ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS UPDATE

The ABRF provides three highly regarded and heavily used electronic communications resources. These include the "Electronic Mailing List", "Selected Communications" and the "ABRF WWW Homepage".

Electronic Mailing List.

The ABRF electronic mailing list/bulletin board was started just two years ago and now has nearly 800 participants on six continents. Frequent topics of discussion include protein, peptide and nucleic acid chemistry; sequencing; synthesis; mass spectrometry; and amino acid analysis. While many questions and answers are directed at very practical issues and intractable sample or instrument problems, other questions address fundamental chemical mechanisms or concerns about running a resource laboratory. It is rare that a question finds no answer, and many members take a great deal of time to provide detailed information to all of us.

The mailing list works very simply and requires only that you check your E-mail. A question or other message sent to the E-mail address at abrf@aecom.yu.edu will be forwarded to all participants. Replies or comments are sent to the same address,and redistributed once again to all participants.

If you wish to join the mailing list, just send a message to: abrf-request@aecom.yu.edu. You can also sign up via the ABRF WWW Homepage. After you have joined, send your questions and replies to: abrf@aecom.yu.edu

All questions and all replies are sent to the following address: abrf@aecom.yu.edu. Replies often elicit new responses. This mechanism permits us all to share in the knowledge and amplifies and enriches the discussion. If you use the reply button on your E-mail system, make sure that you also use the abrf address to forward the same message to the rest of us. If you receive responses that have been addressed only to you, forward them to the abrf address or make a summary and send that along. The replies are archived on the Selected Communications page set up by Dirk Krapf so that important information can be easily retrieved.

The ABRF Ombudsman is a special feature of the mailing list. If you have a controversial or difficult question, response, or problem that you would like to post anonymously, send your message to ombudsmn@aecom.yu.edu (Note the spelling!). Identifiers will be removed from your message before it is sent to the mailing list at large.

If you must unsubscribe temporarily, please use the abrf-request@aecom.yu.edu address. In this manner, only the ABRF administrator will receive this message, not the entire mailing list.

ABRF Selected Communications.

The ABRF Selected Communications Homepage has been relocated to a new server. The server is now located at Harvard Medical School. Space on this server was generously provided by Matthew Temple, the Manager of the HHMI/Harvard Medical School Computer Facility. The new URL for this homepage is: http://salt2.med.harvard.edu/~krapf. When browsers connect to the old server, they will be redirected to the new address.

This homepage contains all correspondence from the ABRF Electronic Mailing List archived in html format. The page is updated several times each week and is convenient for reviewing recent and older Electronic Mailing List discussions.

The archives are divided into two sections, according to the archiving methods used. The section dated before 9 Oct 1996 contains every electronic mail message up to that date, collected and grouped according to subject by several ABRF volunteers. Since 9 Oct 1996, archives have been generated using the program "HyperMail", which semi-automatically generates cross-referenced documents for the archives. HyperMail automatically connects archived messages by subject and by thread, allowing browsers to read the responses to each individual message as an uninterrupted series. This characteristic of the archives is maintained only when Electronic Mailing List participants follow certain guidelines when responding to messages; these guidelines may be found in a recent issue of ABRF News (March 1997, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 7) and at the URL http://salt2.med.harvard.edu/~krapf/hmail/97007/0026.html. We plan to install a search engine at this homepage so that browsers will be able to search archived messages for specific topics, keywords, and authors.

This Web site was established by the Education Committee and is maintained by Dirk Krapf, now at Gilson, Inc. Any questions or comments about this site may be sent to Dirk at his electronic mail address, krapf@gilson.com.

ABRF WWW Homepage.

The ABRF WWW Homepage (http://www.abrf.org) has seen a number of content changes over the past few months. In particular, our Sponsors page has been upgraded and a new section entitled "Who we are and where we are" detailing ABRF membership and sponsor growth over the past nine years has been added. The layout of the homepage has been substantially revised. A tabular listing of links at the site now provides both new and experienced users an accurate overview of the association's activities and quick access to ABRF information.

There has been substantial activity behind the scenes, the server software has been updated, the line capacity between the server and its host at the University of Melbourne has been doubled, and the whole "edu.au" domain has changed its Internet service provider. All these changes should result in significant access speed improvements, especially for our membership in Europe.

Several additional Reseach Committee reports have been linked to the ABRF homepage. Special mention should go to Scottie Adams and her colleagues in the DNA Sequence Research Committee who have done a delightful job of publishing their most recent study. This presentation, which can be found on the DNA Sequence Research Committee page, should serve as an example to all Research Committees, who are encouraged to make their study data available to the widest audience, not just those fortunate enough to attend our annual meetings.

The most recent major activity on the web site has been the compilation of the 1997 Yellow Pages. Members will recall that our web statistics show that the Yellow Pages are the most visited part of the ABRF site; thereby a substantial effort has been made to improve the appearance and performance of this important resource. Details of how to obtain an entry on the Yellow pages has already been covered by both mail and electronic announcements. It offers every ABRF member laboratory providing commercial services a separate page on the Yellow Pages portion of the Web site. These pages will be fully indexed and searchable. Not only is it possible to include the usual details in the Yellow Pages entry, but it is now possible to include additional information regarding either standard or non-standard analytical services offered by individual laboratories. Visit the Yellow Pages at:

http://www.medstv.unimelb.edu.au/ABRF/YellowPages/YellowPages.html

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