- Email: [email protected]
Reaching out to the end user
Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 26 (1993) 305-309 North-Holland
305
Reaching out to the end user Erik Huizer, Janneke Abbema, Maria Heijne, Ton Verschuren SURFnet by, P.O. Box 19035, 3501 DA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Abstract
This paper describes the SURFnet development projects in the area of user services and applications and the results of these projects. It is concluded that more (international) effort is needed to facilitate the access to the network for end users. Some recommendations for other networks are given.
I. Introduction In 1992 the Internet host count passed the figure of 1,000,000 connected hosts. Commercial Internet services are widely available. The Internet is moving from a development project into a mature service that is increasing at an incredible speed in capacity and geographical scope. However the development of user services on the network is not keeping up with the infrastructure development. Access to the network for the non computer literate end user is still difficult and confusing. Most of the funding for computer network development projects goes into bandwidth and infrastructure rather than into development of user services, thereby providing for the happy few rather than the majority of potential users in the research community. In 1990 S U R F n e t acknowledged this lack of support for development of user services, and with support of the S U R F Foundation it launched an extensive program of development projects in order to reach out to the end user. This p a p e r describes the various projects and the results so far.
2. Bringing the WAN home In order to provide students with remote access to the network, S U R F n e t has investigated Correspondence to: E. Huizer, SURFnet bv, P.O. Box 19035,
3501 DA Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: erik.huizer @SURFnet.nl. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.
the possibilities to use the cable television network as a carrier for data communication. The cable television network is available in many student apartments, whereas students often do not have a personal telephone at their disposal. Thereby the option to use dial-in facilities can be discarded. The project has demonstrated that it is technically feasible to use the cable television network for remote network access. The students are very enthusiastic and the greater majority of them would like this facility to be continued. In a separate article more details of this project can be found [9].
3. E-mail to the LAN E-mail is the most popular application among users, providing them with access to an enormous amount of information and contacts. To make the usage of E-mail available to more users, a project was started to improve the S U R F n e t E-mail infrastructure, and to test products that give users easier access to E-mail services. The product tests were aimed at products providing the users with access to E-mail from their own workstations (PCs, Macs) either remote ( C A T V or dial-in) or on a LAN. Two sorts of products were tested: • Products that are based on native X.400 [4] or R F C - 8 2 2 / S M T P [1,7]; • Products that are based on proprietary protocols (Microsoft Mail, Banyan Vines RTS, etc.) with a local gateway to X.400 or RFC822/SMTP. Two asl~ects got special attention in the tests:
306
E. Huizer et al. / Reaching out to the end user
• The User interface: how do the users appreciate the interface? • Management: is the E-mail system manageable at reasonable cost? The results of the tests show that several of the native products allow for easy management, but most of these products provide interfaces that are not acceptable to the users. The proprietary products usually provided interfaces that integrate well into the user's working environment and are thus appreciated by the users. However these products require gateways that, almost without exception, put a very high cost on management. Since the possibilities and workings of the proprietary E-mail protocols do not match with those of X.400 and RFC-822/SMTP, these gateways also work as a barrier for the novice user who does not understand why things work differently for local mail and Wide Area mail. A follow-up project will continue to test out these kinds of products (and feed back the results to the manufacturers for improvement) hoping to contribute to the development of better products for the users. Also this project will try to address other issues that have been indicated by users as important: • Security; • Exchange of text with lay-out through E-mail; • Robustness of the service.
