Asian Studies Online - a Timeline of Major Developments
by
Dr T. Matthew Ciolek,
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
tmciolek@ciolek.com - work in progress -
Document created: 24 Apr 2003. Last revised: 29 Apr 2005.
This section of the Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library tracks the history of Asian Studies' computer and online resources. The page offers an chronological list documenting the earliest Asian Studies' experiments with computerised files and networking, the pioneering online publications, as well as subsequent key transformations and developments. Information about the Asian Studies' online projects is placed within the context of major developments in the world of computers, networks and telecommunications since the early 1970s till the present day.
Please mail tmciolek@ciolek.com if you know details (e.g. the date of establishment, names of the editors, scope of the resource etc.) of additional pioneering, influential, most useful, etc. online Asian Studies facilities. I am interested in all types of resources regardless of whether they are currently active or not. I am especially interested in data dealing with the early (i.e. pre-WWW) developments; and with online materials from countries other than the US or Australia, and/or in languages other than English.
Your factual input is warmly invited, and your addenda and/or corrections will be fully acknowledged - T.M. Ciolek.
1944: Mainframe digital computer introduced;
1960: 6,000 computers in operation in US;
1961: An estimated 9,300 computers exist world wide;
1964: Runoff text editing software introduced;
1967: Floppy disk technology introduced;
1969: Unix operating system introduced;
1969: Networked communication between computers is introduced.
1971: 23 networked computer hosts are operating online; the first microprocessor introduced. Alohanet (a network based on radio transmitters) starts up in Hawaii.
1971: Winfred P. Lehmann of U. of Texas at Austin,
Susan Chapman, and H. S. Ananthanarayana work on digitization and computer storage of the text of "Rig Veda".
[US]
[Reference: Gardner 1998. Status: C]
1972: Cyclades network is demonstrated in France. In Dec 1972 Ray Tomlinson writes a computer program that enables email messages to travel from one computer to another over a network.
1973: 35 computer hosts; hard disk drive developed; Arpanet (launched in Oct 1969) has approx. 2,000 users. Ethernet communication protocol is invented. Email becomes popular.
1973: Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) (now at www.allc.org) is founded in the UK.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/allc/ . Status: C]
return to the index
1977: 111 hosts; UUCP (Unix messaging and file-transfer tool), Apple II computer (first PC with color graphics) is introduced. Tandy TRS-80 and Commodore PET computers appear. The experimental Internet is demonstrated. The first wordprocessor software is introduced.
1977: Department of Classics, Princeton University works on the definintion of rules of Tibetan verb transformation with computer-aided search and Tibetan alphabetization programs.
[US]
[Reference: ACIP n.d. Status: C]
return to the index
1978: 188 hosts; a handful of BBS systems; introduction of CompuServe dialup services. Acorn computers launched in the UK. TCP networking software evolves into TCP/IP protocol.
1978 Dec: "Association for Computers in the Humanities" (www.ach.org), an international professional society for
people working in computer-aided research in literature and language studies, history, philosophy, and other humanities disciplines, and especially research involving the
manipulation and analysis of textual materials - is formed.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.ach.org/bylaws.rev.html . Status: C]
return to the index
1979: Usenet news groups introduced; 100 mln emails are sent each year, versus 135 bln pieces of first-class mail.
1980: Telnet software introduced; one mln personal computers in US. The SGML standard is published.
1980. Susan Hockey publishes. "A Guide to Computer Applications in the Humanities." Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980. The books discusses encoding machine readable texts, word studies, concordances, dictionaries, morphological and syntactical analysis, stylistic analysis, authorship studies, textual criticism, sound patterns and indexing texts.
[US]
[Reference: Hahne 1996-1999. Status: C]
return to the index
1981: 213 hosts; Listserv mailing list is introduced; Osborn, the first portable computer is released. The first IBM-PC (with MS-DOS operating system) is released. Teletel (= the future Minitel) network starts-up in France. Bitnet network is launched. Bitnet provides electronic mail and listserv servers to distribute information, as well as file transfers.
Kermit file transfer protocol (to upload/download documents between computers) is released by Columbia U.
sometime in the late 1981: Usenet newsgroup "fa.human-nets" is established. The group operates as a daily moderated digest with discussions of computer-aided human-to-human communications. Probably it is the most widely read ARPANET publication.
[US]
[Reference: Hauben and Hauben (1997, Chpt 10). Status: C]
sometime in the late 1981: Usenet newsgroup "fa.poli-sci" (political science) is established.
[US]
[Reference: Hauben and Hauben (1997, Chpt 10). Status: C]
return to the index
1982: 235 hosts; US networks linked with networks in Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and UK. In January 1982 the Usenet consists of 67 newsgroups (Hauben and Hauben,1997, Chpt 10)
1983: 562 hosts; 10 mln PCs in the US. Apricot computer is launched in the UK. Arpanet switches to TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP becomes available in BSD Unix operating system.
1984: 1,040 hosts; Macintosh personal computer is introduced; Mouse and windows technology are introduced;
Apple introduces 3.5" floppy; Unix OS supports Internet connectivity; the domain name system (DNS) is established. NSF establishes NSFNet academic network in the US. JANET academic network (based on X.25 protocol) launched in the UK.
1984. John R. Abercrombie publishes "Computer Programs for Literary Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. The books discusses algorithms and presents sample programs in Basic and Pascal for textual analysis. Topics include indexing and concordance generation, textual criticism, searching algorithms and morphological analysis.
[US]
[Reference: Hahne 1996-1999. Status: C]
1984 Feb: First Usenet discussion group dedicated to a specific religion, "net.religion.jewish" is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1984 Apr 12: Robert A. Kraft of U. of Pennsylvania starts editing "Offline" - a newsletter of the Computer Assisted Research Group (CARG), Council on the Study of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). The newsletter (now at rosetta.reltech.org/reltech/Offline/offline.html) is initially distributed in print format.
[US]
[Reference: http://rosetta.reltech.org/reltech/Offline/off0.html. Status: C]
return to the index
1985: 1,961 hosts; File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is introduced. CD-ROM technology is launched.
1985 Jan 30: Bala Krishnamurthy of Purdue University creates an unmoderated Usenet group "net.nlang.india". The group intends to discuss
"(1) travel to and from india (fares etc.);
(2) new students coming to a certain university;
(3) indian restaurants in various parts of this country;
(4) latest news [political and sports] from india;
(5) movie reviews etc.;
(6) anything else that is considered interesting to
an audience that is potentially Indian." Subsequently in Sep 1986 the "net.nlang.india" group gets superseded by "soc.culture.indian".
[US]
[Reference: Krishnamurthy 1985, Lokanathan 1986. Status: C]
return to the index
1986: 5,089 hosts; 241 Usenet groups. The Great Renaming of the Usenet. Cleveland Free-Net starts-up. Hypercard software is used on Macintosh personal computers.
1986 Mar. University of Toronto publishes. "Computers and the Humanities. Today's Research, Tomorrow's Teaching. Software Fair Guide and Conference Guide" Center for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto, March 1986.
[Canada]
[Reference: Hahne 1996-1999. Status: C]
Prior to 1986 Sep 18: Usenet group "soc.culture.indian" is established. in place of the earlier "net.nlang.india" group.
[US]
[Reference: Lokanathan 1986. Status: P]
return to the index
1987: 28,174 hosts; 259 Usenet groups. NNTP software links Usenet and the Internet; Microsoft's Windows 1.01 operating system is introduced. NSFNET and JANET became linked. Perl programming language is introduced.
1987 Apr: Researchers at Xerox commence work which will eventually result in the
Unicode standard - unique, universal, and uniform encoding of multilingual characters.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.unicode.org/history/. Status: C]
1987 May 13:
Willard McCarty of the
Centre for Computing in the Humanities,
University of Toronto launches a Bitnet list "HUMANIST@UTORONTO" (now archived at www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/), an international electronic seminar on the application of computers to the humanities.
[Canada]
[Reference: http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v01/8705.1324. Status: C]
1987 Nov: The first meeting of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). TEI (www.tei-c.org), sponsored by the Association for Computers in the Humanities and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, brought together a diverse group of
scholars from many different disciplines and representing leading professional societies, libraries, archives, and projects in a number of countries in Europe, North America, and Asia.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.tei-c.org/Consortium/TEI-TEI.html. Status: C]
Prior to 1987 Nov 8: Usenet group "soc.culture.japan" is established to receive messages from a Bitnet mailing list "soc.culture.japan", operating from MIT. Subsequently the mailing list was closed down and the discussions were conducted via the Usenet newsgroup. In June 1996 the group received 200 posts per day.
[US]
[Reference: Haring 1987, Isley 1996, Yamashita 2000. Status: P]
Prior to 1987 Nov 26: Usenet group "soc.culture.china" is established. It operates from The Ohio State U. Discussions of the group are subsequently (sometime in early 1989) ported to SOC-CULTURE-CHINA@ ucbvax.berkeley.edu
[US]
[Reference: Hauser 1987, Lui Sieh 1989. Status: P]
return to the index
1988: 26,000 hosts; 381 Usenet groups. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is introduced; over 30,000,000 MS-DOS users.
1988 Aug?: Islam [basic tenets of Islam and interpretations of the Quran] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
return to the index
1989: 80,000 hosts; 40 Internet chat-room (IRC) servers; 44 mln PCs in the US. The Minitel spans 5 million telephone nodes.
1989 Jan: Anthony Reid and other scholars from the Australian National
U. start a paper publication (from a text prepared on a computer) of the "Echosea Newsletter" (Economic History of Southeast Asia. In June 1992 electronic files of the journal are archived (in ASCII format) at the "Coombspapers" ftp archive.
[Australia]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/coombsarchives/southeast-asia-economic-history/. Status: C]
1989 Feb 1: Yechiel Greenbaum launches the first scholarly mailing list and e-journal for the study of a specific religion - JUDAICA @israel.nysernet.org (aka. "He'Asif") is established. Since Aug 1993 the mailing list operates as "H-Judaic" [Jewish Studies Nertwork] at www2.h-net.msu.edu).
[Israel/US]
[Reference: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~judaic/heasif/HEASIF01.txt; ttp://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Judaic&month=9308&week=&msg=NrQCduVWZv8nL9ylKiKOXw Status: C]
1989 Apr: Wilson Ho, then a graduate student from UC Davis
and a small group of Hong Kong (HK) students studying in the US
form an e-mail mailing list called "HKNET". Very soon the list had over 800 subscribers. In mid 1990s the list carried
almost exclusively news from HK and China, and announcement from
Chinese organizations.
[US]
[Reference: Ho 1996. Status: C]
Prior to 1989 May 31: SOC-CULTURE-CHINA@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
[same as MD48@cmuccvma.bitnet] mailing list to distribute discussions of the Usenet soc.culture.china group is established.
[US]
[Reference: HWHS 1989. Status: P]
1989 Jul 28: Fred Ho from University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Canada
initiates the newsgroup creation process for the Usenet group "soc.culture.hongkong."
[US]
[Reference: Ho 1996. Status: C]
sometime in 1989: BUDDHIST@jpntuvm0.bitnet (a forum on Indian and Buddhist Studies, no. of subscribers not known) is established.
[Japan]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1989 Aug 1: Paul Bellan-Boyer launches BUDDHIST@vm1.mcgill.ca (an unmoderated list for the discussion of any and all aspects of Buddhism: academic scholarship, questions of practice, and inquiries from beginners.
