Change.

Computing & Information Services did not renew the Clarinet ClariNews subscription to the clari.* hierarchy of newsgroups when it came due in summer of 1997. The primary reason was cost versus usage, taking into account Web based alternatives.

Discussion of the change.

ClariNews is licensed based not on our usage, but on our total number of students and staff. In practice the usage was very limited, unlikely to grow, and the original force behind getting the subscription several years ago -- Plymouth State College -- said they were no longer interested.

The need to access the information through a News reader interface is also a barrier to wider use, while at the same time more and more news sources are available without cost via Web servers. ClariNews was initiating an HTML version of their News, but in our analysis it was unacceptably complex and cumbersome in the processing involved, given that we received approximately 500 groups in the clari.* hierarchy. Meanwhile, in the several years since we started with ClariNews, the amount of news material on the Web has dramatically increased and a much larger percentage of computing users on campus are networked and running graphical Web browsers on their desktops. Web access to news allows for much easier navigation than the typical newsgroup reader (e.g., slrn, trn, or even Netscape's News interface) and allows for easy access to graphics integrated with stories. Reuters was a major source of ClariNews material and much of that same material is accessible elsewhere on the Web (see the Yahoo reference below).

Web-based news resources.

The following links are to a few (there are many more) Web sites that are useful meta-lists for news, sites that in turn have links to specific resources. If you take some time to explore these, we think you will be impressed with the quantity, quality, and accessibility of news information.

• CNN Interactive

http://www.cnn.com/
Current stories, including images, on major categories of news cuhas world, USA, region, weather, sports, sci-tech, travel, style, showbiz, health, and earth.

• C-SPAN

http://www.c-span.org/
Much information about events in the US government and in Washington, DC.

• Excite's Sports Channel

http://my.excite.com/channel/sports/
Extremely comprehensive starting point for current sports news, scores, and links to other sports Web sites.

• Infoseek's Headline News

http://yournews.infoseek.com/page?col=PP&pg=Headlines.html
General headline news, plus keyword search of the Reuters, Business Wire, and PR Newswire headlines.

• Newspaper Association of America (NAA)

http://www.naa.org/hot/
A gateway to newspaper and other related media organizations' Internet sites in North America.

• NeWo News Resource

http://newo.com/news/
Links to major Web news sources, organized by regions of the world (Africa, Asia & Oceania, Europe ...) and by country within regions.

• Yahoo's Newswires

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/
Much of this information is from Reuters. Allows searching by keywords, including compound search expressions. This includes full stories with each headline.

Summary.

It is always difficult to cut off a service that exists, but Computing & Information Services did spend serious time weighing the cost vs. usage, taking into account the Web alternatives. If you wish to discuss that decision further, contact our Assistant Vice-President for Computing & Information Services, Jerry Olson.