Before websites and the internet, the Amiga computer ‘Megadisc’ magazine on a 3.5 inch, 880 kilobyte floppy disk was sold by mail order and bootlegs distributed at markets. Megadisc included short articles, neat shareware programs, graphics, sound and animations. The movie “Assange” showed a teenaged Julian Assange carrying a copy of Amiga Megadisc around in his shirt pocket.
In 1986-90 I was doing a B.A. (Communications) degree majoring in journalism and IT at UTS, Sydney, while working at Australian Associated Press, and I wrote this story about the dial-up databases accessible on my Amiga 1000 for the Amiga computer magazine-on-a-disk “Amiga Megadisc”, disk #7, 1988. – Mark Anning.
This is what the online world looked like before the internet:
AN OVERVIEW OF DATABASES
Here is an idea of some of the databases available for access via telecommunications. Most are available for direct dial-up on your Amiga, while some are manned by researchers who tap away until they’ve answered the inquiry. Some are as easy as Viatel to access and interrogate from a home computer. This list is by no means complete, as business finds uses for information more are added almost daily. Australians are on par with the rest of the world for use of databases.
“Australia is an information society in which more people are employed in collecting, storing, retrieving, amending and disseminating data than are producing food, fibres and minerals, and manufacturing products… Access to knowledge and capital or wealth is roughly equivalent and there is a widening gap between the information rich and the information poor whereby the unskilled become an intellectual proletariat” (Barry Jones, Sleeper’s Awake!).
A list of Soviet databases fell into my open hands so I have included that too, for what it is worth.
VIATEL. Now three years old, with over 30,000 subscribers and 200 information providers. The Viatel database is located in Melbourne, although there is talk of a new one for Sydney when they have enough
subscribers. The Melbourne database is accessed by a local call charge from anywhere in Australia. Viatel is administered by Telecom, which provides the phone line links (through AUSTPAC data lines) and the database. Private enterprise provide the information and services.
To ensure Viatel’s success the Commonwealth Bank was asked to be one of the first service providers. Telebanking, Telebroking, TeleTAB and many financial services abound as the Viatel’s main customer is business.
The Telebank will improve in popularity as EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer Point of Sale) debit cards are introduced due to the up-to-the-minute bank statements. Both the National Bank and Westpac are coming on-line with similar services. Australian Associated Press (AAP) is also looking at the possibilities of providing a news service. Many other services including dating services, software databanks (although there is a problem obtaining the rights to Commodore/Amiga software), travel services and others. Subscriptions are $12.50 per month for business, and $3.50 per home per month plus local fee per connection plus a fee per page. MEGADISC provide a good pd software package for access. the best way to see if VIATEL suits you is to subscribe for a month or two and have a look around the system. Write to: Viatel, Freepost 20, GPO Box 188C, Melbourne, Victoria, 3001 or call you local Telecom office.
[ED. NOTE: Check the review of GPTERM in this issue, for a good local communications program for Viatel.]
AUSINET. Owned by ACI Computer Services, based in Victoria with 48 different databases and about one million records. Accessable from your computer on subscription. The Ausinet Executive Service comprises AUSINET databases:
° STATEX (a 20 year share price & financial history collected by the Sydney Stock Exchange with the ability to manipulate data to construct an infinite variety of Time Series reports;
° PRO-FILE INFORMATION, a world reporter service accessing the major international news-agency wire services.
° AUSINET TEXT DATABASES includes the AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS INDEX (ABIX): items of business, financial and economic interest published in the Australian media;
° SOFTWARE LOCATOR (SOFT) a full text of software descriptions from “Today’s Computers” and “The Australian Software Guide”, unfortunately the emphasis is with IBM business software;
° UNION LIST OF HIGHER DEGREE THESIS (HDEG) contains a listing of theses accepted for higher degrees in Australian Universities;
° AUSTRALIAN LEISURE INDEX (LEIS) covers material in the fields of recreation, leisure, sport, physical education, health, fitness, tourism and related fields,
° AUSTRALIAN ART INDEX (AART) visual art and artists from 1984, AUST.
° BUREAU of STATISTICS (ABST) from 1953,
° CUMULATIVE ABSTRACTS OF DEFENCE READINGS (CADRE) and others.
