(Cross-posted to LAW-LIB and TEKNOIDS, with usual apologies).
Cornell has placed a program called UWHO on its Internet server
(fatty.law.cornell.edu). The program is reasonably adept at
searching existing directory services, though it is not perfect.
Please give it a try using the instructions below.
Regards,
Tb.
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| Thomas R. Bruce 607-255-1221 |
| Research Associate FAX: 607-255-7193 |
| Cornell Law School |
| 481 Myron Taylor Hall tom@law.mail.cornell.edu |
| Ithaca, NY 14853 CompuServe: 75360,542 |
| GENIE: T.BRUCE4 |
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USING THE UWHO SERVICE
What is uwho?
UWHO is a program which looks up e-mail and other address
information. It knows how to make use of a variety of directory
services in many places on the Internet in a way which is
transparent to you as you use the program. The list of directory
services it knows about is updated weekly, so that uwho has
access to relatively timely information. It is probably the most
comprehensive and easiest to use of the various services
available (that doesn't make it either perfect or ideal -- see
below).
How do I access uwho?
Via telnet:
Telnet to fatty.law.cornell.edu (132.236.108.5). Login as
'whodat'. You will be placed directly in the uwho program.
Via whois client:
Use your whois client to contact fatty.law.cornell.edu.
Depending on the client, this may or may not work well (the Sun4
version of whois seems to interpret uwho search strings as a
syntax error).
Via Gopher:
A uwho gateway using telnet is set up within the Locators
menu choice on the Cornell Law School Gopher.
Via mail:
There is as yet no e-mail gateway to UWHO, but we may set
one up in the near future.
How do I search using uwho?
>From the uwho> prompt, you enter your queries in the form:
uwho> find [name]@[place]
where [name] is the last name or full name of the person you're
looking for, and [place] is the place where you think the person
is, for example:
uwho> find Thomas Bruce@cornell
or
uwho> find Bruce@cornell
You can omit the place name if you believe the person is a
faculty member or librarian affiliated with a law school; by
default, uwho looks in our Directory of Legal Academia first (we
flatter ourselves that it's comprehensive, at least for AALS
member schools -- sorry, we don't keep track of students at all
these institutions).
You can also use pieces of place names; for example, you might
want to look up a fellow whose last name is Feige, and who works
at the University of Wisconsin. Not being sure which branch of
the Wisconsin system Mr. Feige is at, you say
uwho> find feige@wisc
which searches all the places that have a 'wisc' in the
placename. Sometimes you need to be a little ingenious and use
abbreviations; for example, searching for people at the
University of Illinois works best if you say
uwho> find soandso@uiuc
Experiment. It can be a little confusing, but it's better than a
poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Getting help and quitting:
Saying 'help' and 'quit' at the uwho> prompt does pretty much
what you would expect.
How accurate/timely is uwho?
The state of e-mail directory services in general is a disgrace,
largely because of enormous and uncharted growth in the number of
connected computers over the last few years. People find it
difficult to estimate even the number of connected networks, let
alone the number and names of connected users. Directory
services have really only arisen within the last year or two, and
are far from ideal. Most (our own Directory of Legal Academia is
an exception) are sponsored by universities and corporations
rather than being discipline-oriented. There is no such thing as
a comprehensive census of the Internet.
Our initial experiments with UWHO also show that there is
considerable variation in the way local systems list directory
information. The University of Virginia system, for example,
returns brief listings for matching names which include a
'handle' which you then use in a second search to specify the
individual you want and get a full record for that person.
Colorado's system returns email addresses, but doesn't list them
in standard name@domain syntax -- it returns a name for the user
and a machine name, which you're left to put together into an
Internet-style address.
So...it's as accurate and timely as it can be, given that the
directories it accesses are locally maintained by their
respective organizations and that administrative policies vary
from place to place. For example, uwho can find any email user
at Cornell who has a so-called network ID, but it doesn't know
about some QuickMail users, since CIT has not yet integrated the
QuickMail directory service into their network directory. Of
course, other places and individuals may maintain their
directories with different degrees of accuracy.
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