[Canada]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html. Status: C]
1989 Sep: "Offline" (a paper-based newsletter established in April 1984)
mentions for the first time existence of such networks as BITNET,
CSNET, Internet, and NSFnet "which permit rapid communication and data sharing"
[US]
[Reference: http://rosetta.reltech.org/reltech/Offline/off25.html. Status: C]
1989 Sep 5: Kim, Min-Sun of Michigan State U. calls for creation of a Usenet group "soc.culture.korea." The group gets established some time later that year.
[US]
[Reference: Kim 1989. Status: C]
1989 Nov: Usenet soc.religion.islam (a moderated discussion group) is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1989 Nov 22: Eric Dahlin of The Humanities Computing Facility of the University of
California at Santa Barbara publishes a periodic
electronic newsletter called "REACH, Research and Educational
Applications of Computers in the Humanities." (originally at ftp://ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu/hcf)
[US]
[Reference: http://ftp.std.com/obi/NewsLetters/REACH/readme. Status: C]
return to the index
1990: 313,000 hosts; 1,300 Usenet groups. Archie FTP search engine is introduced;
world.std.com becomes the first commercial ISP. Hytelnet software is developed. WWW technology is introduced.
1990. David S. Miall, edits "Humanities and the Computer: New Directions." Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1990.
The books looks at impact of computers on research and teaching in the Humanities.
[UK]
[Reference: Hahne 1996-1999. Status: C]
1990: Robert Taylor, Michael Roach and John Malpas establish the first FTP archive with religious (Tibetan Buddhism) scriptures, "Asian Classics Input Project", now at acip.princeton.edu and at www.asianclassics.org.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
(Contents of the site: *"The Philosophical Dictionary" consisting of Twelve Major Native Tibetan
Philosophical Works
*The Complete Cataloged Listings of Sanskrit and Tibetan Works in the United States
Library of Congress
*Specialized Computer Programs for the Study and Analysis of the Asian
Classics.
ACIP details:
The Asian Classics Input Project
Washington Area Office
11911 Marmary Road
Gaithersburg, Maryland
US
contact: Dr. Robert Taylor, Michael Roach (project director)
John Malpas (chief programmer)
participation, submission of errors found, or support of proposals for
related efforts, contact:
The ACIP overseas data entry center:
Sera Mey Dratsang
Mahayana Philosophy University
Bylakuppe 571 -104, Mysore District
Karnataka State, India
attention: Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, Abbot
Ven. Thupten Pelgye, manager, Sera Mey Computer Center)
Prior to 1990 Feb 12: INDIA-L@utarlvm1.bitnet (also at INDIA-L%utarlvm1@pucc.princeton.edu) [The Indian Interest Group] is established.
[US]
[Reference: Kv Rao 1990. Status: P]
1990 Feb 26: Unmoderated Usenet group "soc.culture.vietnamese" is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ho 1990. Status: C]
1990 Mar 20: Usenet group "soc.culture.pakistan" is established.
[US]
[Reference: Zubairi 1990. Status: C]
Prior to 1990 Apr 28: Usenet group "soc.culture.india" is established. This group parallels operations of the "soc.culture.indian" (est. Sep 1986).
[US]
[Reference: Saeed 1990. Status: P]
1990 Apr: Usenet soc.religion.eastern [Hinduism, Buddhism (all forms), Jainism, Sikhism, and Shintoism] unmoderated discussion group is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1990 Jun: the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) (www.tei-c.org), releases the first draft (known as "P1") of the Guidelines.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.tei-c.org/Consortium/TEI-TEI.html. Status: C]
1990 Jun: The first "Asian BBS Sysops' Conference" meets in Taipei, Taiwan. It is an annual event organised to foster communication among the amateur BBS system operators (SysOps) in East Asia.
[Taiwan]
[Reference: http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/logos/asianbbs.html. Status: C]
1990 Aug:
During the 8th World Sanskrit Conference, Vienna, a panel is held to discuss the standardization of Sanskrit for electronic data transfer. Dominik Wujastyk presents a paper, titled ``Standardization of Sanskrit for Electronic Data Transfer and Screen Representation,'' During the conference Sanskritists from Europe and the US discuss the
possibilities of arriving at a standard assignment of ASCII codes
for letters used in the romanization of Sanskrit and other Indic
languages.
[Austria]
[Reference: http://www.aczone.com/itrans/romancsx/node1.html. Status: C]
1990 Nov 23: Dominik Wujastyk' s Indology list (originally at INDOLOGY@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK) (now archived at www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html) is established. The list serves professional scholars of classical Indian civilization.
In March 1994 the list had 251 subscribers.
[UK]
[Reference: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html. and http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html.
Status: C]
1990: "The CIA World Factbook", approx 2Mb of quality data, with the vital statistics of all Asian countries, is stored at the "Project Gutenberg" (e-texts archive) anonymous ftp site (originally at ftp://mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu/ etext)
[US]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/coombsarchives/coombs-computing/internet-subj-guides/internet-voyager-1-2.txt.
Status: C]
return to the index
1991: 376,000 hosts; 1,850 Usenet groups. Gopher, and WAIS technologies are introduced. JANET runs TCP/IP protocol in parallel with X.25. Commercial use of the Internet is permitted.
1991 May 23: Usenet group "sci.archaeology" is established to exchange information on "method and theory, pot hunting, egyptology, typology, dating, and other related topics."
[US]
[Reference: Gibbs 1991 . Status: C]
sometime in 1991: Ulysses Li establishes "The Internet Chinese Text Archive" (now at www.ibiblio.org/chinese-text/ ) the first Chinese text archive on the Internet. It was formerly known to web surfers as "Xiaoyu's Collection" or "Carp Temple." This collection had once been served by the server of Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars (IFCSS) Chinese Community Information Center (CCIC).
[US]
[Reference: http://www.ibiblio.org/chinese-text/ . Status: C]
sometime in 1991: Barry Kapke establishes "DharmaNet" (now at www.dharmanet.org).
[US]
[Reference: http://www.dharmanet.org/about.html. Status: C]
Prior to 1991 Apr: Tom Nimick and David C. Wright of Princeton U. establish CHINA@pucc.bitnet (also @pucc.princeton.edu) [Chinese Studies] mailing list.
[US]
[Reference: EAANnouncements 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Apr: Ken Klein of U. of Southern California establishes EMEDCH-L@ uscvm.bitnet [Early Medieval China] mailing list is established.
[US]
[Reference: EAANnouncements 1991. Status: P]
1991 Aug 14: "The Pakistan News Service, (PNS)" (now at paknews.com) [most likely called PAKISTAN@ASUACAD [Pakistan News Service] founded by Pakistani computer scientists and journalists is the first system to introduce Pakistan News and Information on the Internet. PNS is distributed daily via listserv mailing list, ftp sites, gopher, newsgroups and world-wide web sites to readers in six continents in over fifty countries.
[Pakistan]
[Reference: http://paknews.com/mainlinks/aboutus.php. Status: C]
1991 Oct: Paul H. Kratoska establishes SEANET-L@nusvm.bitnet Southeast Asian studies list. In Apr 1993 the list had 444 users in 20 countries. It stopped its operations sometime before August 1995.
[Singapore]
[Reference: http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/91d/0214.html, Kratoska 1995. Status: C]
1991 Oct 22: Richard P. Hayes of McGill U. establishes BUDDHA-L@ulkyvm.louisville.edu mailing list (in the late 1990s it had over 700 subscribers).
[Canada/US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1991 Nov: A Bitnet list PCARAB-L@SAKFU00 (Discussion Forum on Personal Computers
Arabization) is launched at King Faisal University in Hofuf, Saudi Arabia.
[Saudi Arabia]
[Reference: http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v05/0436.html. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: CHINA-NN@asuacad.bitnet (CND-Global) [China News Digest - Global] mailing list is established at the Arizona State U.
[US]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: CND-EP@iubvm.bitnet (CND-EP) [China News Digest - European/Pacific Branch] mailing list is established at the Indiana U.
[US]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: Butch Kemper establishes CHINANET@tamvm1.bitnet [Networking in China] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: Weihe Guan establishes CCNET-L@UGA.BITNET (and also at CCNET-L@UGA.UGA.EDU) [Chinese Computing Network, a forum on technologies relating to the use of
Chinese on computers] mailing list
[US]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: Lars E. Frederiksson and Patrik Faltstrom of Royal Institute of Technology establish ZHONGWEN@nada.kth.se [Chinese Computing Network, a forum on "Chinese Computing" with special attention to Europe] mailing list. There is also an associated ftp archive for Chinese related software.
[Sweden]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: CSA-DATA@uicvm.bitnet [Chinese Statistical Archive] mailing list is established.
[US]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: TWUNIV-L@twnmoe10.bitnet [Taiwan Scholars and Students] mailing list is established.
[Taiwan]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
Prior to 1991 Nov 14: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu [Japanese Language Discussion List] mailing list is established at the MIT.
[US]
[Reference: Bohn 1991. Status: P]
1991 Nov: SAWNET (South Asian Women's NETwork) mailing list launched (originally at usubrama[at]magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu, now at sawweb[at]umiacs.umd.edu) as a medium of communication by & for South Asian (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) women. In April 2002 the list reached about 700 women in four continents.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/users/sawweb/sawnet/about.html. Status: P]
1991 Dec 3: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes "Coombspapers" archive (ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/) with documents and materials of relevance to Asian Studies and Social Sciences. In April 2002 Coombspapers electronic research collection comprised 1512 ASCII files totalling 61.1 Mb of data.
[Australia]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/CoombswebPages/Coombspapers.html. Status: C]
1991 - late: Robert M. Hartwell, Marianne Colson Hartwell and their students create a stand-alone database detailing the careers and kinship networks of 25,000 mainly Song dynasty officials and the software applications to analyze that data.
[US]
[Reference: Bol 1999:561. Status: P]
return to the index
1992: 727,000 hosts; 20 WWW servers; 4,300 Usenet groups. Lynx (text) web browser is developed. Veronica gopher search engine introduced.
1992 Jan: Elliot Parker of Central Michigan University establishes SEASIA-L on LISTSERV@MSU or LISTSERV@MSU.EDU (also published as a Usenet discussion group bit.listserv.seasia-l) Southeast Asian studies list. [archived at
list.msu.edu/archives/seasia-l.html]. In April 1993 the list had 701 users in 21 countries. In June 2003 the list had 1,769 subscribers.
[US?]
[Reference: http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9201/0189.html. Status: C]
1992: the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library was established (a) to build and maintain an internet-accessible collection of SGML and XML texts and images; (b) to build and maintain user communities adept at the creation and use of these materials.
[US]
[Reference: http://etext.virginia.edu/. Status: C]
1992: Oliver Wild of the Atmospheric Composition Program, Frontier Research System for Global Change, Yokohama publishes "The Silk Road" web site (now at www.ess.uci.edu/~oliver/silk.html)
[US]
[Reference: http://www.ess.uci.edu/~oliver/silk.html. Status: C]
1992: Establishment of "BuddhaNet", the first bulletin board service (BBS) ever run by a monk (now at www.buddhanet.net). In 1998 the site had 50,000 visitors per day.
[Australia]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1992 Feb 19: Bibliography of the Geoffrey Samuel's book "Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in
Tibetan Societies," 1993. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. (ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/subj-bibl-clearinghouse/tibetan-buddhism-1bibl.txt) is published.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1992 Apr 3: Asim Mughal and Nauman Kassim Mysorewala of the Alumni Association, Caltech, Pasadena, California establish MUSLIMS@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU (also at LISTSERV@ASUACAD.BITNET) mailing list.