PRO-FILE INFORMATION users can call up on their Amigas the ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) world news wire service providing news and analyses of world events and quotes from major speeches and profiles of news makers.
TASS, the official Soviet newswire offers an insight into the Soviet view on international current events.
Other news wire services, including the BBC (Britain) and ASAHI NEWS SERVICE (Japan) combine to make the PRO-FILE Service. The computer package used to search Ausinet is STAIRS (Storage an Information Retrieval System) with enhancements by ACI, so it is only for Amiga 2000 users at this stage. Fee structure is mainly geared for the business user, with a monthly account maintenance fee of $40 applying to research databases with $30-80 per hour connect time, and about 20-25 cents per offline print. Business databases are $150 per hour connect time, and about 50 cents per offline print. ACI AUSINET Service, PO Box 42, Clayton, Victoria, 3168, Australia.
CTC DATABASE. This educational resource database contains The Macquarie Dictionary, Thesaurus, and other Macquarie publications such as The Macquarie Book of Events, History of Ideas, The Dictionary of Trees and Shrubs, Dictionary of Motoring, etc. and The Australian Encyclopeadia, Grolier Universal Encyclopeadia, E.R.I.C. Educational Resource Information Centre and others. Set up as a resource facility for students at high-school and university level, by Computer Telecommunications Corporation Limited, 11th Floor, 189 Kent Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000. An on-line charge applies, quoted as being around 25 cents a minute.
CSIRONET. An autonomous agency run by the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation. Facilities exist to connect home and business computers to the mainframes of CSIRO. The host systems are Control Data Cyber “supercomputers” with up to 400 million floating point operations per second (400 megaflops), with support for Basic, Cobol, Fortran and Pascal languages (written for the IBM, but with modifications should be available for the Amiga). Invaluable if large number-crunching applications are necessary for an Amigan’s project. CSIRONET, Clunies Ross Street, GPO Box 1800, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
CREDIT REFERENCE ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA. This database is not for access by outside computers, and for good reason. I’ve included it here so that Amigans have an understanding of the uses of data, and where data-files on business and individuals are kept. Banks and other financial institutions use CRAA as a co-operative agency to collect and process information on the credit history of their clients. Every time you apply for a loan (credit) with a bank or apply for a house to rent, a check is made with this database for your credit rating history. Information on your past loan repayments and financial history for the past five years is on file. Details of insurance claims, bank charge cards, all loans with banks and credit unions, business credit history and rental history are maintained. The banks, credit houses and insurance groups contribute information in exchange for access. If you are refused credit for any reason, you are entitled to see your file. It is a good idea for you to check your file from time to time as errors can creep into the system, such as someone else with the same name as you, or just plain wrong information. In NSW, The Privacy Committee is the public watchdog on the CRAA to ensure fair dealings and confidentiality. In NSW, the CRAA office is on the 3rd Floor, 44 Market St, Sydney, NSW. The NSW Privacy Committee can be contacted at GPO Box 6, Sydney, NSW, 2001.
INFO-LINE & MONEY WATCH. Two databases, at last count (May’88) still part of Fairfax’s Australian Financial Review. Money Watch is accessed through Viatel, while Info-Line is the Fin-Review’s inhouse information service which is accessed by their own researchers.
Info-Line is regularly updated and enhanced data on market trends, new products, biographies, backgrounders on many topics, takeovers and company statistics (no credit checks, although appraisals, profiles and financial analyses on companies are done). Info-Line researchers can access the huge Fairfax editorial and photographic library, specialist files, surveys and reports built up over 15 years, and their international press network, and they can also interrogate specific Australian and international databases like DIALOG, and SDC ORBIT. They are the Australian agents for the agency network SVP INTERNATIONAL, a 20-country member information service network based in Paris.
They can also interrogate the databanks of the World Bank, USGPO (United States Government Printing Office), NTIS, and OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). MONEY WATCH is available for home computer use via Viatel and contains information useful for the executive businessman in managing a stock portfolio.
NTIS, ORBIT & DIALOG. Three very large American databases.
NTIS NATIONAL TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE is the world’s largest technical information databank. Contains the latest data on every possible field of academic, industrial and institutional research. For example, NTIS publishes all the latest computer product bench tests by the US Defense Department, the world’s largest computer user. The Star Wars technology reports are there, as well as the latest CIA reports on foreign economies, agriculture and industry.
