Online Burma Library hits the stree

[zarni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

the aging despot ne win died in singapore, i have just been told. pls. 
check out the authenticity of the news.

zarni

At 06:14 AM 9/29/01 +0200, David Arnott wrote:
>ONLINE BURMA LIBRARY HITS THE STREETS
>The Online Burma Library (OBL), an online database with classified and 
>annotated links to thousands of full-text documents on Burma is now, at 
>last, up and running. It is on www.burmalibrary.org (soon to be accessible 
>on www.myanmarlibrary.org for those who prefer). PLEASE PUT LINKS TO OBL 
>ON YOUR SITE
>
>WHAT IT IS
>OBL "is an evolving project designed to make full texts of Burma documents 
>accessible online to Burmese and non-Burmese researchers, academics, 
>educators, students, journalists, officials, diplomats, activists, 
>colonels et al. It functions as a linked, annotated catalogue to much of 
>the Burma material already on the Internet and will eventually house a 
>number of archives (in addition to the Burma Press Summary which is 
>already on the site) and directories such as the Burma Action Database 
>(formerly Burma Action Directory). As they become available, more links to 
>documents in Burmese and other languages will be included (there is 
>already a fair number of documents in French in the Multilingual section 
>and some links to Burmese-language sites). OBL is Text-based and 
>frame-free for speed (particularly important for users in the South with 
>dodgy connections, antiquated equipment and limited budgets)".
>
>HELP WELCOMED
>OBL is still at an early stage of development and, in terms of concept, 
>contents, structure, use, ease of navigation etc. is open to improvement. 
>Some people have specialised knowledge of one or more of the 40 or so main 
>areas the Library is divided into -- please make contact. The Librarian 
>invites on-going consultation and assistance in helping the collection 
>grow in quality and quantity.
>
>ADDING TO THE LIBRARY
>If people know of useful Burma documents in electronic form which are not 
>in the Library, please let us know. As well as unaccessed material on the 
>Internet, these could be conference papers, university dissertations, 
>reports and articles of all kinds and in every area. Some may be 
>sitting  idly on your computer or on a floppy disk somewhere. Many 
>hard-copy books, reports and papers have been produced over the past years 
>by individuals, organisations and publishers who still have the electronic 
>versions of these texts and could enhance their public exposure and 
>reputation and contribute to increasing our understanding of Burma if they 
>were to put them online. One way would be to put them on a local website 
>and send us the URL (website address) or else email them to OBL. If any 
>librarians digitising their collections for public online access place 
>Burma documents online, please let us know. If there are important Burma 
>texts which do not exist in electronic form, they will be scanned in. 
>Eventually.
>
>TECHNICALLY
>The database is MySQL, used in combination with PHP. Use the Advanced 
>Search in combination with browsing and the alphabetical list. In the 
>coming months the documents will be further indexed and more keywords 
>placed in the summaries  -- at the moment, many documents are only a title 
>and URL (any help with this welcome).
>
>BURMA PRESS SUMMARY
>The most important single document on OBL is The Burma Press Summary -- 
>the  searchable 17MB archive of Hugh MacDougall's excellent summary of 
>"The Working People's Daily" and "The New Light of Myanmar" from 1987 to 
>1996 -- containing many full texts of major SLORC/SPDC speeches, decrees, 
>laws etc. It is on Greenstone, a free, open source software designed for 
>digital libraries.You can do full-text searches of the whole archive -- 
>there were more than 1000 hits for Japan, for instance.
>
>There's more blurb in the Introduction and Structural Overview at 
>www.burmalibrary.org.
>
>Happy browsing and searching (and even reading)
>
>One more thing: Pulling OBL together has been a rather large operation and 
>there are sure to be mistakes. Please let us know if you spot any.
>
>The Librarian,
>Online Burma Library
>www.burmalibrary.org
>Email darnott@xxxxxxxxxxx