In 1997 the timeline was at http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
in 2010 it was at http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
visitors to www.ciolek.com since 08 May 1997.
To appear in: The Journal of East Asian Libraries, CEAL, 1997.
One of the enduring memories of my childhood in Europe is that of an unheated passenger train traveling through a winter landscape. The windows of my compartment glitter with a coat of frost. The train seems to be cut-off from the world-at-large. It is only by pressing a hand against the surface, or by patient scraping with a key-ring that a tiny patch of glass can be cleared.
Then, as I look through the hole I catch a myriad of incoherent images which whoosh by and disappear. How big they really are, and how these fleeting and disjointed images of potential meadows, trees, buildings and mountains relate to each other I cannot tell, for things happen too fast, and too unexpectedly, and the cleared patch is too small to afford a meaningful perspective.
It is some 50 years later that I find myself in a surprisingly similar predicament. In the short time since WWW technology was made available on the Net, a dazzling and turbulent cloud of networked documents and information resources has shrouded our research activities, as well as the channels of electronic communication. I use the word 'cloud' deliberately, for "the Web is the global sum of the uncoordinated activities of several hundreds of thousands of people who deal with the system as they please. It is a nebulous, ever-changing multitude of computer sites that house continually changing chunks of multimedia information ... all arranged in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. This information is displayed on millions of pages (files) wired together by multiple hypertext links. If the WWW were compared to a library, the 'books' on its shelves would keep changing their relative locations as well as their sizes and names. Individual 'pages' in those publications would be shuffled ceaselessly. Finally, much of the data on those pages would be revised, updated, extended, shortened, or even deleted without warning almost daily." (Ciolek 1996:106).
Most of us who have access to the Net are well aware that what is happening right now on the Internet is big, unprecedented, and important. Also, we know that it has a direct bearing on our individual and collective futures. But we remain very much like passengers on that frosted-over train, transported willy-nilly to new places but whose overall destination, time-tables and actual route, let alone present whereabouts, are essentially unknown.
Therefore, what I propose to do in this paper is to obtain some rudimentary bearings of where we currently are, and where are we most likely to go. This will be done by establishing a small peep-hole in the sparkling surface of many online phenomena and by taking a fleeting glance at the developments at the very heart of networked Asian Studies research, teaching and librarianship. The information presented in this paper will be fragmentary. This is unavoidable, since the phenomenon under study changes and mutates on a daily, if not hourly basis.
However, there is no doubt that having access to such incomplete, 'Domesday Book' type data, is - ultimately - more useful than having access to no data at all. Also, it will be advantageous to explore possible research methodologies of collecting data on WWW-based information resources. Good practical experience in this hitherto unexplored area will be relevant to the design of any future Internet censuses and stock-takings.
Throughout this paper I shall be making frequent use of such expressions as 'Asian Studies cyberspace', 'Asia-related materials' and 'the Web'.
The folksy but memorable term cyberspace will refer here to the global body of online information available in WWW, as well as ftp and gopher formats. Therefore, it will exclude online information distributed via email, listservs, relay-chats, telnet and other networked technologies.
The geographical boundaries of Asia will be set generously. They will encompass Levant and Caucasus in the West, Siberia and the Russian Far East in the North, Japan in the East, Indonesia (but not Melanesia or Australasia) in the South East, and, Sri Lanka and the Maldives in the South.
The adjective Asian Studies will be used to signal any online information of relevance to social sciences, arts and humanities research on Asia, her regions, territories and countries. Thus a Norwegian database on, say, the economy of Pakistan will be regarded here as a part of the Asian Studies cyberspace, whereas a Pakistani database on the Norwegian economy, will not.
At the same time, the expression Asia-related documents will denote online material referring to Asia in general, or to any of her countries and territories, regardless of whether these materials specialize in social sciences or not. For instance, web pages with a list of Indonesian nuclear reactors, or a directory of exporters of mining equipment to Burma will be treated here as Indonesia- or Burma-related material, in short, as Asia-related material.
