Structural Overview
Apart from private communications, information on Burma is available
online in three major forms:
Discussion Groups: More than 100 Burma-specific use/news/discussion
groups, forums, bulletin boards, listservs or conferences which deliver
messages to subscribers by email, or may require you to look at the
messages via a news reader or website. These groups will generally be open
to members' contributions, either moderated or unmoderated. Most have searchable
or browseable archives.
Electronic Newspapers: Daily, weekly or other frequencies coming to
subscribers by email. Mostly collected newswires and press articles,
usually compiled by an individual or organisation. There may also be an
archive, sometimes searchable, on a website. "Discussion groups" where
only the moderator can post messages are included under Electronic Newspapers.
Websites: 4000 links (May 2003) to individual documents and 500 to
multiple documents/websites, organised by subject, are placed in the "Main Library". Click on the top-level category to
find the sub-categories and links to the documents. N.B. the URL of a document may change as websites
upgrade. We try to keep up with the changes, but readers may have to go to the home page of the
site and search for the document (please let us know if you find a dead link,
with the updated link if you have found it). Alternative URLs are given where
available. Some websites only keep documents, especially news items, for a
few months. The URLs of Discussion Groups, Electronic Newspapers and those
websites which contain news, links and/or a mixed selection of articles on
Burma are placed in an area called "Reading
Room". Directories, bibliographies, book reviews etc. are also placed here. The
sites listed here give indirect access to more than 150,000 documents on Burma.
Where possible and practical, the Library gives the specific website address (URL)
of each document. Otherwise, we simply give the URL of the site and/or the
particular issue of the periodical and ask readers to search. The internal
search engines on some websites allow advanced searches for precise
location of documents.
Finding documents:
There are three ways to find documents in the
Library:
1) use the
search function, Use the options in the Search function to search specific
sections and fields of the database. To find documents in a given language, put
the name of the language (Francais, Deutsch, Burmese, Japanese, Espanol, Dansk, Norsk
etc.) in
the search box, check "Language", uncheck "All" and click on
Search.
2) browse the categories in Main Library and Reading Room,
3) use the alphabetical list of subject headings. Or else use all three methods
in combination. Bookmark sections of the Library which are of particular
interest to you. For recent information, go to Reading Room > Breaking
News and Current News which will direct you to online press, press agencies,
search engine directories etc. as well as to the archives of the Burma
Discussion Groups and Electronic Newspapers. Important new documents are listed
in "What's New" (access from the home page).
The Librarian (David Arnott)
May 2003
Email darnott@iprolink.ch
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