The list, also known as the "Islamic Information and News Network", is a moderated forum dedicated to educate the network communities on issues relating to the Muslims in an academic & non-political environment. Submissions are compiled in the form of a newsletter and mailed to the subscribers.
In March 1994 the list had 827 direct subscribers, and an estimated readership of 14,000.
[US]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html and [bit.listserv.muslims, Frequently Asked Questions, bit-muslims-faq (version 1.4) Last-modified: 1994/8/14] Status: C]
1992 April 26: Usenet newsgroup "sci.classics" focused on study of Classical Greek and Roman culture, languages, history, and art is established.
[US]
[Reference: Timar 1992. Status: C]
1992 May 6: James A. Cocks of U. of Louisville establishes ISLAM-L@ ULKYVM.BITNET (also at LISTSERV@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU) mailing list. In March 1994 it had 328 subscribers.
[US]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html. Status: C]
1992 May 15: T. Mathew Ciolek publishes in the "Coombspapers" ftp archive electronic files of the "Thai-Yunnan Project"
[Australia]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/coombsarchives/thai-yunnan-project/. Status: C]
(The Thai-Yunnan Project, headed by
Dr Gehan Wijeyewardene, is established in 1987 by the Department of Anthropology,
Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University,
Its purpose was to foster research and disseminate information on the regions of
contact between the Peoples Republic of China and the states of mainland
Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma. The project
encompassed the study of languages, cultures and societies of the constituent
peoples as well as their interrelations within and across national boundaries.
Thai-Yunnan Bibliography, 1621 items and (b) research notes of late Dr Richard
Davis (known as Richard Davis Card Index, 1415 items))
1992 Jun: The Unicode Standard Version 1.0, is printed.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.unicode.org/history/. Status: C]
1992 Jun: Publication of the first guide to religion and spirituality online - "An Electric Mystic's Guide to the Internet" by M. Strangelove, now at wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/isl/dirs/elmystic.guide3.txt
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1992 Jul: Richard Giragosian of the Armenian National Committee of America launches "The "TransCaucasus: A Chronology" (ISSN 1078-3113 ), a monthly e-journal with a chronological summary of the significant social, economic and political events in the lower Caucasus, as reported by local and international media and selected sources in the region (www.anca.org/anca/transcaucasus.asp).
[US]
[Reference: Giragosian 2003. Status: C]
Prior to 1992 Aug 6: Kent Mulliner establishes and moderates CORMOSEA@ oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu mailing list of the Committee On Research Materials On Southeast Asia (est. 1969). See also (www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SoutheastAsia/CormoseaArchive.html)
[US]
[Reference: Mulliner 1992, Mulliner 2003 Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: INDIA@PCCVM [India] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: INDIA-D@TEMPLEVM [The India Interest Group] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: INDIA-L@TEMPLEVM [The India News Network] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: TAMIL-L@DHDURZ1 [Tamil Studies] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: AJBS-L@NCSUVM [Association of Japanese Business Studies] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: J-FOOD-L@JPNKNU10 [Japanese Food & Culture] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: JAPAN@FINHUTC [Info-Japan] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely Japan]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: JPINFO-L@JPNSUT00 [Information About Japan] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely Japan]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: JTEM-L@UGA [Japanese Through Electronic Media] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely Japan]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: NIHONGO@FINHUTC [Nihongo] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely Japan]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: APNET-L@JPNSUT00 [Asia Pacific Network] mailing list is established. [country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: CURRENTS@PCCVM [South Asian News and Culture Magazine] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
Prior to 1992 Oct 7: PACARC-L@WSUVM1 [Pacific Rim Archaeology] mailing list is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Nelson 1992. Status: P]
1992 Dec: Basil Hashem publishes "Islamic Computing Resource Guide", an ASCII document originally stored in the anonymous ftp archive at ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press, Status: C]
sometime in 1992: "Lao Net" (now www.global.lao.net) is launched. Since Jan 1996 the
site hosts the "Laos WWW Virtual Library" (www.global.lao.net/laoVL.html).
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.global.lao.net/. Status: C]
return to the index
1993: 1,313,000 hosts; over 60,000 BBSs in the US; over 200 WWW servers; 8,300 Usenet groups; "Mosaic" graphic WWW browser introduced; over 25,000,000 licensed Windows users world-wide. White House web site is established.
1993 Mar: Tim-Berners Lee and Arthur Secret launch the WWW Virtual Library project (vlib.org). The project aimed at construction and regular maintenance of a subject bibliography of web links is initially conceived as a centralised service.
[Switzerland]
[Reference: Gillies & Cailliau 2000:244. Status: C]
1993 Jan: An unmoderated Usenet group "alt.war.vietnam" has been created before 10 Jan 1993, but later than 23 Dec 1991. By the early July 2003 the group has exchanged over 228,000 messages.
[USA]
[Reference: http://these-survive.postilion.org/newsgroups/history/alternative-hierarchies/1993-1a.txt, Spafford 1991. Status: P]
1993: "D.O.O.R.S.: directory of on-line scholars of
religion" by Harry Leyenhorst [format not
known] is established.
[Canada]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993: RELIGION@harvarda.harvard.edu (number of
subscribers not known) is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993: "STS NEWS - Tantric Studies Newsletter"
[FTP site] is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993: "Tiger Team Buddhist Information Network"
[BBS site] is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993: American Academy of Religions'
"Electronic Publications Committee" is formed. The Committee is headed by Lewis Lancaster of U.C. Berkeley.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek 1993-1994. Status: C]
1993 Jan 14-15: The First Meeting of member institutions of "The
Pacific Neighborhood Project" held in Honolulu, Hawaii.
[US]
[Reference: H-Net database. Status: C]
1993 Mar: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes "Asian Religions Archives" [an FTP site] at the
"Coombspapers" archive
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Mar 3: Sonam Dargyay of the Indiana U. launches
"TIBET-L" on LISTSERV@IUBVM.BITNET, LISTSERV@UCS.INDIANA.BITNET, and LISTSERV@IUBVM.UCS.INDIANA.EDU
[US]
[Reference: ftp://ftp.sdsmt.edu/pub/resources/INTERNATIONAL/tibet-l. Status: C]
1993 Mar 6: Lynn Nelson (lhnelson@ku.edu) establishes WWWVL History as HNSource, a lynx-based (i.e.WWW text based) information server.
[US]
[Reference: www.ukans.edu/history/VL/. Status: C]
1993 April 25: David Bedell of U. of Alabama sends to the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.vietnamese an annotated register of 13 email lists dealing with Asian and
the Pacific Studies. Their details are as follows: ASPIRE-L@ iubvm ("Linkages for Students from Asean Nations")
663 users in 10 countries.
SEANET-L@ nusvm ("Southeast Asian Studies List") Academic discussion in
English. 444 users in 20 countries.
SEASIA-L@ msu ("Southeast Asia Discussion List") Users are mainly SE
Asians abroad. In English. 701 users in 21 countries.
VIETNET@ uscvm ("The Bitnet feed for the soc.cuture.vietnamese newsgroup
on Usenet") In Vietnamese & English. 59 users in 5 countries.
BERITA@ iastate.edu ("Berita dari Tanahair") News about Malaysia & SE
Asia, in Eng. & Malay.
MISG-L@ psuvm ("Malaysian Islamic Study Group") In Malay & some English.
288 users in 7 countries.
HELWA-L@ psuvm ("Malaysian Women in U.S. and Canada") Division of MISG-L.
For women only, in Malay & English. 97 users in 6 countries.
MSM-NET@ csv.warwick.ac.uk ("Majlis Syura Muslimun Network") Discussion
in Malay, English, & Arabic for Malaysian Muslims in the UK &
Ireland.
PERMIAS@ suvm ("Indonesian Student Association") In Indonesian.
93 users all in US.
PERMIKA@ mcgill1 ("Indonesian Group - Montreal") This is a local list,
limited to subscribers at McGill University; 38 users all in Canada.
IDS@ suvm ("Indonesian Development Studies - Network") News & discussion
in Indonesian & English. 474 users in 12 countries.
PACIFIC@ brufpb ("Forum for and about Pacific Ocean and Islands") For
Pacific Island & Pacific Rim nations. 184 users in 18 countries.
CPS-L@ hearn ("CPS-L: Centre for Pacific Studies Discussion and Mailing
List") In English; 18 users in 5 countries.
[US]
[Reference: From: David Bedell, Subject: SE Asian lists
Newsgroup: soc.culture.vietnamese, Date: 1993-04-25. Status: C]
1993 April 26: Lewis Lancaster of U.C. Berkeley and Urs App announce the formation of the "EBTI - Electronic Buddhist Text Initiative" (originally at www.iijnet.or.jp:80/iriz/irizhtml/ebti/ebtie.htm now at www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/ebti.htm) (an association of about 25 groups involved in the
input of Buddhist materials).
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek 1993-1994. Status: C]
1993 Apr 28: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes "Coombsquest" gopher (gopher://coombs.anu.edu.au). The site annotates and keeps track of online resources dealing with Aboriginal Studies, Asian Studies, Buddhist Studies, Demography, History, Linguistics, Pacific Studies, Prehistory & Archaeology.
[Australia]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/coombsarchives/coombs-computing/coombsquest-inf/coombsquest-about-long.txt. Status: C]
1993 Spring: "Discus - Religious Studies Journal"
is established on computer disks.
[UK]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1993 May: Elliot Palais compiles a list "ELECTRONIC SOURCES FOR HISTORY" with information on a handful of resources dealing on Asia.
He mentions the following discussion lists: CHINA-ND@KENTVM. China News Digest;
CHINA-NN@ASUACAD. China News Network;
CHINA@PUCC. Chinese Studies;
EMEDCH-L@USCVM. Early Medieval China. Devoted to promoting
discussion of the period of Chinese history between the Han and the
Tang dynasties (3rd through 6th centuries A.D.);
SEASIA-L@MSU. Southeast Asian Studies;
VWAR-L@UBVM. Vietnam War History.)
[US?]
[Reference: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/internet/history.guide. Status: C]
1993 May: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes "Buddhist Studies Facility" [a gopher site] at coombs.anu.edu.au.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 June: John McRae of the Cornell University launches a gopher
site for CJK computing
[US]
[Reference: Bohn 1993. Status: C]
1993 May 25: "ANU-Thai-Yunnan" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Jun 25: "ANU-Asian-Religions" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Jun 28: "ANU-Asian-Computing-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 - mid: "The Australian Centre of the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network (ACASIAN)" (www.asian.gu.edu.au ) is established at the Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.asian.gu.edu.au/acasian.html. Status: C]
The Australian Centre of the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network (ACASIAN) was established as an Allied Centre in the Faculty of Asian and International Studies, Griffith University, in mid-1993
1993 Jul 22: "Mas'ood Cajee of U. Oklahoma, Norman publishes on the Usenet newsgroup misc.activism.progressive his document "CyberMuslim 1.0:
A Guide to Islamic Resources on the Internet." The file is also published at the ftp archive at
cs.bu.edu address
[US]
[Reference: Mas'ood Cajee 1993. Status: C]
1993 Jul: Barry Kapke launches "DEFA - Dharma Electronic Files
Archive" [FTP site] (originally at
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/dharma, now at www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/religious/Buddhism/DEFA/).
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek 1993-194. Status: C]
1993 Jul: "Tantric-News" WAIS database is established on SunSITE.unc.edu address.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press; www.ibiblio.org/jem/wais-on-sunsite.html Status: C]
1993 Jul 7: Hartmut Bohn of U. of Trier publishes an online document
"FTP Sites With China/Chinese Related Software" with a list of 15 resources.