Finally, terms such as WWW, Web and the Net will be used to refer to the publicly accessible subsets of the Internet, which also comprise restricted access corporate or military networks and private intranets. Data collected by Network Wizards (1997) suggest that only 22% or 4.4 million of all registered computer hosts are used to form the publicly accessible parts of the Internet. The rest of the equipment is either left temporarily un-installed, or placed on isolated networks or behind firewalls.
This paper makes use of data derived from three major sources.
Firstly, it discusses statistical information on the growth of the Internet as a whole, as well as the growth of one its major components, the WWW. These interlocking sets of figures were originally collected and published by Network Wizards (1977) and Zakon (1977) as well as by Gray (1996). Their data (see Table 1) indicate the operation of three long-term trends. The first two are the continuing exponential growth of both the number of Internet computer hosts and of the WWW servers. The third trend deals with the increasing saturation of the Internet with WWW servers, and therefore, of the online world with Web-based documents and publications.
Table 1
Numbers of WWW sites Jul 93-Jul 97
-----------------------------------------------------
Date No. of Web servers Active Internet Hosts/
Web server
-----------------------------------------------------
07/93 * 130 3,846
12/93 * 623 963
07/94 * 2,738 255
12/94 * 10,022 99
07/95 * 23,500 46
01/96 * 100,000 17
06/96 ** 300,000 8.5
01/97 ** 650,000 5.2
07/97 ** 1,203,096*** 3.6
-----------------------------------------------------
* web and host data from Gray (1996)
** web data from Zakon (1997)
** raw host data from Network Wizards (1997)
*** Netree (1997) postulated, rather unrealistically, on the basis of
extrapolation of server numbers and growth rates from Dec 1995, that in mid Sep
97 there were about 9,600,000 servers.
Secondly, the paper analyses and interprets statistics obtained from a series
of systematic English keyword searches directed to the Altavista database
(Digital Corporation, 1997). Altavista (see Table 2) is the world's
second largest database of Web documents. Assuming (see Table 3) that
currently an average Web Server publishes approximately 49.5 documents one
can estimate from the Table 1 that the entire universe of Web-based information
consists of some 59.4 million online documents or pages. Armed with this
information we can see that while the Excite system appears to be more complete
(84% coverage of the world's web resources) it appears, to
'know' about fewer documents on Asia, than does the smaller (52%
coverage) Altavista system.
Table 2
Frequency of occurrence of WWW pages with a keyword 'Asia'
in 4 major WWW databases
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Documents Asia: non-Asia
Database Date Documents on 'Asia' docs. ratio
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excite Sep 97 50 mln 325,005 1:154
www.excite.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Altavista Sep 97 31 mln 1,341,820 1: 23
altavista.digital.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lycos Sep 97 813,548 94,746 1: 8
www.lycos.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infoseek Sep 97 1,027,148 307,494 1: 3
www.infoseek.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 3
Average number of WWW pages per web-server
as recorded by Altavista database
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Database Date Documents Servers Pages/Server
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Altavista Feb 97 31 mln 476,000 65.1
Altavista Sep 97 31 mln 627,000 49.5
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since this study is focused on Asia-related online documents, the Altavista
database has been selected as the chief source of intelligence. It must be noted that statistics derived from Altavista pertain only to English language documents. This is an important issue (see Table 4). The choice of English as the language of enquiry means that this paper excludes from its analyses approximately 10% of Altavista's Asia-related material, simply because it was produced in other languages. On the other hand, the decision to stick to material published in a single (and dominant) language has greatly expedited the task of gathering the replicable data.