4. Information and navigation services Once the user has gained access to the network (s)he has access to a wealth of information. The amount of information sources on the network and their variance in quality is confusing to the user. The rise of so called navigators (Gopher, WAIS, WWW [8]) and meta-servers (CONCISE, Archie) enable users to find and retrieve information on the net easily. In order to explore and introduce these services a new central machine was purchased, the InfoServer. To ensure a high quality of the information on the server a lot of attention has been paid to the organization of the server. Cooperation with the Dutch National Library has resulted in an editorial board responsible for the quality and maintenance of the InfoServer. The InfoServer has recently become operational, providing an anonymous tip archive, an E-mail server, a G o p h e r and a Wais server. At short notice this will be expanded with a public Gopher client and possibly a F T A M responder. A new follow-up project will deal with t h e addition of new services and better access and retrieval methods. The InfoServer is meant to act as a kind of national Campus-Wide Information System (CWIS). Most universities in The Netherlands are in the process of setting up a CWIS, most of them
Erik Huizer is senior Network Consultant at SURFnet bv, the company that operates the academic and research network in The Netherlands. He spends most of his time managing various national and international projects on E-mail and Directory Services. Huizer works with internetworking technologies such as TCP/IP, OSI, Information Services, Directory Services and User Support, as a service developer, beta-tester and mediator. He is Area Director of the Applications area of the Internet Engineering Task Force. He received a Ph.D. in science and technology from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 1987. Maria Heijne is staff member User-Support at SURFnet bv and project manager of the so-called SURFdoc project on Storing, Accessing and Processing Electronic Documents. She is a member of RARE WG-ISUS and Co-chair of the ISUS Taskforce on Document Delivery. She is trained as a librarian (1973-1976) and since 1983 has been involved in user-support, both in the library automation and the networking environment. Janneke Abbema is a member of the SURFnet Support Team since 1991. She and her two fellow team members make courses and training materials and other means to stimulate groups of new users to get involved in networking. Abbema studied household and consumer sciences at the Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands, and graduated in 1990. Ton Verschuren is Network Consultant at SURFnet bv, the company that operates the academic and research network in The Netherlands. He spends most of his time managing various national projects on Information Services and the use of Cable TV Networks for datacommunication. Other areas of interest are E-mail and Directory Services. Verschuren received a Ph.D. in theoretical high energy physics from Nijmegen University, The Netherlands, in 1991.
E. Huizer et aL / Reaching out to the end user
based on Gopher. To stimulate this process and to provide technical and organizational support a CWIS group was launched consisting of people interested in and usually responsible for their institution's CWlS.
5. Directory services
All over the world pilot projects on Directory Services are under way. The focus of most of these projects was on the technical possibilities of the X.500 CCITI" Recommendations for Directory Services [5]. In the meantime the user pressure for a White Pages service on the network has increased. To address the user needs the SURFnet X.500 pilot has shifted its emphasis. The pilot now aims at the user aspects of the Directory Service. Data management aspects (like maintaining the quality of the data) and legal aspects (the balance between access and privacy) are now the main focus [6].
6. Libraries and electronic documents
Access to documents and libraries is one of the more attractive facilities the network can offer to the user. In the last couple of years libraries have been rapidly connecting up to SURFnet, mainly to support the central cataloguing process. To stimulate libraries to use the network to increase their service to the end users two projects are defined for the period 1992-1994. Both projects are also aimed at the effective usage of increasing bandwidth: 1. project for storage and retrieval of electronic documents, called SURFdoc, 2. project to provide user access to the national central catalogue and to the connected inter library loan system. The first one of these will be described in more detail. The SURFdoc project started in 1992 with a worldwide study of existing document delivery services and projects to investigate the possibilities for starting a cost recovering service in this area in the Netherlands. In October 1992 the results of this study were published [2] indicating that it was too early to start this kind of service. The idea of a document server where documents like journal articles are stored electronically to be
307
retrieved by end users from their own workstations is obviously still premature. To name two reasons: • commercial publishers will not approve electronic storage of their materials without proper arrangement of copyright, which still is a worldwide issue and • there is a lack of user studies in this field to show that users are better off with this kind of service and that they are willing to pay for such a service. However the study also showed that there will be an undeniable trend towards electronic delivery of materials in the near future, whether publishers want it or not, and that libraries and end users need to get experience with these materials. Based on these conclusions SURFnet started a follow-up project to gain experience at both ends (libraries and end users), working with existing products like document servers with anonymous ftp, Gopher, WAIS etc. and with user studies to accompany the project [8]. The project started with selecting 3 organizations that will each start a project in storing full text documents in various subject areas and providing access to these documents to all SURFnet users. This access is via traditional ways like the Online Public Catalogue but also via Gopher and full text retrieval mechanisms like WAIS. User surveys will be carried out and implementations based on the results will guarantee the best possible service for the users. The success of the project depends on the satisfaction of the user with the new service. A second goal of the project is to get more experience with working with scanned documents in the end user environment. Some of the questions to be answered: • Which hardware and software does the user need to retrieve scanned documents from the network and to view and process these documents in h i s / h e r own environment? • Which cheap OCR programs are available to provide the user with the possibility to use scanned documents in h i s / h e r own word processor? • Is it seen as a financially viable solution to use scanners in combination with the network in the end user environment instead of telefax in combination with the public telephone network?