[Germany]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/china-archives/networked-inf-srcs/china-related-ftp-sites.txt Status: C]
1993 Jul 22: "ANU-ZenCalendar" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Jul 30: Taoism-L@coombs.anu.edu.au is established. It is replaced 17 Apr 94 by Taoism-Studies-L@coombs.anu.edu.au.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Aug: "Chogye [Korean] Zen Texts Archive" [gopher
site] is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1993 Aug: Anthony and Rebecca Bichel launch "Interactive Central Asia Resource Project (ICARP)" as part of a graduate research project at the University of Hawai'i.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.icarp.org/about.html. Status: C]
1993 Aug 5: "ANU-Taoism-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (serving contents of the eponymous mailing list)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Aug 20: Zenbuddhism-L@coombs.anu.edu.au, subsequently ZenBuddhism@vivanewmexico.com - a semi-scholarly mailing list on history and current developments of Zen Buddhism. [in Jul 1994 the list had 176 subscribers. Later it grew to over 400 subscribers, the list was closed down on 15 Oct 2000.]
[Australia/US]
[Reference: Ciolek 2002; http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html.
Status: C]
1993 Sep: Louis Rosenfeld launches an FTP/Gopher/WWW-based "Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides" (originally at www.lib.umich.edu/chhome.html). The Clearinghouse houses about 20 guides and is accessed about 7000 times a month.
[US]
[Reference: Rosenfeld 1995:49. Status: C]
1993 Sep 7: "ANU-Tropical-Archaeobotany" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (Tropical Archaeo- and Paleobotany Research
compiled from publications of the Dept. of Prehistory, RSPacS, Australian
National University, 575 items)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Sep 9: "ANU-Philippine-Studies" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (abstracts of 95 papers delivered at the 4th International Philippine
Studies Conference held 1-3 July 1992, at the Australian
National University)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Sep: Lynn Nelson's (lhnelson@ku.edu) "WWWVL History" becomes the first module of the distributed WWW Virtual Library project.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.ukans.edu/history/VL/about/about.html. Status: C]
1993 Sep 22: "ANU-Shamanism" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (It uses the 1992 "Bibliography on Shamanism" by Geoffrey Samuel)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Nov: "Buddhist Electronic Resources
Directory" by T. Matthew Ciolek [FTP site]
is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
Prior to 1993 Nov 5: John C. Huntington of the Ohio State U. establishes a standalone
"Buddhist Iconography Database" with approx 3 GB of slides of Buddhist art and iconography from all
over Asia.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek 1993-1994. Status: P]
1993 Nov 11: Hartmut Bohn of U. of Trier publishes an online document
"China/Chinese Related Usenet-News Newsgroups" with a list of 9 resources.
The list includes: alt.chinese.text;
alt.chinese.text.big5;
aus.culture.china;
rec.games.chinese-chess;
soc.culture.china;
soc.culture.hongkong;
soc.culture.taiwan;
soc.culture.singapore; and
talk.politics.china
[Germany]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/china-archives/networked-inf-srcs/china-related-newsgroups.txt Status: C]
1993 Nov 16: "ANU-Dhammapada" [The Dhammapada] WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Nov 19: "ANU-Cheng-tao-ko" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au ([Zhengdaoge], Shodoka (J.), Song of Enlightenment.
A collection of 64 verses from the T'ang Dynasty China, attributed to
the Zen Master Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh [Yongjia Xuanjue], aka Yoka Genkaku
(J.) (665 -713))
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Dec 1: Hartmut Bohn of U. of Trier publishes an online document
"China/Chinese Related Mailing Lists" with a list of 37 resources.
[Germany]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/china-archives/networked-inf-srcs/china-related-e-forums.txt Status: C]
1993 Dec 7: Yuan Jiang launches "Chinese Community Information Center" web site (originally at ifcss.org:8001/index.html
[US??]
[Reference: Bohn 1993. Status: C]
1993 Dec 8: "ANU-Tibetan-ACIP" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1993 Dec 9: Hartmut Bohn of U. of Trier publishes an online document
"China/Chinese Related Gopher Servers and WAIS and WWW" with a list of 18 resources.
[Germany]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/china-archives/networked-inf-srcs/china-related-gophers-wais.txt Status: C]
1993 Dec 14: Petr Zemanek and Furat Rahman Petr Vavrousek of Charles U., Prague, establish CAAL@ff.cuni.cz (Computers and ancient languages (CAAL) focused on the users of computer databases and hypertext for the study of ancient Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Sem itic) and other languages.
[Czech Republic]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/classic.html Status: C]
return to the index
1994: 2.2 mln hosts; 850 WWW servers; 750 WAIS servers; 10,700 Usenet groups. "Labyrinth" graphic 3-D virtual reality WWW browser is introduced; WebCrawler
WWW crawler search engine is introduced.
1994: "The Buddhist Internet Database" (now "Digital Buddhist Library and Museum" [DBLM] at http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/DBLM/index.htm) is established.
[Taiwan]
[Reference: http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/DBLM/about/aboutdblm.htm. Status: C]
1994: Jan: "Chogye Zen Buddhism" web site (originally at http://oac3.hsc.uth.tmc.edu/staff/snewton/zen/index.html) is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek 1993-1994. Status: C]
1994: BUDDHIST-PHILOSOPHY@world.std.com
[eventually over 123 subscribers] is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994: Feb 16: David Magier of Columbia U. establishes "International Directory of South
Asia Scholars (IDSAS)", an interactive online searchable database (now at www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl/directory.html). Subsequently this database becomes accessible via the South Asia Gopher (SAG). In Apr 97, the site contained 572 records.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/data/indiv/area/idsas/NASR,Vali.htm. Status: C]
1994 Mar: David Magier establishes "South Asian Studies Gopher (SAG)" (gopher://gopher.cc.columbia.edu:71/11/clioplus/scholarly/SouthAsia). SAG is one of the parts of the Columbia's "CLIO Plus" catalogue of "Scholarly Electronic Resources by Subject"
[US]
[Reference: a Fri, 4 Mar 94 message of Michelle Sturges to APEX-L@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu announcing the creation of the SAG. Status: P]
1994 Mar: "Finding God in Cyberspace: A Guide
to Religious Studies Resources on the Internet"
by John Gresham (a gopher site) is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Mar 16: Carlyle A.Thayer of
Australian Defence Force Academy deposits in the "Coombspapers" ftp archive the first of his 27 research papers (in ASCII format) on politics and society of Vietnam.
[Australia]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/vietnam-archives/politics/. Status: C]
1994 Mar 19: Avrum Goodblat establishes JUDAICA@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL (also at LISTSERV@TAUNIVM.BITNET) mailing list. In March 1994 the list had 218 subscribers.
[Israel]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html. Status: C]
1994 May 10: Christopher John Fynn puts in the public domain "TibKey" and
the "Tibetan Modern A" font as a part of his "Tibetan Tools for Windows" suite.
[UK]
[Reference: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/tibetan-archives/tibet-software/tibkey-windows/README.TXT. Status: C]
1994 Jul: "ANU-Buddha-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au. The database provided access to the BUDDHA-L mailing list exchanges from the period July
1993 - June 1994.
[Australia]
[Reference: muhu.cs.helsinki.fi/mailing_lists/pointers/msg00097.html. Status: C]
1994: "Access To Insight" [Theravada Buddhism] [BBS site] is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994: "BodhiNet - Democractic Buddhist Network"
[BBS site] is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1994: "Buddhist Image Bank" [FTP site,
sunsite.unc.edu] is established.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1994 Summer: Charles Prebish and Damien Keown launch the "Journal of Buddhist Ethics" (now at http://jbe.gold.ac.uk)
[UK/US]
[Reference: http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/backissues.html. Status: C]
1994: Establishment of the first Islamic web site, "The Mosque of the Internet", www.mosque.com
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1994 Feb: "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" is established. The online guide eventually evolves into the Yahood directory and publishes Yahoo > Regional > Regions > Asia (dir.yahoo.com/Regional/regions/asia/)
[US]
[Reference: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/misc/history.html. Status: C]
1994 Mar: Web publication of electronic text files of the Bible and Qur'an, at www.hti.umich.edu
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek, in press. Status: C]
1994?: David Magier (magier@columbia.edu) establishes the "SARAI" (South Asia Resource Access on the Internet) web site
[US]
[Reference: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl/. Status: P]
1994 Mar?: "X Guide" (Stanford Experimental Guide to Japan Information Resources).
[US]
[Reference: http://jguide.stanford.edu/jguide_about.htm. Status: P]
1994 Mar 24: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes "Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library" (coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-AsianStudies.html)
[Australia]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-AsianStudies.html. Status: C]
1994 Mar 31: Steven A. Leibo of the Sage Colleges & Suny-Albany and Frank F. Conlon of the University of Washington co-found the "H-ASIA" - the Asian history and culture list (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~asia/) as part of the H-NET family of lists.
(first experiments from 15 March onwards)
[US]
[Reference: H-Net database. Status: C]
1994 Apr: "The Journal of World Anthropology (JWA)" (ISSN 1075-2579)
(now at http://wings.buffalo.edu/academic/department/anthropology/JWA/) is established in FTP/Gopher formats and as a
mailing list (jwa@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu).
[US]
[Reference: Stott 1995:56. Status: C]
1994 Apr 4: "Japan WWW VL" is established. on coombs.anu.edu.au (the site subsequently is transferred to Stanford U).
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Apr 21: "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor Journal" (ISSN 1329 -9778)
(now at http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.html) is established under an initial title "What's New in WWW Asian Studies Newsletter". The journal has also an email format and is distributed via a mailing list initially called "Asia-WWW-Gopher-News-L@coombs.anu.edu.au"
(now asia-www-monitor@coombs.anu.edu.au).
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Apr 21: "ANU-Taoism-Studies-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (serving contents of the eponymous mailing list)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 May 02: Central-Asia-Studies-L@coombs.anu.edu.au mailing list is established. [over 300 subscribers; it was closed down on 10 Apr 2000]
[Australia]
[Reference: Ciolek 2002. Status: C]
1994 May 3: "ANU-Central-Asia-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (serving contents of the eponymous mailing list)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994: May: "Judaism and Jewish resources" by
Andrew Tannenbaum (a web site) is established.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 May: the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) (www.tei-c.org), releases the first official version of the Guidelines ("P3").
[US]
[Reference: http://www.tei-c.org/Consortium/TEI-TEI.html. Status: C]
1994: Jun: Usenet alt.religion.buddhism discussion group
is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994: Jun: Usenet alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan discussion group
is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Jun 27: "ANU-Asian-Settlements" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au [Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Jun 5: One of the first corporate web-sites, "The Batish Institute of Indian Music and Fine Arts"
(originally on http://hypatia.ucsc.edu:70/1/RELATED/Batish) is established.
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
1994 Jun 6: "Asian Studies WWW Monitor" (coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.html) becomes available via email (now asia-www-monitor@coombs.anu.edu.au)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Jun 17: "Ministry of Education" (Singapore) web server is established.
(originally on http://www.moe.ac.sg) [Singapore] [F]
[Singapore]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
1994 Jun 24: "ANU-Vietnam-IT-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (serving contents of the empnymous mailing list on information technology in Vietnam)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Jul: The "Clearinghouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides" (originally at www.lib.umich.edu/chhome.html) [est. Sep 1993] houses now about 140 guides and is accessed about 70,000 times a month (i.e. 500 times per month per guide)
[US]
[Reference: Rosenfeld 1995:49. Status: C]
1994 Jul 7: Experimental WWW Server of the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), at the International University of Japan in Tokyo, is launched.