Table 4
No of WWW pages in Altavista database (Sep 97) containing
a keyword 'Asia' as a function of the page's language
- a comparison of 15 assorted languages.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Any language - 1,341,820
English - 1,122,770
Finnish - 29,960
Japanese - 13,130
Spanish - 6,920
Italian - 5,200
Chinese - 5,840
German - 906*
French - 757**
Norwegian - 729
Portuguese - 265
Dutch - 255
Swedish - 188
Korean - 175
Greek - 35
Estonian - 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
* German keyword 'Asien' returns 13,840 pages
** French keyword 'Asie' returns 15,680 pages
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The final methodological decision related to the use of Altavista was to
convert raw statistics on a number of URLs (uncovered via keywords searches)
into estimates of equivalent Web servers. In other words, every 49.5 pages,
regardless of their actual provenance, were treated as a rough equivalent of
one web server. Thus, for example, a figure of 460 servers dealing with
Afghanistan was based on the finding that an Altavista query involving the
keyword 'Afghanistan' generates links to 22,770 distinct pages
(URLs) with that keyword. Also, a decision was made that all server statistics
are to be rounded to the nearest ten units.The third source of data used in this paper is material drawn from a 10 and half month- long (Nov 96 - 15 Sep 97) set of issues of "What's New in WWW Asian Studies Online Newsletter " (Ciolek 1997). The objectives of the e-journal, its coverage as well as methods of data collection and distribution are discussed in detail in Ciolek (1995) and therefore need not to be repeated here. The choice of this particular time-frame was dictated by convenience. Since 1 Nov 96 all resources listed with the Newsletter were systematically given a 'research usefulness' rating on a 5 point scale: essential - very useful - useful - interesting - marginal. These scores meant that, on the one end of the scale, an online resource was judged to be a trustworthy scholarly or factual monograph or data-set, while on the other, it was found to have a fragment or two of useful material but was, otherwise, largely irrelevant to serious scholarly work. The entire set of 530 announcements published in the Newsletter during the sampled period was inspected to eliminate any redundancies (i.e. occasional repeat announcements), as well as to remove materials pertaining to societies, economies, languages etc. located in Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia as well as Australia and New Zealand (Australasia). This pruning operation yielded a final total of 464 data-points on web sites falling into the Asian Studies cyberspace category. Additionally, in order to estimate the ratio of useful/useless online documents the set of 464 Newsletter data was contrasted with an guesstimated number of 319 resources (= 1 item for each day of the 319 days of the studied period, a conservative assumption) which were inspected by this editor with the view of their publication in the Newsletter but were rejected on the grounds of vacuity or triviality.
To what extent are the Newsletter data congruent with those obtained from Altavista searches ? This question is answered by Table 5.
Table 5
Comparison of geographic coverage by web sites
recorded in "What's New in WWW Asian Studies
Online Newsletter" (Nov 96-Sep 97) and
Altavista database (Sep 97)
------------------------------------------------------------
WWW sites
Region dealt with Newsletter Altavista
------------------------------------------------------------
Middle East 2% 16%
Caucasus 2% 7%
Central Asia 4% 1%
South Asia 20% 11%
South East Asia 25% 22%
East Asia 47% 44%
------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 100% 101%
377 sites 170,950 sites
------------------------------------------------------------
The above juxtaposition indicates that the Newsletter greatly
underreports online developments dealing with the Middle East and
Caucasus, and over-reports existence of web sites dealing with Central
Asia and South Asia. However, both sources of data show a comparable
level of coverage for countries of the South East Asia and East Asia
regions. In other words, while not in full synchrony with each other,
both sources of information seem to be in agreement with respect to
some 66% of online materials they cover. It was assumed, therefore,
that the two sources could be legitimately used together for the
purposes of this paper.The chief purpose of this study is to provide a first attempt at a census of the Asian Studies and Asia-related networked information. Therefore, the main emphasis will be placed on descriptive statistics provided in form of tables with numeric data. Since the collected figures should speak for themselves quite eloquently I shall keep any commentaries and interpretations to a bare minimum.
An investigation of contents of the Altavista database (see Table 6), carried out with a 7 month interval (Feb/Sep) in 1997 shows that during the studied period an overall number of WWW servers containing documents with keywords corresponding to the names of Asian countries (or provinces and territories) has doubled from over 80 thousand to over 170 thousands (see also Table 7).