308
E. Huizer et al. / Reaching out to the end user
User surveys are very important here as well. Last but not least the project seeks to stimulate the cooperation between libraries and computing centers. It is obvious that information provision within the networked world should be a cooperative effort of technicians and librarians. The project stimulates this by asking both parties to put forward joint project proposals.
7. Support, training and documentation SURFnet bv has several ways to support the end users. Over the past 5 years SURFnet has repeatedly published the SURFnet Guide [3], both in Dutch and in English. The Guide has evolved based on the reactions of users, and is now appreciated inside as well as outside of SURFnet. Up to date information and background articles are published in the SURFnet Bulletin, a paper journal. Extra information especially for the local support people is published in an electronic journal called Netnieuw (which means 'just about new'). These publications together form the basis for locally developed documentation and training materials. In order to stimulate these local developments and to attract new users, a project was started called " T h e SURFnet Support Team". In 1989 it became clear that the information from SURFnet to the end user did not always reach its destination. Therefore the SURFnet Support Team was formed, consisting of three members, employed on a four year basis. The main task of the Support Team is support at the user's desktop. The Support Team supplies direct end user support at the request of the affiliated institutes. The Support Team provides information about network possibilities and develops tailor-made courses, in collaboration with support groups at the institutes. The Team also makes courses for the local support people to pass on to their end users. This kind of support is focused on the local facilities and special interests of the group. The Support Team only acts on request. There is no active acquisition. A group must be willing to allocate time to participate in a Support Team project. In cooperation with the group demonstration materials and courses are made. Usually there will be a demonstration first. These demo's
are attended by a large group of people. After this 'warming-up' a course will be made. A course consists of a syllabus, exercises and sheets. The syllabus as well as the exercises are within the scope of the group. Local techniques are incorporated and the examples and exercises are focused on the user's background. A project will take approximately three months. Electronic versions of the courses are stored on the SURFnet file server and are free to use with notification of the source. Other institutes can use the material to incorporate in their own support program. It has to be kept in mind that the courses are especially made for a certain site, although many parts of the courses are for general use. All these services are free of charge within the SURFnet community. It is a time consuming way of support. Nevertheless it seems to be an effective way of support. More and more users are getting to know the network better and better. Over 20 institutes with various faculties made use of the Support Team; many more have already applied. The new users work at universities, polytechnics as well as libraries. More than 600 people participated in the activities of the Support Team, with courses, workshops, demonstrations, lectures, etc. At the beginning of 1993 SURFnet started a new initiative to increase the involvement of its user representatives (i.e. the customers) with new developments. A structure of SURFnet User Groups (SGGs) is proposed, equivalent to the R A R E Working Group structure. The already existing CWlS group was placed under the umbrella of the Information Services and User Support SGG. Two annual meetings are scheduled approximately one month before the JENC and NSC Conferences in order to provide input to the R A R E WGs.