(originally at http://www.glocom.ac.jp/index.html)
[Japan]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
1994 Jul 11: "ANU-Vietnam-SciTech-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (serving contents of the eponymous mailing list)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Jul 31: "Asia-Pacific EXchange (Electronic) Journal (APEX-J)" (ISSN 1077-114X ) is launched at U. Hawaii and Kapiolani Community College as an FTP publication. The Journal is an outgrowth of the electronic
forum, APEX-L. The purpose of APEX-L list, established by Jim Shimabukuro, is to promote international and multicultural education on college campuses,
with a special focus on Asian and Pacific curricula,
instructional strategies, educational resources, and
campus/community activities.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/subject/hd/fak8/sin/cjklib-l/log1/mail-18.html. Status: C]
The Academia Sinica announces its WWW server (www.sinica.edu.tw/) and a gopher
server (originally at gopher://gopher.sinica.edu.tw/).
[Taiwan]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
1994 Jul 18: Burton Lee's "X Guide" takes over "Japan WWW VL" (now http://jguide.stanford.edu/) from coombs.anu.edu.au [US]
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Aug 3: "Center For World Indigenous Studies" website (www.cwis.org/fwdp/fwdp.html) is established.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.cwis.org/fwdp/fwdp.html. Status: C]
1994 Aug 9: Univ. of Kansas publishes WWW sites with details of governments of
Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan; Tatarstan; Turkmenistan; and Uzbekistan;
(originally at http://ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu/ex-ussr/)
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
1994 Aug 12: "ANU-Vietnam-SocSci" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (1143 records) This dbase of social scientists in Vietnam is intended to be updated on annual basis. Data by Dr. David Marr RSPAS, ANU.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Sep 2: The Armenian Research Center of the University of Michigan-Dearborn publishes a web site with material on the Armenians, their
history, the Armenian Genocide, and the current struggle of Nagorno- Karabagh.
(originally at http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian)
[US]
[Reference: AS WWW Monitor Aug Sep. Status: C]
1994 Sep 5: Jeffrey Friedl (jfriedl@omron.co.jp) announces the new version of his Japanese/English English/Japanese dictionary at the Carnegie
Mellon University School of Computer Science. (originally at http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/cgi-bin/j-e)
[US]
[Reference: AS WWW Monitor Sep 1994. Status: C]
1994 Sep 5: Carlos McEvilly announces the "The Chinese-Language-Related Information Page". The site was originally located at ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/mcevilly/www/chinfo.html.
[US]
[Reference: AS WWW Monitor Sep 1994. Status: C]
1994 Sep 5: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes "Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library" (originally at coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-Buddhism.html)
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Buddhism.html. Status: C]
1994 Sep 5: "Zen Buddhism WWW Virtual Library" (originally at coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-Zen.html) is established.
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Zen.html. Status: C]
1994 Sep 20: "Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT) became the third institute that has full internet connectivity in China. It is connected to the Internet via Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan.
[China]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/1994/Monitor1994-017.html. Status: C]
1994 Oct: Usenet talk.religion.buddhism discussion group is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Oct: Susan Prentice and Rob Hurle of the Australian National University (ANU) visit
National Library of China (NLC) in Beijing. The purpose of
the visit was to (a) set up some form of computer connection between the
NLC and the ANU and (b) to conclude work on an agreement for collaborative
work, which would involve the ANU in preparation and publication of NLC
materials across the Internet.
[Australia/China]
[Reference: Hurle 1994. Status: C]
1994 Oct: "Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien" (Titus) project (titus.uni-frankfurt.de)
is launched. The project aims to digitize, encrypt and tag text materials from languages that are relevant for Indo-European studies.
[Germany]
[Reference: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/titusff.htm. Status: C]
1994 Oct 8: Chuck Gardner runs the historic (in the Internet terms) Soc.Culture.Filipino web site (originally at www.mozcom.com/SCF, now at www.cyberbayan.org/SCF/).
[Philippines]
[Reference: http://www.cyberbayan.org/SCF/. Status: C]
1994 Oct 19: T. Matthew Ciolek establishes South-Asia-Studies-L@coombs.anu.edu.au - a scholarly mailing list is established. [over 150 subscribers, it was closed down on 12 Dec 1999.]
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.anu.edu.au/Matilda/9410/0035.html. Status: C]
1994 Oct 19: "ANU-South-Asia-Studies-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au. The database serves contents of the eponymous mailing list.
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.anu.edu.au/Matilda/9410/0035.html. Status: C]
1994 Oct 24: "ANU-Tibetan-Human-Rights" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994: Nov 2: InfoLink announces a new WWW server (www.infolink.net). This server is dedicated as an information hub for businesses and Internet users in Hong Kong to exchange information, provide their home pages and to provide a central place that leads to varies kinds of local and international information resources.
[HK]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/1994/Monitor1994-017.html. Status: C]
1994 Nov 14: Connie Neal (cin@io.com) publishes Buddhist Resource File (BRF),
a list of resources related to Buddhist literature and activities (originally at www.io.com/~cin/bibliography.html)
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Nov 29: "ANU-ZenPoetry" WAIS database [of the 20th c. religious poetry] published on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994: Dec: Usenet alt.religion.vaisnava discussion group
[Hinduism] is established.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1994 Dec: Wataru Ebihara of St. Olaf College publishes at the St. Olaf College Gopher.the first version of his online document: "Internet Guide For Asian American Cybernauts (IGAAC)." The Guide lists relevant electronic mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups, Gopher and WWW servers. Also provided are Asian American organizations
having Internet addresses, and selected sites for finding
electronic documents.
[US]
[Reference: www.janet.org/~ebihara/igaac2.html. Status: C]
1994 Dec 31: During the past 8 months since its launch "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 20 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
return to the index
1995: 5.8 mln hosts; 23,500 WWW servers; 16.5 million Usenet users; over 950 FTP archive sites. RealAudio narrowcasting; Java programming language; Altavista WWW crawler search engine introduced.
Prior to 1995 Feb: Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection at The University of Texas at Austin
is established (originally at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/LibrariesList/PCL/Map_collection/asia.html,
now at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html).
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek and Cathro 1995. Status: P]
1995: Robert Felsing develops a website for the "Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL)" , Association for Asian Studies, Inc. (originally at
darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/welcome.html)
[US]
[Reference: http://web.archive.org/web/19970218101226/darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/cealwhat.html. Status: C]
1995: Jonathan Teoh Eng establishes "The Hakka Global Network (HGN)" (now at www.asiawind.com/hakka/news.htm) as a "manually run Internet mailing list" to provide a forum for "a lively, transnational discourse on [China's] Hakka culture and Hakka social experiences." In March of 1996, the list had 164 subscribers from over 16 countries.
[country??]
[Reference: Lozada 1996. Status: C]
1995: "Asian Studies Network Information Center" (asnic.utexas.edu/asnic.html)
is established.
[US]
[Reference: http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic.html. Status: C]
sometime in 1995: Matthias Kaun of Christian-Albrechts-U. of Kiel establishes a web site for the "European Association of Sinological Librarians (EASL)" (now at www.easl.org).
[Germany]
[Reference: http://web.archive.org/web/19990117021101/http://www.uni-kiel.de/easl/easl.html. Status: C]
1995 Jan: Javed Ahmad Ghamidi launches the first Islamic e-periodical, "Renaissance: A Monthly Islamic Journal" (www.renaissance.com.pk). The "Renaissance" was the first time released in print in January 1991.
[Pakistan]
[Reference: http://www.renaissance.com.pk/mission.html. Status: C]
1995 Jan 12: Jim Zwick publishes a web site "Mark Twain on the Philippines" (www.boondocksnet.com/ai/twain/index.html)
[US]
[Reference: http://www.boondocksnet.com/about.html. Status: C]
1995 Jan 16: Raphael Carter establishes JAIN-L@indirect.com mailing list.
[US]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html. Status: C]
1995 Feb 8: "ANU-EAsia-Libr-Group-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (contents of the mailing list edited by Susan Prentice, ANU Library and Susan MacDougall, Faculty
of Communication, University of Canberra.)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1995 Feb 10: "Asian/Pacific Studies
Subject-Oriented Bibliographies" (coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/VLBibl.html) site is launched.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1995 Feb 20: David Bedell of U. of Bridgeport publishes an online document: "Review Of Bitnet/Internet Lists For Northeast Asia."
[US]
[Reference: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/DBedell/Bedell.NEAmlist.html. Status: C]
1995 May 15: Brian Ross, Richard Rohde
and John Tegtmeier launch a moderated Usenet newsgroup "soc.history.war.vietnam"(aka SHWV).
[US]
[Reference: Tegtmeier 1996. Status: C]
1995 Jun 12: Wataru Ebihara publishes the web version of his "Internet Guide For Asian American Cybernauts (IGAAC)" (www.janet.org/~ebihara/igaac2.html).
[US]
[Reference: www.janet.org/~ebihara/igaac2.html. Status: C]
1995 Apr: Michael Witzel of Harvard U. and Enrica Garzilli of Harvard U. (now of the University of Perugia) publishes online the first issue of the "Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS) ISSN 1084-7561 (now at http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/)
[Italy]
[Reference: www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/issues.html. Status: C]
1995 Apr 16: Urs App constructs "The International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism (IRIZ)" at Hanazono University web site (www.iijnet.or.jp/iriz/irizhtml/irizhome.htm), now at (www.iijnet.or.jp/iriz/). The site is officially launched in June 1995.
[Japan]
[Reference: http://www.iijnet.or.jp/iriz/irizhtml/iriz/irizinfo.htm and http://www.iijnet.or.jp/iriz/frame/gaiyo_f0.en.html. Status: C]
1995 May 23: Dr Moo-Young Han of Duke U. establishes "The Korean-American Science and Technology News" (ISSN 1089-7518) an international weekly online newsletter (at www.phy.duke.edu/~myhan/s-kastn.html). In 2003 KASTN was read by approximately 17,000 professionals worldwide, especially in North America, East
Asia and Western Europe.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1995 Jun: Richard Weber-Laux establishes "Karma Kagyu Buddhist Network (KKBN)" (originally at pobox.com/~kkbn)
[US/Germany]
[Reference: Ciolek 1993-1994. Status: C]
1995 Jun 09: Department of State Foreign Affairs Network (DOSFAN) (by The State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)) is established (originally at gopher://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/, now at dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/index.html) to deal with information about East Asia and the Pacific,
Near East, South Asia. DOSFAN is a collaborative effort to present a broad range of up-to-date foreign policy information on the Internet.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1995 Jul 27: Stephen Arod Shirreffs publishes online the SEASCALINFO, now called "Southeast Asia Web: Internet Resources for Scholars, Researchers and Friends of
Southeast Asian Studies" (www.gunung.com/seasiaweb)
[Italy]
[Reference: http://www.gunung.com/seasiaweb/. Status: C]
1995 Aug: JSTOR (www.jstor.org ) is established as an independent not-for-profit organization. In early June 2003 JSTOR published online 2,062,106 articles from 322 journals.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.jstor.org/about/background.html and http://www.jstor.org/about/facts.html Status: C]
1995 Aug: Enrica Garzilli publishes online the first issue of the "International Journal of Tantric Studies (IJTS) ISSN 1084-7553 (now at http://www.asiatica.org/ijts/)
[Italy]
[Reference: http://www.asiatica.org/ijts/index.php. Status: C]
1995 Aug 15: Internet access is officially launched by the Prime
Minister for the general public in India. Indian scholars are now able to explore and contribute to the world of networked information.
