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Newsbriefs
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Project Muse receives $400,000 Mellon grant

     Project Muse, the university's effort to provide
worldwide networked access to the entire journal catalog of
the Johns Hopkins University Press, took a step closer to its
goal last week. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation made a
$400,000 grant   to the project as seed money  to move the
project beyond the pilot stage to the beginning of the
production stage. 
     "We got this project off the ground through donated time
and resources," said Todd Kelley, the project's co-manager
and the library's coordinator for electronic information and
instruction.
     Project Muse is designed to create an easy-to-use
electronic-journal environment that includes searching and
multimedia features, such as hypertext links to tables 
of contents, endnotes, illustrations, voice and textual
annotations and on-demand printouts of articles. Of added
interest to users is that journals will be available
approximately six weeks prior to print publication.
      "This is the direction journal publishing is going,"
said Susan Lewis, co-manager of the project and on-line
projects manager at the Press. "I think this project will be
the one other universities and scholarly presses emulate."
     To gain access to the Project Muse prototype, Mosaic
clients enter URL:http://muse.mse.jhu.edu. VT100 clients can
access Muse through gopher, at jhuniverse.jhu.edu, select #3
("Search JHUniverse Menu Titles") and then enter "project
muse."


Library users asked to 'test-drive' systems

     Users of the Eisenhower Library will have an opportunity
this week to "test-drive" two new computer library catalog
systems being considered for future installation. Library
staff are in the process of evaluating the two systems, one
of which will eventually replace the Eisenhower's Janus
system now in use.
     "We are asking students, faculty and staff to spend
about 45 minutes with us performing various search and
inquiry functions and then filling out a questionnaire rating
their experience," said Virginia Massey-Burzio, head of
resource services at the Eisenhower Library. The results of
the user survey will be used in selecting the new system.
     Blind tests of the two systems will be conducted in the
electronic classroom on A-Level of Eisenhower Library
Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 2 to 5 p.m.; Thursday, Nov. 17, from
2 to 5 and 6 to 9 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 18, from 9 a.m. to noon;
and Saturday, Nov. 19, from 9 a.m. to noon. Everyone is
welcome to participate in the tests. For more information
call 516-8335.


Faulty telescope causes delay of MSX launch

     Launch of the Midcourse Space Experiment, scheduled for
Friday, Nov. 18, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California, has been delayed due to problems with the
satellite's infrared telescope.
     MSX is a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization project
developed at the Applied Physics Laboratory. APL also built
several primary MSX instruments and will operate the
satellite from its Laurel campus. The telescope, known as
SPIRIT III, was built by Utah State University.
     BMDO officials said the SPIRIT III will be returned to
Utah for repair. A new launch date for MSX has not been
determined.


'Irish Times' editor to lecture Nov. 23

     Novelist John Banville, literary editor of the Irish
Times in Dublin, will lecture on 20th-century Irish
literature on Wednesday, Nov. 23, at 7 p.m. in Shaffer Hall
on the Homewood campus.
     Banville's most recent novel, Ghosts, was published in
1993. In 1989 he received the Guinness Peat Aviation Award
for The Book of Evidence, and in 1981 he won the Guardian
Fiction Prize for Kepler. His first book, Long Lankin, was
published in 1970.
     The lecture is part of the School of Continuing Studies'
Odyssey program titled "The Irish: At Home and Abroad,"
coordinated in cooperation with the Irish Embassy in
Washington, D.C. Cost for the lecture is $15; reservations
are not required. For more information call 516-4842.