8. Conclusion Various SURFnet projects aim to enhance the participation of users in networking activities and to facilitate the use of the network. The results of these projects show an increase in the number of users. However it is clear that a lot still remains to be done to make the various services for the user more accessible and understandable. User
E. Huizer et al. / Reaching out to the end user
interfaces need to be improved and integrated into the working environment of the user. Infrastructure for access to the network needs to be extended (CATV, I S D N and Dial-in). Information and navigation services need to be homogenized. Access to libraries and documents needs to be simplified. User support needs to be more widespread. The research community has developed a worldwide infrastructure that offers researchers a medium of communication and information. To open this medium to the end users a lot of development still has to be done, on a global scale (Internet), on a European scale (RARE), as well as within SURFnet. The focus of these developments should shift towards services for the end user rather than bandwidth and infrastructure. The authors recommend that other networks that wish to reach out to the end user do the following: • Install a well managed information server, with an editorial board, responsible for the contents; • Stimulate user groups (e.g. libraries) to use this information server for communicating; • Stimulate the relation between libraries and computing centers in order to optimize information provision; • Apply pressure on software vendors where possible to improve their user interfaces to network services according to the needs of the users; • Provide cheap and easy network access for users (e.g. students) that do not have full time access through their organizations;
309
• If the money is available, install a support team to help uninitiated (groups of) users. Hopefully the result will be that the network becomes part of every day work as a valuable tool to find information of interest.
References [1] D. Crocker, Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages, Request for Comments 822, University of Delaware, 1982, RFC-822. [2] M. Heijne, Study report, SURFnet, 1992, anonymous ftp: ftp.nic.surfnet.nl, file: projects/docdel/studyreport.eng. [3] M. Heijne et al., eds., SURFnet Guide 1993, SURFnet, 1993, anonymous ftp: ftp.nic.surf-net.nl, directory: usersupport/gids/. [4] International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, Message Handling: system and service overview, 1984, X.400. [5] International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, The Directory--overview of concepts, models and service, December 1988, Recommendation X.500. [6] E. Jeunink and E. Huizer, Directory Services and Privacy Issues, SURFnet, Proc. 4th Joint European Networking Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 10-13 May 1993 (Handout). [7] J. Postel, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Request for Comments 821, ISI, 1982, RFC-821. [8] T. Verschuren, Overview of recent developments in networked information retrieval, SURFnet, 1992, anonymous ftp: ftp.nic.surfnet.nl, file: projects/navigators/nir-overview. [9] T. Verschuren, SURFnet, WAN to the home: data communication over CATV networks, Proc. 4th Joint European Networking Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 10-13 May 1993 (Handout).
305
Reaching out to the end user Erik Huizer, Janneke Abbema, Maria Heijne, Ton Verschuren SURFnet by, P.O. Box 19035, 3501 DA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Abstract
This paper describes the SURFnet development projects in the area of user services and applications and the results of these projects. It is concluded that more (international) effort is needed to facilitate the access to the network for end users. Some recommendations for other networks are given.
I. Introduction In 1992 the Internet host count passed the figure of 1,000,000 connected hosts. Commercial Internet services are widely available. The Internet is moving from a development project into a mature service that is increasing at an incredible speed in capacity and geographical scope. However the development of user services on the network is not keeping up with the infrastructure development. Access to the network for the non computer literate end user is still difficult and confusing. Most of the funding for computer network development projects goes into bandwidth and infrastructure rather than into development of user services, thereby providing for the happy few rather than the majority of potential users in the research community. In 1990 S U R F n e t acknowledged this lack of support for development of user services, and with support of the S U R F Foundation it launched an extensive program of development projects in order to reach out to the end user. This p a p e r describes the various projects and the results so far.
2. Bringing the WAN home In order to provide students with remote access to the network, S U R F n e t has investigated Correspondence to: E. Huizer, SURFnet bv, P.O. Box 19035,
3501 DA Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: erik.huizer @SURFnet.nl. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.
the possibilities to use the cable television network as a carrier for data communication. The cable television network is available in many student apartments, whereas students often do not have a personal telephone at their disposal. Thereby the option to use dial-in facilities can be discarded. The project has demonstrated that it is technically feasible to use the cable television network for remote network access. The students are very enthusiastic and the greater majority of them would like this facility to be continued. In a separate article more details of this project can be found [9].
