The South Asia Gopher

[David Magier]

The South Asia Gopher (SAG), a collection of network-accessible information
resources from all over the world relating to South Asia, is about to become
available to the public over the Internet via Gopher or direct telnet connection
to the host at Columbia University. Although it is stil 'in process' and
contains many gaps, and I am still constantly adding to it and refining it, I
thought it would be good to make available what I've assembled so far. Thus, SAG
will probably be up and running next week. As the compiler and editor of this
service, I will post detailed information on how to access it as soon as it is
up. Meanwhile, a brief decription to let you know what it contains:

The major categories of inforation in SAG are as follows:

a) Bibliographic resources
   1. A listing of the world's top library collections on South Asia, along with
direct links to their online catalogs, as well as brief text files describing
the particular strengths of those collections. (This part, especially the text
files which have to be written by the South Asia librarians at each institution
listed, are still 'under construction'. I would also welcome suggestions about
WHICH libraries, say the world's 'TOP TWENTY', to include here).

  2. A link to the South & Southeast Asia Video Archive at University of
Wisconsin (Madison), which provides access to their online catalog of videos.

b) A sprinkling of links to online resources in Germany, Australia, India, and
the UK (I would GREATLY appreciate suggestions on additions to these menus).

c) Listings of (and some links to) South Asia-related newsgroups, listservs,
mailing lists, etc.

d) Listings of (and some links to) electronic text archives for South Asia
materials. (Not yet on the menu, but coming soon. Please alert me to anything
you think ought to be here).

e) South Asia Teaching Resources
   1) Another link to the S.Asia Video Archive
   2) The Inventory of Language Materials (ILM), produced by Professor Frances
Pritchett of Columbia, and mounted locally here.

f) I am also creating the Directory of South Asia Scholars and mounting it
locally as a fully-searchable (WAIS-indexed) database of records. Other new
resources (created locally or by groups of South Asianists) which I plan to
mount and 'publish' via this gopher include: a Union List of S. Asia Newspapers
on Microfilm (under construction by Irene Joshi of Washington and others), a
listing of current journals and serials acquired through the Library of Congress
Field Office in New Delhi (if they polish it up and grant allow us to include
it), the Chronology of Urdu Literature (a comprehensive listing being compiled
by Professor Pritchett), a comprehensive listing of grant and fellowship
opportunities for South Asian Studies, and any other text files, databases,
bibliographies, or other resources which the community of South Asianists would
like to me put into this central repository for world-wide easy access.

As you can tell from my brief descriptions above, this effort is still in its
infancy, and Columbia University has made a commitment to maintain it and keep
it evolving and improving. This will depend to a large extent on your
cooperation. While I myself am an experienced internet 'navigator', I can't
claim to have located all the appropriate resources that should be listed (and
linked) in the SAG. Also, the universe of such resources mounted locally at
institutions all over the world changes from day to day. So I would  be very
grateful if all of you would contribute to this effort by pointing out to me any
resources I may have overlooked, any changes in the resources already listed or
any problems in using them, or any suggestions for improving the form or content
of the SAG to improve its value to the community.

In regard to the Directory of South Asia Scholars, I will send, immediately
after this message, the "About" file from this Directory, and ask you to make
this particular resource as useful as possible by submitting entries to me as
indicated. The South Asia Reflector Service from University of Pennsylvania was
a step in the right direction, but since it is not an indexed searchable
database, it cannot function as a directory per se. So please do help me
construct this service to maximize its usefulness to yourself and your
colleagues. Thank you.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
    ____________________________      304 International Affairs
  ///    -- David Magier --    \\\    Columbia University
 |||   Director, AREA STUDIES   |||   New York, N.Y. 10027-7296
 |||  S&SE Asia, Latin America, |||   212-854-8046 / FAX: 212-854-2495
  \\\ Mid-East, Slavic, Africa ///
    ---------------------------       magier at columbia.edu