Table 6
Estimated number of Web servers dealing with Asian countries,
as recorded by Altavista database
------------------------------------------------------------------
Country Feb 97 Sep 97
------------------------------------------------------------------
MIDDLE EAST
Afghanistan 460 790
Bahrain 460 730
Iran 920 1,710
Iraq 300 740
Israel 7,700 11,800
Jordan * 300 470
Kurdistan 80 60
Kuwait 460 770
Lebanon 300 1,810
Oman 300 540
Palestine 300 820
Qatar 150 380
Saudi Arabia 460 600
Syria 300 700
Turkey 1,600 4,520
United Arab Emirates 150 300
Yemen 150 290
TOTAL 4,390 (18%) 27,030 (16% of Asia-related
online materials)
------------------------------------------------------------------
CAUCASUS
Armenia 460 780
Azerbaijan 150 490
Chechnya 90 190
Georgia ** 300 10,060
TOTAL 1000 (1%) 11,520 (7% of Asia-related
online materials)
------------------------------------------------------------------
CENTRAL ASIA
Kazakhstan 300 350
Kyrgyzstan 100 170
Tajikistan 100 170
Turkmenistan 100 160
Uzbekistan 150 270
TOTAL 750 (1%) 1,120 (1% of Asia-related
online materials)
------------------------------------------------------------------
SOUTH ASIA
Bangladesh 770 1,240
Bhutan 150 350
India 6,200 12,680
Kashmir 130 200
Maldives 150 250
Nepal 920 1,250
Pakistan 920 1,680
Sri Lanka 460 540
TOTAL 9,700 (12%) 18,190 (11% of Asia-related
online materials)
------------------------------------------------------------------
SOUTH EAST ASIA
Brunei 300 610
Burma 460 870
Cambodia 460 790
East Timor 60 90
Indonesia 3,100 4,850
Laos 460 510
Malaysia 3,100 5,350
Philippines 1,540 3,070
Singapore 6,200 11,940
Thailand 3,100 5,460
Vietnam 1,600 4,080
TOTAL 20,280 (25%) 37,620 (22% of Asia-related
online materials)
------------------------------------------------------------------
EAST ASIA
China *** 10,800 19,590
Hong Kong 3,100 3,540
Japan 15,400 43,490
Korea (North) 150 210
Korea (South) 300 550
Macau 300 430
Mongolia 150 440
Siberia 150 390
Taiwan 3,100 5,940
Tibet 600 890
TOTAL 34,050 (43%) 75,470 (44% of Asia-related
online materials)
------------------------------------------------------------------
ASIA TOTAL 80,170 (100%) 170,950 (101%)
------------------------------------------------------------------
* The number of servers dealing with the Kingdom of Jordan may be overestimated
because the keyword may also refer to a number of other geographic locations in
Australia and North America (The Times Atlas of the World, 1994:188) and also
is a widely used Anglo-Saxon surname (Telstra 1997).
** The data for Georgia are derived from a search combining keywords
'Georgia' and 'Republic'. This is because the name of the Asian
country also refers to the name of a state in the US.
*** Note that the number of servers dealing with the country of China may be
overestimated because the keyword may also refer to popular term for
porcelain.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Furthermore, Table 6 also shows that the largest amount of Web material deals
with countries of East Asia (44%), and South East Asia (22%) with a more
moderate interest shown in the affairs and resources of the Caucasus (7%),
South Asia (11%) and the Middle East (16%). Finally Table 6 suggests that
practically minimal online attention is paid to the countries of Central Asia
(1%). These trends can also be observed in Table 7.
