Subject: Merging AstroWeb and CERN VL/LaPlata

From: Jose Daniel Ponz VILSPA/VCS <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 13:17:23 +0200 (CET)

Dear colleages, 
   
   Sorry for this long e-mail. For your information on the merging of 
AstroWeb and CERN VL/LaPlata, I am in contact with Sergio Paoli to complete 
the installation of the AstroWeb procedures that we are using at Villafranca. 
It will take a few days to finish it. 

The preliminary analysis of the URLs in VL/LaPlata gives the following 
results:

URLs   Description
---- ---------------------------------------------------------------
1024 VL/LaPlata (files indicated below). Category 'Conferences' is not 
     included in this list. 
1527 AstroWeb (newmaster.html file). Includes _all_ URLs in the file
     not only the 'resource records'.
 492 (unique) URLs in VL/LaPlata not included in Astroweb. 
---- --------------------------------------------------------------- 

The large number of URLs in VL/LaPlata not included in AstroWeb does 
not mean that the _information_ is not accessible from AstroWeb. In fact
the actual number of _new_ URLs to be added will be around 150-200, due to:
 - different (aliased) names for the same internet number,
 - some URLs include the index (html) file explicitly, in some other cases
   it is defaulted, 
 - in some cases the information is defined in more detail, including
   several subdirectory levels.

The addition of these new URLs has to be done by hand, in order to avoid
redundancy and to have a consistent definition of the information. To start
this activity, I have identified the number of URLs per category in 
VL/LaPlata that has to be matched with AstroWeb categories.

New URLs      Filename in VL/LaPlata           Proposed AstroWeb category
-------- ------------------------------------- --------------------------
     44  databases.html                        Data. Archive centers 
      6  departments-and-groups-america.html   Organizations. Departments
      0  departments-and-groups-asia.html             "
      1  departments-and-groups-australia.html        "
      5  departments-and-groups-canada.html           "
     35  departments-and-groups-europe.html           "
     30  departments-and-groups-usa.html              "
     13  educational.html                      Educational(*)
     13  libraries.html                        Publications. Biblio-services
     22  mailinglists.html                     People. Mailing lists
      6  miscellaneous.html                    History of Astronomy(*)
      2  nasa.html                             Organizations. Space Agencies
     32  newsgroups.html                       People. Newsgroups
    119  observatories.html                    (**)
     94  other-lists.html                      Various lists of Astronomy
     71  publications.html                     Publications
     12  software.html                         Software. Astronomy SW servers

    505  total (Some URLs are included in two categories)
-------  -------------------------------------- -----------------------

(*) It could be interesting to include a new category with two main
entries: Educational and History of Astronomy. 

(**) These URLs should be distributed into at least three categories:
    - Observations. Telescopes
    - Data. Astronomy Information Systems
    - Research Areas. 

Now the questions to the group:
1. What do you think about adding Educational and History of Astronomy as
   new categories?
2. Do we share the effort of including new URL's?  I could distribute the 
   files above (only new URLs) to the people. If we leave Sergio to work
   on his implementation, then : 505/8 ~ 63 URLs per member is not a 
   terrible task. 
3. Which update procedure do you propose? We could generate a file in a 
   format like the newmaster.html file. Each URL should be checked to
   identify if an alias is already available.
   These files could be reviewed (by Bob ?) to check consistency and 
   be included into the AstroWeb database.

What do you think?

This is all for the moment. Best regards,
   Daniel Ponz

P.S.: Sergio, is there any other relevant file with URLs? I was assuming
   that the file 'conferences.html' (?) will be obsolete in the near future.

---

From: [email-masked] (Sergio Paoli)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 95 15:04:36 SAT

Hi,
        Sorry per my silence, but I'm crazy with exams...

> The preliminary analysis of the URLs in VL/LaPlata gives the following 

      Is possible split the telescopes category in subcategories, in a similar
      way to my telescopes page?

> 1. What do you think about adding Educational and History of Astronomy as

      Only one point. In my miscellaneous category there are only one
      link to History of Astronomy subjet... the other links are really
      miscellaneous links!

>    on his implementation, then : 505/8 ~ 63 URLs per member is not a 

      Please!, I'm absolutely busy with my exams in this time...

>    that the file 'conferences.html' (?) will be obsolete in the near future.

      It's true, but in my conferences page there are conferences indexes
      which are update regularly... 

                                                    Sergio   ;-)

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: Sergio A. Paoli                         :  Paseo del Bosque s/n        :
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