3. E-mail to the LAN E-mail is the most popular application among users, providing them with access to an enormous amount of information and contacts. To make the usage of E-mail available to more users, a project was started to improve the S U R F n e t E-mail infrastructure, and to test products that give users easier access to E-mail services. The product tests were aimed at products providing the users with access to E-mail from their own workstations (PCs, Macs) either remote ( C A T V or dial-in) or on a LAN. Two sorts of products were tested: • Products that are based on native X.400 [4] or R F C - 8 2 2 / S M T P [1,7]; • Products that are based on proprietary protocols (Microsoft Mail, Banyan Vines RTS, etc.) with a local gateway to X.400 or RFC822/SMTP. Two asl~ects got special attention in the tests:
306
E. Huizer et al. / Reaching out to the end user
• The User interface: how do the users appreciate the interface? • Management: is the E-mail system manageable at reasonable cost? The results of the tests show that several of the native products allow for easy management, but most of these products provide interfaces that are not acceptable to the users. The proprietary products usually provided interfaces that integrate well into the user's working environment and are thus appreciated by the users. However these products require gateways that, almost without exception, put a very high cost on management. Since the possibilities and workings of the proprietary E-mail protocols do not match with those of X.400 and RFC-822/SMTP, these gateways also work as a barrier for the novice user who does not understand why things work differently for local mail and Wide Area mail. A follow-up project will continue to test out these kinds of products (and feed back the results to the manufacturers for improvement) hoping to contribute to the development of better products for the users. Also this project will try to address other issues that have been indicated by users as important: • Security; • Exchange of text with lay-out through E-mail; • Robustness of the service.
4. Information and navigation services Once the user has gained access to the network (s)he has access to a wealth of information. The amount of information sources on the network and their variance in quality is confusing to the user. The rise of so called navigators (Gopher, WAIS, WWW [8]) and meta-servers (CONCISE, Archie) enable users to find and retrieve information on the net easily. In order to explore and introduce these services a new central machine was purchased, the InfoServer. To ensure a high quality of the information on the server a lot of attention has been paid to the organization of the server. Cooperation with the Dutch National Library has resulted in an editorial board responsible for the quality and maintenance of the InfoServer. The InfoServer has recently become operational, providing an anonymous tip archive, an E-mail server, a G o p h e r and a Wais server. At short notice this will be expanded with a public Gopher client and possibly a F T A M responder. A new follow-up project will deal with t h e addition of new services and better access and retrieval methods. The InfoServer is meant to act as a kind of national Campus-Wide Information System (CWIS). Most universities in The Netherlands are in the process of setting up a CWIS, most of them
Erik Huizer is senior Network Consultant at SURFnet bv, the company that operates the academic and research network in The Netherlands. He spends most of his time managing various national and international projects on E-mail and Directory Services. Huizer works with internetworking technologies such as TCP/IP, OSI, Information Services, Directory Services and User Support, as a service developer, beta-tester and mediator. He is Area Director of the Applications area of the Internet Engineering Task Force. He received a Ph.D. in science and technology from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 1987. Maria Heijne is staff member User-Support at SURFnet bv and project manager of the so-called SURFdoc project on Storing, Accessing and Processing Electronic Documents. She is a member of RARE WG-ISUS and Co-chair of the ISUS Taskforce on Document Delivery. She is trained as a librarian (1973-1976) and since 1983 has been involved in user-support, both in the library automation and the networking environment. Janneke Abbema is a member of the SURFnet Support Team since 1991. She and her two fellow team members make courses and training materials and other means to stimulate groups of new users to get involved in networking. Abbema studied household and consumer sciences at the Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands, and graduated in 1990. Ton Verschuren is Network Consultant at SURFnet bv, the company that operates the academic and research network in The Netherlands. He spends most of his time managing various national projects on Information Services and the use of Cable TV Networks for datacommunication. Other areas of interest are E-mail and Directory Services. Verschuren received a Ph.D. in theoretical high energy physics from Nijmegen University, The Netherlands, in 1991.
E. Huizer et aL / Reaching out to the end user
based on Gopher. To stimulate this process and to provide technical and organizational support a CWIS group was launched consisting of people interested in and usually responsible for their institution's CWlS.