[India]
[Reference: Mittal 2003. Status: C]
1995 Aug 24: Susan Prentice and George Miller of the Australian National University Library establish online "Chinese Serials Database" (in Oct 96 there were TOCs of 103 serials from the PRC) and "Indonesian Serials Database" (in Oct 96 there were TOCs of 38 serials from the Indonesia).
Both systems initially operate from T. Matthew Ciolek's server (coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/AJC/), and about a year later they are moved to the Library's machine.
[Australia]
[Reference: Cook and McDougall 1996:29,43, coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/1995/Monitor1995-200.html. Status: C]
1995 Sep 17: Ludovico Magnocavallo publishes a web interface to a previously existing
ftp site (EJVS-IJTS FTP Archives - Fonts and Utilities)
[Italy]
[Reference: ftp://ftp.shore.net/members/india/fonts/. Status: C]
1995 Oct 15: John C. Huntington and Susan L. Huntington launch the "The Huntington Photographic Archive of Buddhist and Related Art" (kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/) on the web.
[US]
[Reference: http://kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/. Status: C]
1995 Nov: Lay Poh of Singapore publishes online a document entitled "Electronic Resources On Asia - A General Guide."
[US?]
[Reference: http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:RGhP3aMkXH0J:www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/about-the-net/inet-subject-dirs/asia:poh. Status: C]
1995 Nov 20: Hanno Lecher of Vienna U. establishes "Internet Guide for China Studies (IGCS)" (originally at www.uniview.ac.at/Sinologie/netguide.htm, now at sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/igcs/). Since Oct 28, 1996 the Guide acts as the China WWW Virtual Library.
In June 2003 the guide provided annotated links to 1500 online resources.
[Austria]
[Reference: http://sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/igcs/. Status: C]
1995 Nov 29: Enrica Garzilli publishes online the first issue of the "Journal of South Asia Women Studies (JSAWS) ISSN 1084-7478 (now at http://www.asiatica.org/jsaws/)
[Italy]
[Reference: http://www.asiatica.org/jsaws/index.php. Status: C]
1995 Dec 8: T. M. Ciolek establishes "Tibetan-Studies-L@coombs.anu.edu.au" - a scholarly mailing list on Tibetan history and culture [in 2003 over 550 subscribers]
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1995 Dec 8: "ANU-Tibetan-Studies-L" WAIS database is published on coombs.anu.edu.au (serving contents of the eponymous mailing list)
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1995 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 475 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 20 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
sometime in 1995: Suzanne McMahon of the UC Berkeley Library establishes "South Asian Diaspora" web site (www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/diaspora.html)
The site includes: Photographs/Documents/Maps,
Bibliographic Guides, links to Electronic Resources, and (in 1996) the Diaspora
Project Database
(NEW), where researchers concentrating on the South Diaspora are
encouraged to enter details of their projects.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/diaspora.html. Status: C]
return to the index
1996 Jan 05: Philip C Brown of the Ohio State U. launches
launches "H-Japan", History of Japan (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~japan/), an H-Net scholarly mailing list.
[US]
[Reference: http://h-net.msu.edu/. Status: C]
1996 Feb 05: A web site of "Al-Qur'an was-Sunnah Society" [www.qss.org] is launched. The site has two objectives which may be summarized in two words: Tasfiyah (cleansing/purifying) and Tarbiyah (educating/cultivating) the essential tenets of Islam.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.qss.org/aboutus.html. Status: C]
1996 Feb 18: Marilyn Shea of U. of Maine at Farmington establishes "China Bibliography: Collections of Resources"
(hua.umf.maine.edu/China/bibtxt2.html), a collection of bibliographies on topics ranging from Buddhism in China to those on Gangs, Triads and Criminals; Rural China; and Han Dynasty.
[US]
[Reference: Shea 2003. Status: C]
1998 Apr: "Al-Qur'an was-Sunnah Society" publishes online a critique of Sufism entitled "Ilat-Tasawwuf Ya Ibbadallah" [www.qss.org/articles/sufism/sufi3.html], by ash-Shaikh Abu Bakr al-Djaza'iri of the Islamic U. in al-Madinah al-Munawwarah.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.qss.org/articles/sufism/sufi4.html. Status: C]
1996 Mar 5: Danielle Dee establishes SHAMAN-L@ @LISTSERV.AOL.COM mailing list, a free-form conference for discussion, debate and discourse on shamanism and shamanistic practices.
[Israel]
[Reference: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/theology/religion.html. Status: C]
earlier than 1996 May 10, (but later than 29 Nov 1995): The
"Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS)" web site is launched. NIAS is an international research institute (nias.ku.dk) funded by the governments of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
[Denmark]
[Reference: http://web.archive.org/web/19970126215854/nias.ku.dk/NIASINFO/Information/domestic/Centralasia.html;
http://web.archive.org/web/19970126220008/nias.ku.dk/NIASINFO/Information/domestic/southasia.html. Status: P]
earlier than1996 Oct (but later than 29 Nov 1995):
Apurba Kundu of Bradford U., UK launches the web site of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) (www.basas.ac.uk). Then site was originally published at basas.homepage.com
[UK]
[Reference: http://www.basas.ac.uk/basasb21.html. Status: P]
1996 May: Nixi Cura launches "Chinese and Japanese Art History News", subsequently called "Chinese and Japanese Art History
WWW Virtual Library" (now at www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/html/chinese/index.html)
[US]
[Reference: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/html/chinese/index.html. Status: C]
1996 Jun 13: Shimpei Yamashita of Stanford U. establishes Usenet group "soc.culture.japan.moderated" The "soc.culture.japan" (est. before Nov 1987) continues to operate as unmoderated group.
[US]
[Reference: Isley 1986. Status: C]
1996 Jul 18: Tamil newspaper, "The Muzhakkam Tamil Weekly" web edition (www.muzhakkam.com) commences operations.
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: http://www.muzhakkam.com. Status: C]
1996 Sep: Richard Salomon and Collett Cox embark on
The British Library / University of Washington "Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project" (depts.washington.edu/ebmp/)
[UK/US]
[Reference: http://depts.washington.edu/ebmp/. Status: C]
1996 Sep 15: Robert Felsing publishes web pages on "How To Read Internet Information In Chinese, Japanese and Korean" (originally at darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/welcome.html)
[US]
[Reference: http://web.archive.org/web/19970218101501/darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/hanyu.html. Status: C]
1996 Oct ??: John Gardner publishes online 10mb of Vedic texts, including Rig Veda and Shatapatha BraahmaNa, with detailed indexes in form of the "Vedavid" web site.
[US]
[Reference: http://vedavid.org/. Status: C]
1996 Nov 7: Moo-Young Han establishes "The Information Exchange
For Korean-American Scholars" (IEKAS) (ISSN 1092-6232)", IEKAS is
an electronic weekly newsletter published (www.skas.org) by the Society of
Korean-American Scholars (SKAS).
[The US]
[Reference: http://www.skas.org. Status: C]
1996 Nov 29: Southeast Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library (iias.leidenuniv.nl/wwwvl/southeast.html) moved from coombs.anu.edu.au to
International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden.
[The Netherlands]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1996 Nov: www.hindustantimes.com - online edition of a leading printed daily
from New Delhi started.
[India]
[Reference: Mittal 2003. Status: C]
1996 Oct: Nerida Cook and Susan MacDougall of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) complete work on their book "Asian Resources: a directory of databases on Asia accessible in Australia", Canberra: Asia and Pacific Special Interest Group, ALIA. The 148 pages document lists 67 public access databases, gopher- and web-sites; 68 commercial databases; and 6 commercial information search services.
[Australia]
[Cook & MacDougall 1996. Status: C]
1996 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 632 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 475 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
sometime in 1996: Jost Gippert conducts experiments with scanning a series of Tocharian manuscripts from the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin.
[The Germany]
[Reference: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/tocharic/index.html. Status: C]
return to the index
1997: 21.8 mln hosts; 650,000 Web servers; 190 bln emails and 190 bln pieces of first-class mail are sent each year. Extensible Markup Language (XML) introduced.
1997: Feb: Bangladesh Online (www.bdonline.com/information/) web site is established.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.bdonline.com/information/. Status: C]
1997 Jan 07: Charles Muller publishes an online catalogue of "Graduate Programs in Asian Philosophy and Religion" (now at www.h-net.org/~buddhism/GradStudies.htm).
[Japan]
[Reference: http://www.h-net.org/~buddhism/GradStudies.htm. Status: C]
1997 Feb 14: The first "Electronic Cultural Atlas Workgroup" meeting is organised by Lewis Lancaster at U. California, Berkeley, US. The group subsequently evolved into "ECAI (Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative)" (www.ecai.org), a loose constellation of scholars who meet twice a year to discuss ways for a possible streamlining and standardisation of their methdologies and electronic integration of results of their various reserarch projects.
[US]
[Reference: Ciolek notes on the "ecai-timeline.html". Status: C]
1997 Mar 5: e-asia-area-group@coombs.anu.edu.au is established.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1997 Mar 15th: Lewis Lancaster (University of California, Berkeley) heads the newly constituted AAS Working Group on Electronic Resource Development (AAS WGERD). The group comprises: Lewis Lancaster, U. Cal., Berkeley, US,
T. Matthew Ciolek, Australian National U.,
Frank Conlon, U.Washington, US
Maureen Donovan, Ohio State U., US,
Thomas Hahn, Heidelberg U., Germany,
David Magier, Columbia U, US,
Kent Mulliner, Ohio U., US,
Carol Mitchell, U.Wisconsin, US.
[US]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/NLA/EALRGA/newsletters97/9707.ciolek.html. Status: C]
1997 Mar 25: Maureen Donovan and Mary Jackson launch "AAU/ARL/NCC Japan Journal Access Project" (pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/NCC/jpnpjct.html)
[Australia]
[Reference: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/NCC/arl-aau.html. Status: C]
1997 Apr 4: Usenet alt.religion.bahai is established. with 157 participants
[country???, most likely US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1997 Apr 16: "Asian Studies Association of Australia, Inc. (ASAA)" web site (coombs.anu.edu.au/ASAA/) is launched.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1997 Apr 26: Charles Muller of
Toyo Gakuen University publishes online "WWW CJK-English Character Dictionary-Database" (now
"CJKV-English Dictionary" at www.acmuller.net/dealt/index.html), a database of CJK characters and compounds related to East Asian Cultural, Political, and Intellectual History.
[Japan]
[Reference: http://web.archive.org/web/19970618144726/http://www2.gol.com/users/acmuller/cjkdict/CJKDictIntro.htm. Status: C]
1997 May 7: William Lavely launches "China in Time and Space (CITAS)" project [CITAS data sets include vectorized base maps of China, georeferenced socioeconomic data, bibliographic resources and utilities for coding data of administrative units]. The project was first foreshadowed in 1994. Subsequently the CITAS data are re-used in 2001 by CHGIS (Harvard) project.
[US]
[Reference: Lavely 1994; http://citas.csde.washington.edu/. Status: C]
1997 May 12th: Josephine Khu commences writing the "Hong Kong Diary", a series of
online documents about life in Hong Kong during the transition to mainland control (issues #1 May 12, 1997 - #41 Oct. 2, 1999 are now archived at www.sage.edu/RSC/programs/globcomm/H-ASIA/diary.html). The individual installments were posted at the H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu mailing list.