Table 7
Increase in the number of Web servers dealing with countries
of Asian regions as recorded by Altavista database
------------------------------------------------------------------
Region Feb 97 Sep 97
------------------------------------------------------------------
Middle East 14,390 27,030
Caucasus 1000 11,520
Central Asia 750 1,120
South Asia 9,700 18,190
South East Asia 20,280 37,620
East Asia 34,050 75,470
------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 80,170 170,950 113% growth
------------------------------------------------------------------
The main message conveyed by Table 7 is that of the rapid growth in the
volume
of the Asia-related online publications. However, the speed with which
English-language Web documents related to a given Asian country are placed on
the network appears to be a function of many inter-related variables. It will be premature at this point in time to speculate about the reasons, such as the strength of the economy, political stature, public-relations' skills or the ubiquity of the telecommunication resources for which country X has a greater 'online presence' than a country Y. Nevertheless, it must be noted (see Table 8) that not only do certain countries have a greater share of the Asia-related online materials, but also that they tend to increase their share at the expense of other, less dynamic in their uses of the Internet (or perhaps, less popular, less 'sexy') countries.
Table 8 12 Asian countries with the largest share of Asia-related cyberspace as recorded by Altavista database (Feb-Sep 97) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Servers Country Feb 97 Sep 97 Growth -------------------------------------------------------------------- Japan 15,400 43,490 182% China 10,800 19,590 81% India 6,200 12,680 104% Singapore 6,200 11,940 92% Israel 7,700 11,800 53% Georgia 300 10,060 3352% Taiwan 3,100 5,940 91% Thailand 3,100 5,460 76% Malaysia 3,100 5,350 72% Indonesia 3,100 4,850 56% Turkey 1,600 4,520 182% Vietnam 1,600 4,080 155% -------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 62,200 145,760 --------------------------------------------------------------------Table 8 reveals that while the average growth for all the Asia-related WWW material between February and September 1997 was about 113%, the numbers of pages dealing with the Republic of Georgia grown an astonishing 3352%, and Japan- and Turkey-related web pages have increased at very strong rate of 180%. The table also shows that twelve of the countries which were most visible on the Web were responsible for 80% of the Asia-related English-language web pages, with Japan being the undisputed focus of online attention (25%), followed somewhat more sluggishly by online interest in China (11%) and India (7%). In other words, 22% of Asian countries (12 out of 55) are discussed by 85% of all Asia-related Web-based documents.
While there is a great proliferation in the number of networked documents dealing with Asia, there is also an unfortunate flood of online materials which, ideally, should not ever be offered for public consumption at all. Data listed in Table 9 indicate that 40-50% of the Asian Studies resources published on the Net tend to be useless mediocrities, about 40% of the materials are quite worthy of one's attention and the remaining 10 % can be classified as potentially 'interesting'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 9
The Quality of Asian Studies WWW Resources
[779 materials (1 Nov 96-15 Sep 97) considered for publication in
"What's New in WWW Asian Studies Online Newsletter"]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Essential 52 7%
V.Useful 106 13%
Useful 143 18%
Interesting 102 13%
Marginal 51 7%
Useless * 319 41%
rating not available 10 1%
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 783 100%
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* useless, rejected materials
If this pattern is extrapolated to Asia-related materials uncovered in keyword
searches of Altavista, the conclusion is truly stunning - the contents of
about 85 thousand Web servers (i.e. one half of the current number of 170,000
Asia-related servers) designed, financed, constructed and maintained in all
parts of the world could be safely switched-off, not only without any loss to
any-one, but actually to the great benefit of all of serious Net users. The reason for this disconcerting state of affairs is simple. Until the early 1990s the technology of electronic placement of information was prohibitively complicated and fairly expensive. Not everybody had an account on a networked computer and not everybody was skilled enough in the construction of WAIS databases, ftp archives or gopher subject-trees. Therefore most of the informational floodgates were kept shut. However, the advent of the HTML and convenient graphic WWW browsers has changed the situation dramatically. From September 1993 onwards any snippet of data could be easily placed for public viewing by almost anyone. The end result of the widespread introduction of the Web as the 'enabling technology' is that documents, photographs, sketches and notes which hitherto were disseminated by hand only within a narrow circle of friends and relatives are now accessible electronically to anyone anywhere, globally.
In other words, the long-standing boundary between 'informal' and 'private' vs. 'public' and 'official' information has been irrevocably breached, and the two worlds, which formerly co-existed separately, have now been conjoined and hopelessly mixed up. The democratic and anti-establishement aspects (Rutkowski 1994) of the Net also mean that from a point of view of a Web database, the Bible and the Britannica, constitute a mere bunch of URLs, no different from those leading to a pre-schooler's grafitti or a circus poster.
