Electronic Publishing: Resources

Roger Clarke

Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University

Version of 21 October 1998

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 1998

This paper was prepared for the Business Entry Point Management Branch

This document is at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/BEP/EPResources.html

Introduction

This document provides annotated links to resources that are relevant to electronic publishing conducted by agencies of the Australian Government in general, and by provider-agencies within the Business Entry Point community in particular.

Contents

• Introductory Materials
• Government Documents
  • Information Management Generally
  • Document Formatting
  • Web-Site Management
  • Metadata
• Reference Materials
  • Web-Page Design
  • Web-Site Management
  • Electronic Publishing of Periodicals
  • Metadata
  • Mark-Up Languages
• Some Key Standards
• Some Relevant Publishers

Introductory Materials

The following resources provide background information relevant to electronic publishing:

• An Internet Technology Primer
• An introduction to Electronic Publishing as a specialised form of Electronic Commerce
• John December's Guide to Web Development
• A World Wide Web FAQ
• A Web Browsers FAQ

Government Documents

The following sections identify resources published by Australian Government agencies.

Information Management Generally

The term 'information management' recognises that the 'stock-in-trade' of most government agencies is information, and that it therefore needs to be managed with all the skill and sophistication applied to stock of other kinds:

• The Australian Government Locator Service site at National Archives of Australia
• Data Management in the APS, Auditor-General, 1998
• Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource: Report of the Information Management Steering Committee on Information Management in the Commonwealth Government, August 1997
• Improving Electronic Document Management: Guidelines For Australian Government Agencies, IESC EDMSC, October 1995

Document Formatting

These resources provide guidance relating to the manner in which documents published electronically should be presented:

• Draft standards for Commonwealth information published in electronic formats, Ausinfo, May 1998
• AccessAbility Online Resource from NOIE

Web-Site Management

These resources provide guidance in relation to the establishment and maintenance of a site that contains electronic publications:

• Interim Guidelines for Establishing a WEB Information Service, Department of Defence, 1995
• Government Access Architecture Workshop, National Library, September 1996

Metadata

Metadata is information about a resource such as a document, e.g. the title, author, data of publication, and keywords indicating its content. The following government resources are relevant to electronic publishing by agencies of Australian Governments:

• The 'Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) Manual for Users', which defines the metadata standard for use by Australian Governments
• Metadata Tools and Services at DSTC, Brisbane
• The MetaWeb Project
• The A.G.L.S. Implementation Plan of December 1997
• The metadata specification for EdNA (Educational Network, Australia)
• 'Key Issues In Australian Electronic Publishing', Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, 1995-1996

Reference Materials

The following sections identify resources provided by various non-governmental sources, which are fairly authoritative or comprehensive.

Web-Page Design

Rather than 'document formatting', most references tend to use the web-centric term 'web-page design':

• Web Style Guides from:
  • the Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media
  • Sun
• The Web-Developer's Virtual Library from Meckler Media:
  • one version
  • another version
• The Web Designer, from the University of Newcastle (U.K.)
• Accessibility Guidelines for Web-Page Authoring, from W3C, which provides guidance on how to make pages accessible to people with disabilities
• WWW Copyright Guide, by Dr Gillian Dempsey, ANU
• Commercial Considerations in Electronic Publishing, by Dr Roger Clarke, Xamax Consultancy

Web-Site Management

These resources provide guidance in relation to the establishment and maintenance of a site that contains electronic publications:

• Site Design, from the the Yale Center for Advanced Instructional Media
• The Site-Owner tool-site
• Did-It Resource Registration Services
• The Web Robots Pages, which provides access to information about the robots or spiders that roam the Internet locating and indexing web-pages for access through search-engines
• Software Tools for the Web by the University of Newcastle (U.K.)
• Steve Pepper's Whirlwind Guide to SGML & XML Tools and Vendors
• Understanding LDAP & X.500

Electronic Publishing of Periodicals

Publications which comprise a succession of separate issues, such as newsletters, require a rather different approach:

• Charles Bailey's 'Network-Based Electronic Publishing of Scholarly Works'

Metadata

These resources provide guidance in relation to information about electronic publications:

• the Dublin Core, which represents an international standard for describing web-pages

Mark-Up Languages

These resources provide guidance in relation to particular mark-up languages:

• HTML - The Hypertext Markup Language, from Meckler Media
• information about XML, which is the replacement for HTML
• Robin Cover's Oasis SGML/XML Web Page

Some Key Standards

These resources provide guidance in relation to specific, formalised Standards relevant to electronic publishing:

• W3C User Interface
• XML (1998)
• HTML 4.0 (1998)
• HTML3.2 (1996)
• HTML 2.0 (1994)

Some Relevant Publishers

These publishers specialise in books and other publications relevant to electronic publishing:

• Hogan Books
• O'Reilly
• Macmillan

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Created: 20 October 1998

Last Amended: 21 October 1998

These community service pages are a joint offering of the Australian National University (which provides the infrastructure), and Roger Clarke (who provides the content).