4.1257 REACH on FTP; FTP/Court Reports Instructions (2/134)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 22 Apr 91 00:37:17 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1257. Monday, 22 Apr 1991.


(1) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 15:04:40 PDT (23 lines)
From: hcf1dahl@UCSBUXA.BITNET
Subject: REACH on FTP

(2) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 11:49 EDT (111 lines)
From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: How to get U.S. Supreme Court reports from project

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 91 15:04:40 PDT
From: hcf1dahl@UCSBUXA.BITNET
Subject: REACH on FTP

The March & April issue of REACH, the newsletter of the Humanities
Computing Facility at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is
now available through anonymous FTP.

FTP to either:

ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
or
128.111.122.50

Then enter the command:

cd hcf

to change to the appropriate directory.

Eric Dahlin
Humanities Computing Facility
University of California, Santa Barbara
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------116---
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 11:49 EDT
From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU>
Subject: How to get U.S. Supreme Court reports from project

I am enclosing a message explaining how to obtain U.S. Supreme Court
reports from Project Hermes on Freenet, which message was prepared by
Judith A. Kaul of the Law Library at Case Western Reserve University.

-----------Here is the explanation of Project Hermes-----------------

I'll begin with the "official" information our campus
computer center disseminates on the project, followed by what I know
about connecting to Hermes via the Internet.

Here is the "official" information about Hermes from our
network service, Free-Net:

"On May 11th, 1990, the United States Supreme Court
announced that it was beginning a two-year experimental
program called "Project Hermes." The objective of this project
is to rapidly provide copies of the Court's opinions in
electronic for to as wide an audience as possible.
"Twenty organizations applied to be part of this project, 12
were accepted; and one of the successful applicants was a
noncommercial, nonprofitm consortium composed of Case Western
Reserve University (CWRU), EDUCOM, and the National Public
Telecomputing Network (NPTN). What this means for YOU is that
you will not be able to receive electronically the full-text of
the Court's opinions within minutes of their release---FREE.
"It will work like this...
"When the Court decides to release an opinion or set of
opinions , a computer at the Supreme Court Building will open-up
12 telephone lines and simultaneously send copies to its primary
distributors. In our case," (CWRU Free-Net) "it will be received
by a CWRU computer here in Cleveland where a special program
will clear out the various printer codes from the document. Two
things will then occur. First, a copy of each of the "clean"
documents will be sent electronically to the EDUCOM offices in
Washington, D.C. EDUCOM will then place the files on both the
Internet and BITNET networks for distribution to the academic
and research community. Second, and at the same time, copies
will be distributed across all NPTN affiliated community
computer systems.
"You may have the Court's opinions sent directly to you if
you have access to either a BITNET or Internet computer...or
you may download the files directly from teh NPTN community
computer system. There is no charge to receive this service
beyond whatever fees your university computing center might
have, or the cost of a telephone call to an NPTN affiliate...
"To receive more information on how to sign-up for the
BITNET/Internet service, or if you would like to know more
about accessing these files on an NPTN community computer,
please send your name, organization or firm address, city,
state, and zip, to: PROJECT HERMES, CWRU COMMUNITY TELECOMPUT-
ING LAB, 319 WICKENDEN BUILDING, CLEVELAND, OHIO 44106.
"You can also contact Project Hermes electronically via:
Internet: aa584@cleveland.freenet.edu
BITNET: aa584%cleveland.freenet.edu@cunyvm
"ALL USERS:
Please remember: The files shown [on HERMES] are text
files only. They DO NOT contain the italics, underlinings, and
other non-text expressions which might, in some cases, alter or
influence the meaning of the document. We have tried to overcome
some of these problems by placing, for example, all footnotes in
special brackets like these { }, but its still not quite the
same.
"For an official printed version of any of these opinions,
please contact your nearest law library."

-----------My Additional Comments-------------------------------

1/ You can gain access to Project Hermes via Internet in two
ways. You may connect (via telnet) to:
freenet-in-a.cwru.edu, or
freenet-in-b.cwru.edu, or
freenet-in-c.cwru.edu.
When its your first time logging on to Free-Net, you can log on
as a visitor. Visitors can see Project Hermes but cannot post to
any bulletin boards. Visitors can use Free-Net's menu system to
locate Hermes under the menu selection "The Courthouse." A
simpler method is: at the first "Your Choice>" prompt, enter:
go hermes
which will take you to that portion of the menu driven system.
Anyone may apply for a Free-Net account and be able to post to
the bulletin boards, etc.

Another, perhaps more direct method, is to use FTP to the
decisions. Use the FTP command and specify "ftp.cwru.edu" as
the host. This is an anonymous FTP site so if asked for an ID,
just enter "anonymous." Once connected, the decisions are in a
directory called "/hermes". If you need further help while
using the FTP connection, enter "help".

2/ We have noticed lately that the database of opinions is
apparently not complete. So if you do not see the one you are
looking for in Hermes, that does not mean it was not announced.
The official reason given for this is communication problems
at the court. Our network is attempting to fill in the gaps.
(So far, we're talking about three opinions.)

3/ When you use Free-Net to view the opinions, there are
special downloading techniques which are described in that
section of the system.

****************************************************************
Judith A. Kaul Phone: (216)368-8570
Technology Reference Librarian Facs: (216)368-6144
CWRU School of Law Library
jak4@po.cwru.edu "The devil lies in the details."
****************************************************************