Providing patron access to Usenet newsgroups

[Glen Davies]

> Here at HKUST Library, we are trying to find the best way to provide patron
> access to individual usenet newsgroups (especially the ClariNet groups,
> which our University subscribes to).  I have been playing with URLs like
> news:clari.world.asia.hong_kong and news:clari.world.asia.*  but these seem
> only to work if the individual user's browser considers the groups targeted
> by this request to be subscribed to by the user.
> 
> We are looking for a more effective solution, both for our in-Library PCs
> and for our on-campus users.  I would welcome suggestions - what do you do
> at your site to provide such access in a functional and easy-to-use manner?
> 
> -Edward Spodick, Systems Librarian
> 
> - - - - -
> Edward F Spodick, Systems Librarian - lbspodic at usthk.ust.hk or @uxmail.ust.hk
> Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Library
> tel:  852-2358-6743    fax:  852-2358-1043
> 

We use Free Agent. There is a link on our home page that launches 
Free Agent using W3launch.  I have written a short program in Visual Basic 
that deletes all of the DAT and IDX files, that Free Agent creates to 
keep track of read messages, each time the program is opened. This 
means that if students read and delete messages they will reappear 
the next time somebody opens the package. 

You could do something similar but  copy groups.dat & idx (the files 
that list the groups and those subscribed to) back from a read only 
directory each time. That way patrons can play around as much as they 
like but your default list of subscribed groups is  restored each time Free
Agent is opened.

You can probably do something similar with Netscape's newsreader, 
but I haven't  tried it.

And of course, this would only work for your in-library PCs.

Regards
Glen 
**************************************************
Glen Davies                        "I've been drunk for 
Systems Support Librarian    a week now, and I 
Learning Resource Centre    thought it might sober
Christchurch Polytechnic      me up to sit in a 
daviesg at lib.chchp.ac.nz       library." 
                                          F.Scott Fitzgerald
                                          The Great Gatsby, ch3.
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