Subject: Re: standardizing AstroWeb

From: [email-masked] (D. egret)
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 94 11:30:25 +0200

Some comments about the points raised by Anton and Don:

 1. A good point for the visibility of AstroWeb would certainly be
the adoption of a common logo. What about posting on "What's new"
at NCSA an announcement like:

  A <B><A HREF=anchor-to-be-defined>logo</A><B> for the AstroWeb:
The <A HREF="http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/www/astroweb.html"> AstroWeb </A>
is a living database of pointers to astronomically relevant
information available on the Internet, maintained by the
<A HREF=http://fits.cv.nrao.edu/www/astroweb.html><B>AstroWeb 
Consortium</B></A>, a collaboration between a number of individuals 
at different astronomical institutions.   <BR>
AstroWeb is looking for a logo: anyone on the Web is welcome to submit an entry.
The winning logo will appear on the AstroWeb pages, and the winner will be 
acknowledged in the on-line documentation. 

  Some of the logos submitted to ADS after a similar announcement are
of very good quality (http://adswww.colorado.edu/logos/logo_entries.html).
  There should be a "logo" page giving the technical requirements and
way to submit the entry.
  
 2.   Lists of astronomical resources
>  (examine for example the number of personal web pages at various
> research groups, which would appear to be running into the thousands)
  On the other hand, with more than 900 entries in AstroWeb, I think
it may be a good idea to maintain a "short list" of useful resources
at the level of an institute or research group. But of course this
"short list" should include a link to AstroWeb !

 3. Personal pages

> One of my motivations for improving our input forms is that when we
> advertise availability of the 'personal' category of AstroWeb, we are
> likely to be flooded with input! I want us to be ready for that.
> I expect that our 'personal' category could have 1000+ records within
> six months if we started advertising. 

   My feeling is that such a database of personal items is NOT the task 
of AstroWeb. I would prefer to see AstroWeb pointing to existing lists
maintained by specialized groups or individuals (such as the work made
by Andre with his new StarHeads, or by Benn and Martin for e-mail 
-- i.e. the category "people" in AstroWeb). 
  To say it differently , instead of having 932 resource records
in AstroWeb of which 266 are personal records, I would prefer 666 resource
records, and one more entry in the "people" category pointing to a separate
database of personal records.
  
 4. Optimizing the home page
> One basic strategy which I have used is to minimize the number of
> links which the user must click in order to find their target
> category.
  This will also make sense to have the input window of the 
search mechanism directly available on the home pages (even when the
search mechanism works on a different site).  This said, I realize that
the "search-master" of Bob doesn't work this morning. 
  --->> Bob, what happens ?

Daniel