Dear college, we want offer to your attention New Announcement
about New Russia-American World Wide Web Server
 
Friends and Partners
 
>From Russia and from America comes a new information service called
"Friends and Partners" -- one of the first information systems jointly
developed by citizens of these two nations.
 
It is hoped that it will contribute towards better
understanding between our nations by providing instruction on our
countries and cultures, by providing a common base of information
about issues affecting relations between our countries, and by
providing a common 'meeting place' where folks can find and
communicate with each other.
 
If you wish to visit, the following uniform resource locator (URL)
will allow you to connect to the World Wide Web server:
 
   http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/friends/home.html
 
At the moment, it is more a 'framework' of an information system --
more 'heart' than substance.  The goal is to help others build upon
the framework -- to create and link together information on our
nation's histories; our art, music, literature, and religion; our
educational and scientific resources; our geography and natural
resources, our languages; and our opportunities for communicating,
travelling, and working together.  The 'end product' -- an evolving
and continually changing information resource -- should be useful to
many and will hopefully help bridge the gap of understanding that
exists between our nations.  It will hopefully also demonstrate the
potential for good that exists with this wonderfully chaotic, global
resource we call the Internet.
 
What are the potential uses? Scientists should be able to use the service
to find information about funding opportunities and exchange programs,
access various databases and library resources, and locate potential
colleagues and co-workers.  Teachers and educators at all levels should be
able to find and contribute interesting and up-to-date material to assist
in their instruction -- making their courses more 'alive' and more
pertinent to real world issues.  Folks in business should be able to learn
about the economic environment and opportunities in both countries as well
as the rules and laws pertaining to conducting business.  Artists from all
fields (and their patrons) should be able to learn about, meet and work
with each other.  And people from all walks of life should be able to learn
more about these two nations -- so closed off from one another for so many
years.
 
The primary motivation of this service is to help introduce new
friendships and partnerships between our peoples.  It hopes to build
upon the excellent work already being accomplished by our governments
and by the various groups, centers, and institutes who have been
working for so many years towards this same goal of cooperation and
friendship.
 
Perhaps the only difference from other efforts is the intention to use
the World Wide Web on the Internet as the method of communicating
information.  The World Wide Web was chosen because of its ability to
handle mixed media (text, graphics, audio, etc.), the excellent
graphic and non-graphic browsers available for free on the Internet,
and its ability to 'integrate' information from all of the best
Internet-based tools and utilities -- Listservers, Gophers, WAIS
indexes, FTP archives, etc.
 
If you do not have a WWW browser, you can use our 'friends' account. Telnet
to solar.rtd.utk.edu. At the login: prompt, enter friends and press return
(make sure to enter friends in all lower case). This will place you in a
non-graphic WWW browser called 'Lynx' (on-line help is available).
(Note: you must be emulating a vt100 terminal to use this method of
access.)
 
We will soon be providing a 'mirror' of this server in Pushchino, Russia
(near Moscow) on the computer of co-developer Natasha Bulashova.  This will
be perhaps the first information system of its kind in Russia.  One of the
most exciting developments underway in Pushchino is the development of a
'virtual network' of biological sciences information.  This is being
designed to be a global information resource on biological sciences
research and will be offered soon as a part of this overall service.
Efforts will soon begin to establish both servers in Russian and English
languages.
 
We have established an electronic mailing list (listserver) to help
facilitate communication for this project. Please feel most free to join by
sending a message to listproc@solar.rtd.utk.edu with the following
text:
 
   SUBSCRIBE FRIENDS Your name
 
This is a moderated list with which one 'digest' of all postings will be
sent to subscribers each day.
 
Please send us your comments, criticisms, suggestions (and
offers of help! :-) ).
 
 
Natasha Bulashova                                       Greg Cole
Pushchino, Moscow Region                     Knoxville, Tennessee
Russia                                                        USA
natasha@ibpm.serpukhov.su                 gcole@solar.rtd.utk.edu
 
 
 
P.S. We hope to quickly broaden the scope of this server to incorporate
information and communication with all of the newly independent states of
the former Soviet Union. The information content of this server must
reflect a much larger constituency than just our two nations and we should
work towards that end.  (but, of course, one step at a time . . . )