[HK]
[Reference: http://www.sage.edu/RSC/programs/globcomm/H-ASIA/diary.html. Status: C]
1997 May 12th: WAIS databases last time used on coombs.anu.edu.au
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
1997 Jul: "Ahlul Bayt Digital Islamic Library Project (DILP)" (www.al-islam.org) is launched.
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
1997 Jul 9: Jost Gippert of U. Frankfurt heads an informal association called "Scholars Engaged in Electronic Resources (SEER)" (http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/seer/index.htm) is formed. The group of scholars established itself during the ICANAS congress (International Congress on Asian and North African Studies) at Budapest with the aim of promoting and coordinating further efforts in the development and spreading of electronic resources of all kinds relating to Asia and adjacent areas.
[Germany]
[Reference: http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/seer/index.htm. Status: C]
Prior to 1997 Sep: Robert Eng publishes "East and South East Asia: an annotated directory of Internet resources" (newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/AsianStudiesDept/index.html).
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: P]
1997 Sep 1: Preparatory work on "The Digital South Asia Library" project (DSAL) (now at dsal.uchicago.edu) commences. The project gets launched on 1 Sep 2000.
[USA]
[http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/arl-w.html Status: C]
1997 Oct 3: Alan Fisher of Michigan State University
launches "H-Islamart", history of Islamic Art and Architecture, (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~ islamart/), an H-Net scholarly mailing list.
[US]
[Reference: http://h-net.msu.edu/. Status: C]
1997 Oct 22: "AsiaSource.org" is launched by the Asia Society to "Provide
Information on Everything About Asia" (www.asiasource.org).
[US]
[Reference: http://www.asiasource.org/press/asiasource.cfm. Status: C]
1997 Nov: Sergio Paoli catalogues discussion groups and mailing lists of relevance to research on India and South Asian Studies. According to his document there were 27 unmoderated and 9 moderated Usenet
newsgroups, and 30 email lists.
[Argentina]
[Reference: http://www.india.com.ar/india5.html. Status: C]
1997 Dec 26: Marilyn Levine of Lewis-Clark College launches "Chinese Biographical Database (CBD)" (www.lcsc.edu/cbiouser/). In its initial format the database accepted online input from its readers. In Dec 2001 the database contained 3,500 biographical entries.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.lcsc.edu/cbiouser/. Status: C]
1997 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 590 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 632 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
sometime in 1997: The Chinese U. of Hong Kong establishes "China Research & Resource Centre" web site (www.cuhk.edu.hk/usc/). The site offers a Databank for China Studies,
which aims to promote qualitative studies on China and datasharing
in the academic community."
[HK]
[Reference: http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/usc/. Status: C]
sometime in 1997: Feb Bangladesh Online (www.bdonline.com/information/)
[US]
[Reference: http://www.bdonline.com/information/. Status: C]
sometime in 1997: ABIA - Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology (www.iias.nl/host/ abia/) is published by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at Leiden, the Netherlands, as a WWW database.
[Netherlands]
[Reference: http://www.humbul.ac.uk/output/shortout.php?subj=other-asian&type1=bibliographic&type2=&ref=subout. Status: C]
sometime in 1997: Beginning of digitization of
the David Rumsey Collection (www.davidrumsey.com) of maps of the World, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania. In early June 2003 the collection had 8,800 maps online.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.davidrumsey.com/index4.html. Status: C]
sometime in 1997: Christian Wittern of Chung-Hwa Institute, Taipei starts working on the "System for Markup and Retrieval of Texts (SMART)" which is used as a TEI-complient tool for electronic markup of premodern Chinese texts (www.kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~wittern/smart/)
[Taiwan/ Germany/ Japan]
[Reference: http://www.chibs.edu.tw/~chris/smart/SmartIntro.htm . Status: C]
sometime in 1997: Maggie Exon, Christine Richardson and Ian Dawes of Curtin U. launch
The "South Asia Resources Database" (now at recall.curtin.edu.au/Data/saru/sard.htm). The database contains over 120,000 records listing resources (including books, serials, archive collections and ephemera) about South Asia available in Australia and (in a separate file) over 150,000 records of South Asian materials not known to be held in Australia.
[Australia]
[Reference: http://web.archive.org/web/19980509135243/recall.curtin.edu.au/Data/saru/ack.htm. Status: C]
return to the index
1998: 29.6 mln hosts; 1.8 mln Web servers. Google WWW crawler intelligent search engine introduced; Java source code is made freely accessible to the software community.
1998 Mar: Maureen Donovan starts publishing an experimental e-journal "The AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter" (Asian Database Online Community Electronic Newsletter) (ISSN:1098-9145) (asiandoc.lib.ohio-state.edu/) and the associated mailing list, asiandoc@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu. The project was discontinued upon the publication of Vol 1 No. 3 (October 1998).
[US]
[Reference: http://asiandoc.lib.ohio-state.edu/. Status: C]
sometime in early 1998: The Library of Congress publishes a massive collection of online
Country Studies/Area Handbooks (lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html), including multidisciplinary studies of Asian countries.
[US]
[Reference: To be supplied. Status: C]
1998 Apr 27: James Lindsay launches
launches "H-Mideast-Medieval" (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~midmed/), an H-Net scholarly mailing list. H-MidEast-Medieval specialises in the study of the Islamic lands of the Middle East during the medieval period (defined roughly as 500-1500 C.E.). The network is sponsored by Middle East Medievalists (MEM).
[US]
[Reference: http://h-net.msu.edu/. Status: C]
1998 April:
Orientalisches Institut (OIL), U. of Leipzig launches a tri-lingual (German, English, and Arabic) "Islamic Law (ISLAW) Catalogue" (now at www.islamcatalogue.uni-leipzig.de/islawindex.html). The site collects from the Internet all available information
about the Islamic Law and the Law of the Islamic States.
[Germany]
[Reference: coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/WhatsNewWWW/old-asian-news/ archival/asia-www-monitor-98-04a.html. Status: C]
1998 May 6: "Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) On Line", Association for Asian Studies, University of Michigan, US is published online. In May 1998 this single most important record of research and scholarly literature on Asia written in Western languages had about 420,000 references; in Mar 2003 there were 520,000 references.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.aasianst.org/bassub.htm. Status: C]
Prior to 1998 Jun: A document "Paso-kon Toohoo-kenkyuu" (Personal Computer and Asian Humanity Studies) is published on the Japanese commercial BBS NiftyServe (www.nifty.com)
[Japan]
[Reference: http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~n-iyanag/links.html. Status: P]
1998 Jun 1: Ann Andrews and Matthew Ciolek launch "RSPAS Print News: E-Journal" (coombs.anu.edu.au/rspas-print-news.htm).
[Australia]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/rspas-print-news.htm. Status: C]
1998 Jul: "Virtual e-Text Archive of Indic Texts" [a catalogue of distributed online holdings] (www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html) is established.
[UK]
[Reference: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/indology.html. Status: C]
1998 Sep 9: Yone Sugita of Osaka University of Foreign Studies
launches "H-US-Japan", US-Japan relations, (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~usjp/), an H-Net scholarly mailing list.
[US]
[Reference: http://h-net.msu.edu/. Status: C]
1998 Oct 14: Susan Whitfield of the British Library launches the "International Dunhuang Project (IDP)" web site, now at (idp.bl.uk).
[UK]
[Reference: http://idp.bl.uk/. Status: C]
earlier than 2 December 1998: Rebecca Payne and David Plath launch a web site for the "Asian Educational Media Service (AEMS)" (www.aems.uiuc.edu). The site based at the U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
helps educators find and use media materials (including documentary films, feature films, CD-ROMs, and slide units) for teaching about the cultures and peoples of Asia. In November 2001 the site had a database of a searchable database of over 3,500 videos.
[USA]
[http://web.archive.org/web/19981202194446/http://www.aems.uiuc.edu/ . Status: P]
1998 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 584 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 590 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
late 1998: "Japanese Journal Current Awareness Project" (pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/JJCAP/search.html l) is launched at the Ohio State U. by Maureen Donovan and the East Asian Libraries Cooperative WWW. The web-based service permits users to browse the contents of Japanese journals included in the Union List of Japanese Serials and Newspapers.
[USA]
[http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/JJCAP/search.html; http://www.arl.org/collect/grp/grp.html. Status: C]
sometime in 1998: "Sinophilia", A Web site on Chinese culture (www.sinophilia.org) is established.
[Italy]
[Reference: http://www.sinophilia.org. Status: C]
1999: 43.2 mln hosts; over 1,000 WWW search engines; over 39,000 IRC channels; over 135,000 Listserv lists; 4.3 mln Web servers; over 800 mln publicly accessible Web pages are indexed; 3 bln SMS text messages sent during the month of December; Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) for mobile Internet is introduced.
1999 Jan 1: Maison Asie Pacifique (www.up.univ-mrs.fr/wmap/)
Universite de Provence, Marseille is launched.
br />[France]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/2001/Monitor2001-289.html. Status: C]
1999 Jan: "India Hoje Online Newsletter" (originally at www.iseg.utl.pt/html/uips/cesa/india.html) , the only online newsletter in Portuguese about India, is launched.
br />[Portugal]
[http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/1999/Monitor1999-040.html. Status: C]
1999 Apr 28: Paul H. Kratoska of the National University of Singapore
launches "H-SEASIA" (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~seasia/), an H-Net scholarly mailing list.
[Singapore]
[Reference: http://h-net.msu.edu/. Status: C]
1999 Apr 29: David Rosenberg of Middlebury College, VT establishes
"South China Sea WWW Virtual Library" (www.middlebury.edu/SouthChinaSea).
[US]
[Reference: http://www.middlebury.edu/SouthChinaSea/about.html. Status: C]
1999 May 14: Charles Muller establishes "Budschol" ("Buddhist Scholars") mailing list on the OneList service.
[Japan]
[Reference: Muller 2002. Status: C]
1999 Oct: "Sino-Japanese Studies" web site (originally at www.lsweb.sscf.ucsb.edu/depts/hist/faculty/fogel/sjs/index.htm) is launched at
History Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, US. The site complements operations of the
the SINOJPN-L listserve [SINOJPN-L@ukans.edu] and the journal Sino-Japanese Studies [paper publication est. 1988]
[US]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/1999/Monitor1999-479.html. Status: C]
1999 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 574 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 584 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
sometime in 1999: "Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Asienkunde" [German Association for Asian Studies] (www.asienkunde.de) launches its web site.
[Germany]
[Reference: http://www.asienkunde.de/englishversion/index.html. Status: C]
return to the index
2000: 72.3 mln hosts; 9.9 mln Web servers; over 1 bln publicly accessible Web pages indexed; estimated 407.1 mln online users worldwide; 15 bln SMS text messages sent during the month of December. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is introduced.
2000 Jan 1: John Einar Sandvand launches
"Asia Observer" (www.asiaobserver.com) to provide a start page for observers of news and developments in Asia.
[Norway]
[Reference: http://www.asiaobserver.com/about_asia_observer.htm. Status: C]
2000 Feb 02: Svante E. Cornell of The Johns Hopkins U. launches "Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst " (www.cacianalyst.org) to provide a rigorous, concise and nonpartisan information issues and events in the Central Asia-Caucasus region.
[USA]
[ttp://www.cacianalyst.org/search.php. Status: C]
2000 Feb 23: Karl J. Schmidt of Missouri Southern
State College, launches "Project South Asia (PSA)" (www.mssc.edu/projectsouthasia).
[US]
[Reference: http://www.mssc.edu/projectsouthasia/. Status: C]
2000 Mar 1: David Germano and the University of Virginia Library, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and Arts and Sciences at Virginia establish "The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library" (www.thdl.org and iris.lib.virginia.edu/tibet/index.html).
