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THE REMOTE SENSING VIRTUAL LIBRARY ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Seppo Väätäinen & Mikael Holm
Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT)
Finland
E-mail: Seppo.Vaatainen@vtt.fi, Mikael.Holm@vtt.fi
Commision VI, Working Group 4
KEY WORDS: Remote Sensing, Information, International, Organization, Hypermedia, Internet
ABSTRACT
The World Wide Web (WWW), which is one of the services available on the Internet, is a well-known and rapidly expanding
hypermedia in the international educational and research community. The hypermedia is extremely well appropriated as an
information system in the remote sensing branch, especially due to the visual style of presentation it provides.
The World Wide Web offers a promising opportunity to create distributed virtual libraries. The Remote Sensing Virtual Library
has been set up by collecting a very comprehensive index covering the entire remote sensing branch on the WWW server at
the Technical Research Centre of Finland. This index comprises four hundred links to WWW servers of research institutes,
enterprises, societies and image archives maintaining remote sensing information resources. The Uniform Resource Locator
(URL) of the Remote Sensing Virtual Library is http:/ /www.vtt.fi/aut/ava/rs/virtual/.
1 INTRODUCTION
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a well-known and rapidly
expanding hypermedia in the international educational com-
munity. Many research institutes and enterprises possessing
advanced facilities of information technology have shown in-
creasing interest in hypermedia in their own strategies of mar-
keting, public relations and information gathering. Particu-
larly, institutes and companies offering and exploiting services
in the remote sensing branch can be included in this category.
Hypermedia is extremely well appropriated as an information
system in the remote sensing branch, especially due to the
visual style of presentation it provides.
Hypermedia on the Internet offers a promising opportunity
to create distributed virtual libraries. By clicking on links
gathered onto the virtual library it is possible to access a
huge amount of information on the user's own workstation.
From the user's point of view those information resources
seem to be accessed on one server, although in fact they are
physically distributed on several servers all over the world.
2 WORLD WIDE WEB VIRTUAL LIBRARY
One of the most comprehensive and well-known distributed
subject catalogue is the World Wide Web Virtual Library
(URL: http:/ /www.w3.org/vl/Overview.html) maintained by
volunteers and coordinated by Arthur Secret at W3 Con-
sortium. The W3 Consortium exists to develop com-
mon standards for the evolution of the World Wide Web
(http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/). It is an industry con-
sortium run by the Laboratory for Computer Science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The WWW Virtual
Library Project was started at CERN in Switzerland in 1991.
At the moment there are more than one hundred subjects
listed on the Virtual Library catalogue from 'Aeronautics and
Aeronautical Engineering' to 'Zoos'.
In the beginning of the year 1995 the Remote Sensing Group
at the Technical Research Centre of Finland started to col-
lect a remote sensing index which was added to the WWW
Virtual Library in May, 1995. The objective of the work was
to define and create a clear structure and a comprehensive
scope for the Remote Sensing Virtual Library on the WWW.
133
An important goal was the clear and easy maintenance of the
index. If the Virtual Library will get popular it will serve as
one part of an international network of information exchange,
and help the progress of institutional relations for benefit of
the international remote sensing community.
3 ORGANISATION OF THE REMOTE SENSING
INDEX
The Remote Sensing Virtual Library has been set up by col-
lecting a very comprehensive index covering the entire remote
sensing branch on the WWW server at the Technical Research
Centre of Finland. This index comprises about four hundred
links to WWW servers of research institutes, enterprises, so-
cieties and image archives maintaining remote sensing infor-
mation resources. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of
the Virtual Library is http:/ /www.vtt.fi/aut/ava/rs/virtual/.
The tasks of the creation of the Remote Sensing Virtual Li-
brary were defined as follows:
e To define and outline the topics and the index of the
Remote Sensing Virtual Library
e To create the Remote Sensing index by searching and
collecting the URL addresses needed for the links
e To develop a flexible and easy-to-use procedure of
maintenance for the index
e To register the collected index on the World Wide Web
Virtual Library.
In the defining process of the Remote Sensing catalogue three
main titles were refined as follows:
e What's New
e Organizations
e Other Remote Sensing Information.
These items were organized as three separate HyperText
Markup Language (HTML) files accordingly. The item
"What's New' is meant for those regular users who just like
to see recently added links. Under the title 'Organizations'
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996