One of the ways of looking at the 464 announcements of new or modified Asian Studies web sites recorded in the Newsletter (see Table 10) is in terms of their contents.
Table 10
Subject matter of Asian Studies WWW sites
as recorded by "What's New in WWW Asian
Studies Online Newsletter" (Nov 96-Sep 97)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category WWW sites
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CORPORATE AFFAIRS
(organisations, associations) 100 22%
INFORMATION GUIDES
(Internet directories, libraries, bookshops) 90 19%
ONLINE NEWS & PERIODICALS 51 11%
MONEY
(economy, trade, business, tourism) 48 10%
TEACHING & CONFERENCES
(resources, bibliographies, experts) 47 10%
CULTURE & ART 35 8%
SOCIETY
(demography, history, religion, health) 35 8%
TEXTS & IMAGES
(hist-, relig-, lang.-documents, photographs) 32 7%
POLITICS
(government, security, intl. relations) 17 4%
ENVIRONMENT 9 2%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 464 101%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One fifth (20%) of all sites appear to be describing mission statements and
organizational structures of those institutions (university departments,
research associations, businesses, government bodies etc) which have a stake in
Asian affairs. Another 20% of the sites deal with meta-information, that is,
online information about sources of online information about Asia. The next
three categories, each representing about 10% of all analysed sites, deal
respectively, with (a) the Asian news and commentaries; (b) Asian economy,
trade and business; and finally, (c) with educational issues and resources
relevant to tertiary teaching about Asia.The content of Web sites registered with the Newsletter appears to be influenced (see Table 11) by the country in which such sites have been established.
Table 11
Location of an Asian Studies web site vs. its subject matter *
as recorded by "What's New in WWW Asian
Studies Online Newsletter" (Nov 96-Sep 97)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Location of Topic
the WWW site
CORP INFO NEWS MONEY TEACH CULT SOC TEXT POLIT ENVIR Total
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USA 30 28 21 11 18 17 15 15 9 5 169
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Australia 11 23 5 1 3 - 2 3 3 1 52
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Indonesia 10 2 3 5 - 4 1 - - 2 27
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Japan 2 - 1 4 5 1 2 6 - - 21
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canada 2 2 3 2 3 1 2 1 - - 20
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China 1 5 2 7 1 1 - 1 1 - 19
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
India 2 4 4 - 1 4 - 1 - - 15
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UK 6 3 - 2 2 - 2 - - - 15
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philippines 6 2 1 2 1 - 2 - - - 14
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Germany 4 1 1 1 - 2 1 - - - 10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hong Kong 4 - 1 2 1 1 1 - - - 10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* a case of 11 countries with the largest input to Asian Studies cyberspace
For example, Web systems established in the USA seem to be concentrating
on corporate information (18% of US web sites), as well as on providing
guides to Asian cyberspace (17%). By contrast, China-based resources
dedicated themselves mainly to information about trade, business and economy
(37%) and to publishing online guides to Asian cyberspace (26%). At the same
time, Web sites established in Japan tend to favour publication of online
texts & images (29%) as well as provision of tertiary education tools
and resources (24%). At this stage it is not possible to decide whether the
above differences should be interpreted as a result of tacit but deliberate
national policies and agendas, or simply as the outcome of random factors.
Furthermore, Web sites listed with the Newsletter testify to an uneven allocation of interest (see Table 12) in countries comprising Asia. For instance, there are five countries (or as in the case of Tibet, territories) which tend to attract the attention of the largest number of Asian Studies web sites. These are: China (talked about by 80 web sites, or 17% of the whole Asian cyberspace), Indonesia (talked about by 32 web sites or 7% of the total), Japan (26 or 6%) and, finally, India and Tibet (talked about by 23 web sites each or 5% each). In other words, the 9% of all Asian countries (5 out of 55) attract 40% of the Asian Studies cyberspace attention.