5. Directory services
All over the world pilot projects on Directory Services are under way. The focus of most of these projects was on the technical possibilities of the X.500 CCITI" Recommendations for Directory Services [5]. In the meantime the user pressure for a White Pages service on the network has increased. To address the user needs the SURFnet X.500 pilot has shifted its emphasis. The pilot now aims at the user aspects of the Directory Service. Data management aspects (like maintaining the quality of the data) and legal aspects (the balance between access and privacy) are now the main focus [6].
6. Libraries and electronic documents
Access to documents and libraries is one of the more attractive facilities the network can offer to the user. In the last couple of years libraries have been rapidly connecting up to SURFnet, mainly to support the central cataloguing process. To stimulate libraries to use the network to increase their service to the end users two projects are defined for the period 1992-1994. Both projects are also aimed at the effective usage of increasing bandwidth: 1. project for storage and retrieval of electronic documents, called SURFdoc, 2. project to provide user access to the national central catalogue and to the connected inter library loan system. The first one of these will be described in more detail. The SURFdoc project started in 1992 with a worldwide study of existing document delivery services and projects to investigate the possibilities for starting a cost recovering service in this area in the Netherlands. In October 1992 the results of this study were published [2] indicating that it was too early to start this kind of service. The idea of a document server where documents like journal articles are stored electronically to be
307
retrieved by end users from their own workstations is obviously still premature. To name two reasons: • commercial publishers will not approve electronic storage of their materials without proper arrangement of copyright, which still is a worldwide issue and • there is a lack of user studies in this field to show that users are better off with this kind of service and that they are willing to pay for such a service. However the study also showed that there will be an undeniable trend towards electronic delivery of materials in the near future, whether publishers want it or not, and that libraries and end users need to get experience with these materials. Based on these conclusions SURFnet started a follow-up project to gain experience at both ends (libraries and end users), working with existing products like document servers with anonymous ftp, Gopher, WAIS etc. and with user studies to accompany the project [8]. The project started with selecting 3 organizations that will each start a project in storing full text documents in various subject areas and providing access to these documents to all SURFnet users. This access is via traditional ways like the Online Public Catalogue but also via Gopher and full text retrieval mechanisms like WAIS. User surveys will be carried out and implementations based on the results will guarantee the best possible service for the users. The success of the project depends on the satisfaction of the user with the new service. A second goal of the project is to get more experience with working with scanned documents in the end user environment. Some of the questions to be answered: • Which hardware and software does the user need to retrieve scanned documents from the network and to view and process these documents in h i s / h e r own environment? • Which cheap OCR programs are available to provide the user with the possibility to use scanned documents in h i s / h e r own word processor? • Is it seen as a financially viable solution to use scanners in combination with the network in the end user environment instead of telefax in combination with the public telephone network?
308
E. Huizer et al. / Reaching out to the end user
User surveys are very important here as well. Last but not least the project seeks to stimulate the cooperation between libraries and computing centers. It is obvious that information provision within the networked world should be a cooperative effort of technicians and librarians. The project stimulates this by asking both parties to put forward joint project proposals.
