Wire:Traugott Koch

1) What do you do in the world of networking/libraries/WWW?

Projects developing the use of networked information at NetLab, the Development department of Lund University Library, Sweden. 80 % of the projects are externally funded, by local, national, Nordic and European partners. (http://www.ub2.lu.se/UB2proj/egnapubl/netlab_present.html)

Administrating and developing "Lund University Electronic Library" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/), our electronic library service, since four years. I specially maintain pages like "Browsing and Searching Internet Resources" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/nav_menu.html) and "Library online catalogues" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/opacs/opacs-top.html). Develop database services for campus access, providing information from commercial services and integrating it into the electronic library (Web SPIRS to Silverplatter ERL databases, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Elsevier CAPCAS etc.)

EU-Project DESIRE (http://www.ub2.lu.se/desire/ Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education), part of the Telematics For Research program. We work, together with people from UKOLN, SOSIG, Loughborough and others, on the "Resource discovery and retrieval" part of DESIRE, and develop amongst other features, an European WWW Index. This will be based on our experiences with the "Nordic WWW Index" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/wwwindex.html). My main activity this Spring will be to write a state-of-the-art report on Internet indexing and search services and to contribute to the specification of the European WWW Index.

Teaching, examination etc. at the Institute of Library and Information Science, Lund University. Largest course: "The electronic library: Knowledge structuring and information retrieval", fully documented and run using the Web (in Swedish only: http://www.ub2.lu.se/biblutb/koch/elbibladv.html).

"Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden" (EELS http://www.ub2.lu.se/eel/eelhome.html): Responsible for the methodological development, the technical maintenance, the adaptation of the classification scheme and thesaurus, and the construction of WWW-pages.

Work for "Nordic Net Center for Libraries" (http://www.nnc.dk/nnc/), a Nordic Centre of Excellence for Networked Information Services and the coordination of all three NORDINFO centers. Coordinator of Electronic Library and Conference. The conference "NordElib-conf" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/NNC/email-conf/) is available as Hypermail- archive as well. This Spring, I am preparing a trial issue of an electronic journal "NordElib Journal", which is supposed to publish Nordic contributions to our subject area.

Publishing pages on library issues and projects on the Web, i.e. "Electronic library projects" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/tk/ellib-projects.html), "Nordic libraries: information servers" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/resbyloc/Nordic_lib.html) "Finding Internet resources in the subject area of Library and Information Science/Librarianship" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/lisres.html).

Editor of "Libraries and Internet: Electronic text collection" (http://www.ub2.lu.se/UB2proj/LIS_collection/collection_top.html), which publishes original articles in hypertext structure with external links and papers from LIS Schools. Talks, papers, courses, workshops etc., mainly in the Nordic countries and Germany (http://munin.ub2.lu.se/person_tk.html).

2) ... and how did you get into this area?

Into libraries: by chance, after a period of unemployment as a foreign social scientist (regional and urban planning) in Sweden. Into networking: Worked for some years with CD-ROM networking and LAN's; read about WAIS in April 1992 and had to develop this interest in my spare time the first couple of month', before it became "accepted" late Fall that year.

3) What was your reaction to the Web when you encountered it for the first time (and when was this)?

I discovered CERN's line-mode browser in Fall 1992, did demonstrations to others but did'nt use it myself. CERN's High Energy Physics stuff didn't interest me. We provided WAIS databases and a gopher server at that time and I found them superior. But I liked the hyperlinks, displayed as numbers. In July 1993 we established our own WWW server.

4) How significant an impact do you think that mobile code, such as java applets, will have on the development of the Web as an information resource?

Not imediately the kind of huge impact the licensing by all big software companies would indicate. In principle, turning Web pages into tools which allow to handle dynamic documents and processes is very important for our information intermediary branch as well. The first applications, I would like to see for us, are user support and educational programs, simulations and demonstrations of search processes, experimental modules inside scientific articles etc. We will probably have to wait another year for this type of applications, I am afraid.

5) A friend buys a PC, relatively fast modem and an internet connection. (S)he asks you what browser they should either buy or obtain. What do you advise?

Get the free Netscape browser for MS Windows and the PPP-software, if necessary. If no Internet-provider offering PPP is available, I would advise to use the free, character-based lynx-browser.

6) Many people have recently commented on the relationship between SGML and HTML. Some speculate that they will one day merge into a "unified" language; some others see HTML diverging into various esoteric directions. What do you think?

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