directory you'll be able to read all old MICAT-L messages by
either 

  a) Searching (via WAIS). This is a free-text word-indexed search
     faciility, in which every word of every message is indexed.
     Searches can be free-form ("tell me everything about old
     varnishes") but the search engine isn't perfect, so you'll get the
     best results using just the best terms you can think of ("old
     varnishes").  You can do truncation (varnish*) and simple boolean
     searching (varnish not paint).

     Please understand that there are some serious bugs in the search
     engine, so there may be times when you know something is in the
     database, but you can't find it. Please be patient; as soon as a
     fix is available, it will be put into action. The full text
     indices will normally be updated at least once a day (in other
     words, messages sent today may not show up immediately)

  b) Browsing. The archives are in monthly logs, with the current
     month's message (normally right up to the minute) labelled "Most
     recent messages" and the older messages in dated files.

** WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW)

You can use Mosaic, Lynx, MacWeb, Cello, Viola, etc. to connect to URL

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/

This is the top level entrance for CoOL (NB case *is* significant and
the trailing slash is necessary). You'll see MICAT-L prominently
displayed on the Welcome page. If you want to jump right to MICAT-L,
the URL is 
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/micat/index.html

There are 4 indexes Author, Subject, Date, and Thread (the latter is,
at the moment virtually the same as Date). Free-text searching is not
available but I may implement it later if there's enough interest.

As with Gopher, these indexes will normally be current (within a few
minutes of my receiving the incoming messages).

I am always interested in receiving bug reports, suggestions for
improvements etc. (send them to waiscool@palimpsest.stanford.edu), but
I can not, under *any* circumstances offer help with the mechanics of
getting, installing, or using Gopher, Web or other clients. Please see
your local tech gurus for that.

Enjoy,
Walter Henry
Conservation Lab
Stanford University Libraries