7. Support, training and documentation SURFnet bv has several ways to support the end users. Over the past 5 years SURFnet has repeatedly published the SURFnet Guide [3], both in Dutch and in English. The Guide has evolved based on the reactions of users, and is now appreciated inside as well as outside of SURFnet. Up to date information and background articles are published in the SURFnet Bulletin, a paper journal. Extra information especially for the local support people is published in an electronic journal called Netnieuw (which means 'just about new'). These publications together form the basis for locally developed documentation and training materials. In order to stimulate these local developments and to attract new users, a project was started called " T h e SURFnet Support Team". In 1989 it became clear that the information from SURFnet to the end user did not always reach its destination. Therefore the SURFnet Support Team was formed, consisting of three members, employed on a four year basis. The main task of the Support Team is support at the user's desktop. The Support Team supplies direct end user support at the request of the affiliated institutes. The Support Team provides information about network possibilities and develops tailor-made courses, in collaboration with support groups at the institutes. The Team also makes courses for the local support people to pass on to their end users. This kind of support is focused on the local facilities and special interests of the group. The Support Team only acts on request. There is no active acquisition. A group must be willing to allocate time to participate in a Support Team project. In cooperation with the group demonstration materials and courses are made. Usually there will be a demonstration first. These demo's
are attended by a large group of people. After this 'warming-up' a course will be made. A course consists of a syllabus, exercises and sheets. The syllabus as well as the exercises are within the scope of the group. Local techniques are incorporated and the examples and exercises are focused on the user's background. A project will take approximately three months. Electronic versions of the courses are stored on the SURFnet file server and are free to use with notification of the source. Other institutes can use the material to incorporate in their own support program. It has to be kept in mind that the courses are especially made for a certain site, although many parts of the courses are for general use. All these services are free of charge within the SURFnet community. It is a time consuming way of support. Nevertheless it seems to be an effective way of support. More and more users are getting to know the network better and better. Over 20 institutes with various faculties made use of the Support Team; many more have already applied. The new users work at universities, polytechnics as well as libraries. More than 600 people participated in the activities of the Support Team, with courses, workshops, demonstrations, lectures, etc. At the beginning of 1993 SURFnet started a new initiative to increase the involvement of its user representatives (i.e. the customers) with new developments. A structure of SURFnet User Groups (SGGs) is proposed, equivalent to the R A R E Working Group structure. The already existing CWlS group was placed under the umbrella of the Information Services and User Support SGG. Two annual meetings are scheduled approximately one month before the JENC and NSC Conferences in order to provide input to the R A R E WGs.
8. Conclusion Various SURFnet projects aim to enhance the participation of users in networking activities and to facilitate the use of the network. The results of these projects show an increase in the number of users. However it is clear that a lot still remains to be done to make the various services for the user more accessible and understandable. User
E. Huizer et al. / Reaching out to the end user
interfaces need to be improved and integrated into the working environment of the user. Infrastructure for access to the network needs to be extended (CATV, I S D N and Dial-in). Information and navigation services need to be homogenized. Access to libraries and documents needs to be simplified. User support needs to be more widespread. The research community has developed a worldwide infrastructure that offers researchers a medium of communication and information. To open this medium to the end users a lot of development still has to be done, on a global scale (Internet), on a European scale (RARE), as well as within SURFnet. The focus of these developments should shift towards services for the end user rather than bandwidth and infrastructure. The authors recommend that other networks that wish to reach out to the end user do the following: • Install a well managed information server, with an editorial board, responsible for the contents; • Stimulate user groups (e.g. libraries) to use this information server for communicating; • Stimulate the relation between libraries and computing centers in order to optimize information provision; • Apply pressure on software vendors where possible to improve their user interfaces to network services according to the needs of the users; • Provide cheap and easy network access for users (e.g. students) that do not have full time access through their organizations;
309
• If the money is available, install a support team to help uninitiated (groups of) users. Hopefully the result will be that the network becomes part of every day work as a valuable tool to find information of interest.
References [1] D. Crocker, Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages, Request for Comments 822, University of Delaware, 1982, RFC-822. [2] M. Heijne, Study report, SURFnet, 1992, anonymous ftp: ftp.nic.surfnet.nl, file: projects/docdel/studyreport.eng. [3] M. Heijne et al., eds., SURFnet Guide 1993, SURFnet, 1993, anonymous ftp: ftp.nic.surf-net.nl, directory: usersupport/gids/. [4] International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, Message Handling: system and service overview, 1984, X.400. [5] International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, The Directory--overview of concepts, models and service, December 1988, Recommendation X.500. [6] E. Jeunink and E. Huizer, Directory Services and Privacy Issues, SURFnet, Proc. 4th Joint European Networking Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 10-13 May 1993 (Handout). [7] J. Postel, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, Request for Comments 821, ISI, 1982, RFC-821. [8] T. Verschuren, Overview of recent developments in networked information retrieval, SURFnet, 1992, anonymous ftp: ftp.nic.surfnet.nl, file: projects/navigators/nir-overview. [9] T. Verschuren, SURFnet, WAN to the home: data communication over CATV networks, Proc. 4th Joint European Networking Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 10-13 May 1993 (Handout).