Table 12
Geographic coverage of Asian Studies web sites
as recorded by "What's New in WWW Asian
Studies Online Newsletter" (Nov 96-Sep 97)
----------------------------------------------------------
Country dealt with no of WWW sites
----------------------------------------------------------
ASIA in general 87
----------------------------------------------------------
MIDDLE EAST in general 2
Afghanistan 1
Israel 1
Palestine 2
Saudi Arabia 1
Turkey 1
----------------------------------------------------------
CAUCASUS in general 1
Armenia 1
Azerbaijan 2
Chechnya 1
Georgia 1
----------------------------------------------------------
CENTRAL ASIA in general 13
Kazakhstan 1
Kyrgyzstan 2
Tajikistan 1
----------------------------------------------------------
SOUTH ASIA in general 33
Bangladesh 3
Bhutan 3
India 23
Nepal 5
Pakistan 6
Sri Lanka 1
----------------------------------------------------------
SOUTH EAST ASIA in general 9
Burma 1
East Timor 2
Indonesia 32
Laos 1
Malaysia 1
Philippines 15
Singapore 2
Thailand 8
Vietnam 24
----------------------------------------------------------
EAST ASIA in general 14
China 80
E.Turkistan 3
Hong Kong 5
Japan 26
Korea Nth & Sth 15
Macau 1
Mongolia 4
Siberia 2
Taiwan 4
Tibet 23
----------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 464
----------------------------------------------------------
A similar trend towards a skewed distribution of interest in Asian matters is
displayed also at the regional level (see Table 13).
Table 13
Geographic coverage of Asian Studies web sites
as recorded by "What's New in WWW Asian
Studies Online Newsletter" (Nov 96-Sep 97)
----------------------------------------------------------
Region dealt with no of WWW sites
----------------------------------------------------------
Asia 87 19%
Middle East 8 2%
Caucasus 6 1%
Central Asia 17 4%
South Asia 74 16%
South East Asia 95 20%
East Asia 177 38%
----------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 464 100%
----------------------------------------------------------
When target (= talked about, dealt with) countries are aggregated into regional
groups one can see that both East Asia (177 web sites or 38%) and South East
Asia (95 or 20%) constitute the most popular topics. These two regions claim
the attention of some 60% of online documents and publications.
Which region of Asia is dealt with online appears to be determined by the geographical location of the online information system itself (see Table 14).
Table 14 Location of an Asian Studies web site and its geographic coverage as recorded by "What's New in WWW Asian Studies Online Newsletter" (Nov 96-Sep 97) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table 14 Location of Region dealt with the WWW site Asia ME Cauc. CA SA SEA East A. TOTAL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table 14 Europe 17 1 - 8 14 7 22 69 15% Nth America 28 3 4 8 36 22 84 185 40% Sth America - - - - - - 1 1 0% Australasia 29 - - - 5 14 9 57 12% Middle East - 4 - - - - - 4 1% Caucasus - - 2 - - - - 2 0% Central Asia - - - 1 - - - 1 0% South Asia 1 - - - 18 - 2 21 5% South East Asia 8 - - - - 51 2 61 13% East Asia 4 - - - 1 1 57 63 14% ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table 14 TOTAL 87 8 6 17 74 95 177 464 100% ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table 14There seem to be at least two possible trends, one towards the coverage of several regions at the same time, the other one towards narrower specialization.
Table 14 shows that Web servers situated in Europe, North America and Australasia tend to cover a number of Asian regions, whereas servers in South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia are focussed on the issues of their own region.
For instance, major European preoccupations seem to be East Asia (32%), Asia as a whole (25%), and South Asia (20%). In the case of North America, these are East Asia (45%), South Asia (20%) and Asia in general (15%). Australian and NZ web servers, in turn, tend to focus chiefly on Asia as a whole (51%), South East Asia (25%), and East Asia (16%). In sum, between 77% and 92% of the Asian-focussed resources established in those regions devote their attention to two of the three major Asian regions, as well as to Asian continent as a whole. These three Asian regions, however, seem to be interested chiefly in themselves. The percentages of web sites dealing with the countries of their own region are: South Asia - 86%; South East Asia - 84%; and, finally, East Asia - 90%.
