The MICAT-L Archives

[Cary Karp <ck@NRM.SE>]

The following is a copy of a message previously posted on MICAT-L by
Walter Henry about public availability of the list's archives. The
original message is close to a year old so some things may have changed in
the interim.

Also, although MICAT-L will be shut down at the end of the day tomorrow,
its archives will remain available for e-mail retrieval via
listserv@nrm.se for an additional few days. If you wish to retrieve the
whole lot you may do so by addressing a request to listserv@nrm.se
containing the following commands:

// JOB
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9408
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9409
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9410
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9411
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9412
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9501
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9502
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9503
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9504
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9505
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9507
SEND MICAT-L.LOG9508
// EOJ

Each file must be requested on a single line. You may exclude the
two lines that start with double slashes. The JOB and EOJ commands
are intended to facilitate the task of retrieving the files. Their
inclusion in this message means that it can simply be forwarded
back to LISTSERV@NRM.SE to have the commands executed automatically.
If you elect to do so, it is of critical importance that your mailer
does not insert any characters at the start of any line in the
preceding block.

Walter's message:

The MICAT-L archives are now in place in Conservation OnLine (CoOL).

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
     facility, 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