5.0030 Humanist Biographies are Here! (2/169)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 13 May 91 21:27:00 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0030. Monday, 13 May 1991.

(1) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 19:51:40 EDT (72 lines)
From: Steve DeRose <EL406011@BROWNVM>
Subject: Humanist Biographies are Here!

(2) Date: Mon, 13 May 91 19:38:28 EDT (97 lines)
From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM>
Subject: Getting the Biographies

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 May 91 19:51:40 EDT
From: Steve DeRose <EL406011@BROWNVM>
Subject: Humanist Biographies are Here!

At last, the long-anticipated Humanist Biographies are here!

Those of you who have submitted biographical sketches before
the end of 1990 are included in a set of biography files now
available from the Humanist Listserv fileserver.

The earliest bios did not follow any formal conventions for content or
layout, and were painstakingly edited by myself and several other
Humanists including Ivy Anderson, Lou Burnard, Lyle Eslinger, Harry
Gaylord, David Graham, Ray Harder, Dave Hibler, Grace Logan, Martin
Ryle, Robin Smith, Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Ken Tompkins, Bill Winder,
Philip Yevics, Abigail Ann Young, and Ron Zweig (extreme apologies if
I've omitted anyone).

Sometime in 1990 I managed to write an actual SGML DTD and build various
tools to get more recent bios (of which there have been a LOT) into
SGML. I then re-edited everything to fit the exact document structure
and tagging rules. At this point I also added the several hundred newer
biographies (this has been the main locus of delay).

The final task was loading the whole collection into a database,
and reviewing each field for consistency. One can't make very
useful demographic statements until the data is fairly well normalized.
For example, a school such as UCLA has at least a dozen reasonable
abbreviations. A long time was spent normalizing spellings,
abbreviations, and so on. However, prose content (as opposed to
demographic information) has not been intentionally changed.

The end product is now available on the file server, in 25 files: one
for each initial letter of a last name -- no "Q"s though. There are 905
biographies all together. If you sent in a biography BEFORE Dec. 31,
1990, and it is not included please contact me by e-mail and we'll
figure out what happened. NOTE: Many more biographies have come in
the early part of this calendar year, and I'm working on them. The
infrastructure is now in reasonable shape, so I anticipate putting the
more complete set on the file server fairly soon.

If you have not sent in a biography at all, please do so. This is
especially encouraged for those who read Humanist via bulletin boards
or similar mechanisms. But please be sure you have a recent copy of
the biography template. You can request one from the fileserver by
sending mail to LISTSERV@BROWNVM or @BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU with the line

GET BIO TEMPLATE HUMANIST

Please download at least your own file and check your biography.
If there is an outright error in your name or address information,
please copy your biography, edit it to correct the error, and mail
it to me for inclusion in the next round. If the problem is not
an outright error, please wait for seconds until everyone has had
firsts. One note: I've done a lot of hand-editing to make the
resulting database usable; updates will not be favorably received
if the tags are gone, necessitating much additional work.

Tools are available for Macintosh (HyperCard 2) and CMS (REXX)
for scanning the biographies. Unix users can use grep and/or
sed fairly easily, given the explicit and consistent tagging;
so can DOS users who have grep or sed equivalents. I would welcome
tools for the more general DOS user, but because I don't have a DOS
machine someone else will need to build them (obviously, you can
still use any text editor and it's "find" command).

Yours belatedly and tiredly,
Steve DeRose
Humanist biographer
EL406011@BROWNVM or EL406011@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Mon, 13 May 91 19:38:28 EDT
From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM>
Subject: Getting the Biographies

The Basic Listserv Procedure

To retrieve the biographies from the fileserver send mail to
listserv@brownvm or listserv@brownvm.brown.edu with the following
line as the text of the body

get biografy package

This will cause all the biography files to be send to you. You may also
request individual files using the usual procedure. For instance, to
retrieve the files with the B's and C's send mail to listserv with the
following lines

get bios-b sgml humanist
get bios-c sgml humanist

We are leaving the old biography files on the fileserver for reference
for a few months. They are named BIOGRAFY 1, BIOGRAFY 2, etc. The new
files are BIOS-A SGML, BIOS-B SGML, etc. Be careful not to confuse them.

Anonymous FTP

Alternatively, if your site supports FTP to Internet nodes you can
download the biography files using anonymous ftp. We are not sure
just how we are going to support FTP to HUMANIST in the long term,
so this should be considered an experiment. Thanks to David Sitman,
Steve, Elli, and others for their continuing advice on these things.
Here are Steve's instructions... (--Allen)

>From Steve DeRose <EL406011@BROWNVM>

Those with direct access to the Internet may obtain the
files by "anonymous FTP". Follow this procedure:

Use your local Internet access mechanism to open an FTP connection
to Internet address 128.148.128.40, otherwise known as brownvm.brown.edu.

Log on as userid "anonymous", and give something like your initials
as the "password".

Use the change-directory command ("cd") to access "EDITORS.203".

Use the "dir" command to list the available files. The bios them selves
are in files BIOS-x SGML, where the "x" varies across the Latin alphabet.

Use the "get" command to retrieve whatever files you want. Note that
although the "dir" command may report filenames and filetypes
(=extensions) separated by a space, the get command generally requires
that you separate them with a period.

Example: (the "*" in the margin indicates what _you_ enter)

* ftp 128.148.128.40
VM TCP/IP FTP R1.2.1
Connecting to 128.148.128.40, port 21
220-FTPSERVE at brownvm.brown.edu, 12:42:40 EDT THURSDAY 04/11/91
220 Connection will close if idle for more than 15 minutes.
USER (identify yourself to the host):
* anonymous
* >>>USER anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:

* >>>PASS ********
230 ANONYMOU logged in; working directory = ANONYMOU 191
Command:
* cd el406011.195
>>>CWD el406011.195
250 Working directory is EL406011 195
Command:
* dir
>>>PORT 128,148,128,40,59,176
200 Port request OK
>>>LIST
125 List started OK
BIOS-A SGML V 844 689
....
250 List completed successfully
Command:
* get bios-a.sgml
>>>PORT 128,148,128,40,59,177
200 Port request OK
* >>>RETR bios-a.sgml
150 Sending file 'bios-a.sgml'
250 Transfer completed successfully
30567 bytes transferred. Transfer rate 28.95 Kbytes/sec.
Command:
* quit
>>>QUIT
221 Quit command received. Goodbye