[US]
[Reference: http://iris.lib.virginia.edu/tibet/intro/index.html; Germano 2003. Status: C]
2000 Mar 23: A meeting addressing creation of GIS for China's historical administrative geography takes place at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. The meeting is attended by Peter Bol who had organised the event, Ge Jianxiong from Fudan in Shanghai, PRC, Fan I-Chun and Erin Yen from Academia Sinica, Taiwan and Lawrence Crissman, ACASIAN, Griffith U, Australia.
[Taiwan]
[Reference: Ciolek notes on the "ecai-timeline.html". Status: C]
2000 - mid: "Afghanpedia" (www.sabawoon.com/afghanpedia/default.shtm) is launched.
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
2000 Sep 1: U.S. Embassy in Beijing launches "Beijing Environment, Science and Technology Update" e-journal (www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/estnews-contents.html).
[China]
[Reference: http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/estnews090100.htm. Status: C]
2000 Sep 1: Donald Simpson of the Center for Research Libraries, James Nye and Rebecca Moore of the U. of Chicago and David Magier at Columbia U. launch "The Digital South Asia Library" (DSAL) (dsal.uchicago.edu ). The DSAL project (developed since Sep 1997), based at the U. of Chicago, provides online access to Reference Resources; Bibliographies and Union Lists; Images; Indexes of periodicals; Maps; Books and Journals; Statistical information from the colonial period through the present, and Other Internet Resources. DSAL is a global collaborative effort involving partners from the US, Europe, Soutrh Asia, Australia and from international organizations.
[USA]
[http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/southasia/dsal.html Status: C]
2000 Sep 12: Google search engine enables users to conduct searches in Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Korean, in addition to the existing searches in
Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease34.html. Status: C]
2000 Oct 10: "Middle East Virtual Library (MENALIB)" (ssgdoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de) is launched by the Martin-Luther-Universitaet Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. The bi-lingual (DE and En) site offers a portal to Middle East and Islamic Studies information facilities. In Nov 2001 the site kept track of links and metadata of over 1,600 online resources.
[Germany]
[http://ssgdoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/ . Status: C]
2000 Nov: "The Digital Asia Library/Portal to Asian Internet Resources" (digitalasia.library.wisc.edu), based at the U. of Wisconsin-Madison is placed online. The portal is a cooperative project of The Ohio State U. Libraries, the U. of Minnesota Libraries, and the U. of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. It offers a catalogue selected, evaluated and annotated by subject area specialists and librarians. In January 2002 it catalogued over 3000 records. In April 2003 the catalogue had over 5,300 records.
[USA]
[http://digitalasia.library.wisc.edu/CORCatALAJan02_files/frame.htm; http://web.archive.org/web/20010219161545/http://digitalasia.library.wisc.edu/ . Status: C]
2000 Nov: "USEST: U.S. Embassy Beijing Environment, Science and Technology" mailing list (www.usembassy-china.org.cn/english/sandt/estnews-contents.html) is launched.
[China]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
2000 Dec 15: Keith D. Watenpaugh of Le Moyne College launches
launches "H-Levant" (www2.h-net.msu.edu/~levant/), an H-Net scholarly mailing list.
[US]
[Reference: http://h-net.msu.edu/. Status: C]
2000 Dec 20: Peter Bol establishes "China Historical Geographic Information System (CHGIS)" project to develop 'a standardized coding system to identify historical administrative units for different periods in Chinese History.'
[US]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/database/2000/Monitor2000-395.html. Status: C]
2000 Dec: Alan Macfarlane and Mark Turin of University of Cambridge, UK launch "Digital Himalaya Project" (www.digitalhimalaya.com)
[UK]
[Reference: http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/overview.html. Status: C]
2000 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 397 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 574 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
return to the index
2001: 109.5 mln hosts; 27.8 mln Web servers; over 1.6 bln publicly accessible Web pages are indexed; The WayBack Machine provides access to the WWW pages which were archived since 1996 by the Internet Archive.
2001 Apr 5: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announces the formation of "ArtSTOR," (now at www.artstor.org), an independent not-for-profit
organization that will develop, "store," and distribute electronically digital images and related scholarly materials for the study of art, architecture, and other fields in the
humanities.
[US]
[Reference: Mellon Foundation 2001. Status: C]
2001 Aug 7: "South Asia Literature Association Announcements (SALA-Announce)"
(www-instruct.nmu.edu/english/zthundy/salaindex.html), is launched.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
2001 Aug 22: "Budschol" mailing list is restablished as the "H-Buddhism" list.
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
2001 Oct: David Arnott creates the "Online Burma/Myanmar Library" (www.burmalibrary.org) with annotated and classified links to thousands of full-text documents on Burma/Myanmar.
[Switzerland]
[Reference: http://www.burmalibrary.org . Status: C]
2001 Oct 24: Brewster Kahle, inventor of the WAIS servers, unveils his "The Wayback Machine" (www.archive.org/) to provide access to the WWW pages which were archived since 1996 by the Internet Archive. The system is first demonstrated at U.C. Berkeley's Bancroft Library.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.archive.org/. Status: C]
2001 Nov: Susan Whitfield and her team publish on the web a document "The International Dunhuang Project: Procedures and Standards for Digitisation and Image Management"
(idp.bl.uk/chapters/publications/IDP_papers/standards.html)
[UK]
[Reference: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/WhatsNewWWW/old-asian-news/archival/asia-www-monitor-02-01a.html. Status: C]
2001 Nov 30: mekong-pa@vn-gw.anu.edu.au, laos-pa@coombs.anu.edu.au, thai-pa.info@coombs.anu.edu.au ("Review of protected
areas and their role in socio-economic development in the
four countries of the Lower Mekong River region") mailing lists are established.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
2001 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 419 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 397 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
return to the index
2002:147.3 mln hosts; 36.6 mln Web servers; over 222,000 Listserv lists; over 100,000 e-mail newsletters; over 350,000 Usenet groups. over 2.4 bln publicly accessible Web pages are indexed.
2002 Jun: OAIster (www.oaister.org) a project of the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services is launched. In early June 2003 it delivered 1,246,953 records from 185 institutions.
[US]
[Reference: http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/reports.html. Status: C]
2002 Jun 21: vtn-l@vn-gw.anu.edu.au "Vietnam Tourism Network" (www.undp.org.vn/forums1/forums.htm) mailing list is established.
[Australia]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
2002 Sep 9: "Sandstorm", a weblog of modern Middle East asides, comments, and analysis from Martin Kramer (www.martinkramer.org/pages/899529/index.htm) is launched.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.martinkramer.org/pages/899529/index.htm. Status: C]
2002 Sep: "Campus Watch", a project which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North America (www.campus-watch.org/) is launched.
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2002. Status: C]
2002 Sep 19: "Asian Law Online", the first online bibliographic database of Asian law materials in the world (www.law.unimelb.edu.au/alc/bibliography) is launched.
[Australia]
[Reference: Taylor 2003. Status: C]
2002 Sep: The "China Elections and Governance", a joint project by The Carter Center at Emory University and the Research Center on Chinese Local Governance at Beijing University (www.chinaelections.org) is launched.
[US]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Database 2003. Status: C]
2002 Nov 11: The National Library of China launches the Chinese version (idp.nlc.gov.cn) of the Susan Whitfield's "International Dunhuang Project (IDP)" web site (idp.bl.uk).
[China]
[Reference: IDP News 2003. Status: C]
2001 Dec 11: Google search engine has fully integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google Groups, which now offers access to more than 700 million messages dating back to May 1981. This is by far the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled.
[US]
[Reference: http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html. Status: C]
2002 Dec 31: During the past 12 months "The Asian Studies WWW Monitor" announced details of 402 new or improved Asian Studies' online resources. For comparison, a year earlier the Monitor announced 419 resources.
[Australia]
[Reference: Asian Studies WWW Monitor database. Status: C]
return to the index
2003: 171.6 mln hosts; 35,543,000 web servers; over 3 bln publicly accessible Web pages are indexed.
2003 Jan 10: George Miller of the Australian National U. launches the "Meta-Guide to Indonesia: Annotated Bibliography of post-1990 Bibliographies on Indonesia" (coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/IndonPages/Meta-Bibliography.html).
[Australia]
[Reference: coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/IndonPages/Meta-Bibliography.html. Status: C]
2003 May:
Robert Eng of U. Redlands launches "The SARS Epidemic" web site (newton.uor.edu/ Departments&Programs/ AsianStudiesDept/ sars.html), an annotated list of SARS-related resources, dealing with the affected Asian regions including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam.
[US]
[Reference: to be supplied. Status: C]
2003 Jan 13: Brian Bruya launches "Shuhai Wenyuan: Classical Chinese Digital Database and Interactive Internet Worktable" (www.shuhai.hawaii.edu).
[US]
[Reference: http://www.shuhai.hawaii.edu/front/cite.html. Status: C]
2003 Jun: A catalogue of "Asian & Pacific Studies Electronic Journals" (coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLAsian/AsianE-Journals.html) lists 230 e-journals.
[Australia]
[Reference: http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/AsiaPages/AsianE-Journals.html. Status: C]
2003 Jun 19: "Asian Studies in an Internet Connected World:
Building an Asia- Pacific Community?"
Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast [2003 Annual Meeting - ed.]
June 19-22, 2003 East-West Center, Honolulu (www.aspac.org)
[US]
[Reference: to be provided. Status: C]
2003 Jun 25: An online news agency - "News Central Asia (nCa)" (www.newscentralasia.com) - has been launched from Central Asia.
[Turkmenistan?]
[Reference: Saeedi 2003, http://www.newscentralasia.com/. Status: C]
2003 Jul 24: The Zhang zhung Studies Forum (groups.yahoo.com/group/zhangzhungstudies/) dealing with the broad topic of Zhang zhung and so-called 'early Bon culture' - has been launched by Henk Blezer.
[USA]
[Reference: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zhangzhungstudies/. Status: C]
Acknowledgments
Updates, additions and corrections to this page have been kindly provided by:
The Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP). n.d. The Project History.
acip.princeton.edu/r1p4.html
Barlow, Jeffrey G. 1999. Doing Asian Studies On the Web. In: Journal of the Association for History and Computing, Vol 2(2). [a draft of an article to be published in hard copy in the volume "History Highway 2000", ed. Dennis A. Trinkle (M.E. Sharpe: 1999)]
www.mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCII2/E-REVIEWSII2/Eres.HTML
Bohn, Hartmut. 1993. China/Chinese Related Gopher Servers and WAIS and WWW.
ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/asian-studies-archives/china-archives/networked-inf-srcs/china-related-gophers-wais.txt
Bol, Peter K. 1999. Robert M. Hartwell's 'Chinese Historical Studies, Ltd.' Software Project, pp. 559-570, in: Proceedings of the 1999 EBTI, ECAI, SEER, and PNC Joint Meeting, Academia Sinica, Taipei, January 18-21, 1999. Taipei: Academia Sinica.
Ciolek, T. Matthew. 1991-1993.Internet Voyager:
Social Scientist's Guidebook to AARNET/INTERNET Online Information Services. RSPAS, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Part 1: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/coombsarchives/coombs-computing/internet-subj-guides/internet-voyager-1-2.txt
Part 2: ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/coombsarchives/coombs-computing/internet-subj-guides/internet-voyager-2-2.txt
Ciolek, T. Matthew. 1993-1994. Buddhist Electronic Resources Directory (B.E.R.D). RSPAS, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/coombspapers/otherarchives/electronic-buddhist-archives/buddhism-general/e-resources/buddh-electr-rsrc-dir-berd.txt
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