How statistically and socially significant these figures are cannot be answered without further research.
A number of points can be made here.
Firstly, observations derived from Altavista suggest that the present volume of Asia-related online information is substantial. It is the equivalent of some 18,700 books and it grows rapidly in size, with the doubling period being, at this stage, about 6 months.
Table 15
Estimated size of Asia-related cyberspace,
as recorded by Altavista database
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 97 Sep 97
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimated no. of web servers * 80,170 170,950
Estimated no. of web pages (URLs) 5.2 mln 8.4 mln
Percent of the whole WWW space
on Altavista 16.8% 27.0%
Total volume of Asian Studies
information ** 20.8 Gb 33.6 Gb
Traditional library equivalent *** 11,500 books 18,700 books
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* 65.1 pages/server in Feb 97; 49.5 in Sep 97
** 1 web page = approx. 4 Kb
*** 1 book (300 pages) = approx. 1,800 Kb
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Secondly, while half of the online information can be safely ignored,
the other half appears to be interesting, if not useful. Clearly, a
new form of librarianship may need to be established fairly soon in
order to keep track of the location, nature and factual content of
that information.Thirdly, several of the statistics presented above were based on data from 464 web sites listed during a 10 months period in the "What's New in WWW Asian Studies Online Newsletter." Clearly, the sample used in this study is, on the whole, too small to generate firm conclusions. Ideally, such a sample should be at least trebled or quadrupled in size for reliable analysis. Fortunately, the Newsletter has been continuously published since April 1994 and it archives materials covering some additional 30 months.
Fourthly, this exploratory study demonstrates that it is technically possible to start uncovering trends and regularities in materials derived from both large scale databases and small scale research collections. However, in order for those apparent regularities to be taken seriously, their statistical significance needs to be properly ascertained. Certainly, subsequent censuses of the numbers and holdings of Asian Studies cyberspace will benefit from the application of suitable and rigorous statistical tests.
Finally, any useful research on the size, nature and directions taken by the Asian cyberspace and Asia-related information systems needs to be done on a regular and systematic basis. The need for one or more Web 'watching posts' which will systematically collect, archive and tabulate all relevant statistical data is already apparent.
There are number of practical as well as intellectual reasons why regular censuses of the Web, including Asian Web, should be initiated at the earliest opportunity. I will allude to just one of them, perhaps the oldest and most elementary one.
In 1838 Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini, an ex-staff officer in Napoleon's and in Alexander I's armies, wrote: "Nothing should be neglected to acquire a knowledge of the geography and the .... statistics of other states, so as to know their material and moral capacity for attack and defense, as well as the strategic advantages of the two parties" (Jomini, 1996:50).
The old colonel, of course, referred to the geopolitical considerations of the 19th century Europe. There is no doubt, however, that his admonitions are equally pertinent to the fast emerging world of networked communications of the 21st century, the Asia-Pacific century.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the session of the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) held at the AAS Annual Meeting, Chicago, USA, in March 1997. My participation in this event was made possible by a CEAL travel grant and supplementary grants-in-aid from the East Asian Library Resources Group of Australia (EALRGA) as well as from the Division of Pacific and Asian History, RSPAS, ANU. My words of thanks are due to Ms Gail King, Editor of the Journal of East Asian Libraries, for prevailing upon me to complete work on this paper despite the numerous and irresistible distractions of my day-to-day responsibilities. I am also grateful to Ms Kendra Wilkes, who in Aug 2010 has spotted in this paper a couple of broken web links. Finally, I am grateful to Monika Ciolek for critical comments on the first draft of this article.
[The great volatility of online information means that some of the URLs listed below may change by the time this article is printed. Naturally, in the online paper I will try, whenever it is feasible, to have them repaired/corrected.]