NTIS, an agency of the US Department of Commerce, is the central source for the public sale of US Government-sponsored research and development reports, as well as foreign technical reports and other analyses prepared by national and local government agencies.
The Australian government contributes with their reports in exchange for access. Offers American translation of overseas reports including many Russian titles. Nearly two million titles including the NTIS Bibliographic Data Base, Patent Data Base, Energy Data Base. Reports are generally $80 upwards depending on inquiry. Australian agent is Info-Line, but individual subscriptions can be obtained direct from NTIS.
DIALOG and ORBIT are all heavily sponsored by the US Defense Department. ORBIT is owned by Burrows, a financial institution. DIALOG is part of Locheed Aviation, with 200+ databases and over 100,000,000 titles or records -statistics, profiles & reports obtained from publishers, corporations, government agencies.
Australian agent for DIALOG Information Services is INSEARCH Ltd., Box K16, Haymarket, Sydney, NSW., in the University of Technology, Sydney.
Overseas addresses for applications are: NTIS, National Technical Information Services, U.S. Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, VA, 22161. USA; SDC ORBIT, Systems Development Corporation, 2500 Colorado Ave, Santa Monica, California 90406. USA; and DIALOG, 3460 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto, CA. 94304. U.S.A.
OTHER AMERICAN DATABASES. These are some of the databases in the USA, accessed by an international telephone call from your Amiga.
PLAYNET. A full colour graphic system, mainly for game playing and downloading. Includes electronic mail, teleshopping, public domain software, and general-interest lectures. Address: PlayNet, 200 Jordan Road, Suite 180, Troy, NY 12180, USA.
MICROCOMPUTER INDEX. This database contains abstracts from dozens of publications in the microcomputer field. It can save you time when seeking information on when and where articles are published. Write to Microcomputer Information Services, 2464 El Camino Real, Suite 247, Santa Clara, CA 95051, USA.
COMPUDEX. This mainframe computer is connected by the phone line to your home computer when large number-crunching problems arise. Write to: Source Telecomputing, 1616 Anderson Road, McLean, VA 22102, USA.
US CENSUS DATABASES. The US Census is counted every ten years, the last being taken in 1980. This database provides the raw census data. National Planning Data Corporation, PO Box 610, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
GLASNOST.
In the spirit of Soviet openness, here is a list of some of the USSR’s databases. No doubt it would be very hard to get a subscription and very hard to access, unless you understand Russian. The Soviets are upgrading the network of computer information databases (Perestroika is Russian for Restructuring) and increasing the accessibility allowing better flow and use of data. The network is for use of the Soviet military and now industry and business. The Russian telephone system is still primitive by Western standards which would cause problems in making a usable connection.
So, here is the structure of the USSR State System of Scientific and Technical Information.
VINITI is the head institute of SSSTI, the All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information containing world scientific and technical information on natural, exact and applied sciences.
GPNTB is the State Public Scientific and Technical Library – databases on the location of domestic and foreign books and periodicals.
INION is the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences – Soviet and foreign publications on social sciences.
VNIIPI : the All-Union Technical Patent Information. VPTB contains domestic and
foreign patent documentation.
VKPA, All-Union Books Chamber contains all kinds of Soviet publications.
VNTIZ is the All-Union Scientific and Technical Information Centre – reports on research and development, dissertations, algorithms and programs. VZIO the Centre for Information on Equipment – catalogues and information on industrial equipment.
VZP is the Centre for Translation containing translations of scientific and technical literature and documents.
VNIIKI is the Research Institute for Technical Information, Classification and Coding – standards, technical requirements, and VDNKH the Permanent Exhibition of Soviet Economy Achievements – exposition of new developments and products of Soviet industry, agriculture and science. There are 17 STI centres in the Ukraine, Five in Byelorussia, 5 in Uzbekistan, 14 in Kazahstan and 3 in Azerbaidjan according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC.
Data Breach
An international incident a couple of years ago caused great mirth amongst database researchers. It seems the Americans had contributed millions of dollars to the establishment and running of the United Nations library, which naturally is a big user of database telecommunications. Russians have held the top positions of the U.N. library for the past twenty years, so it came as no surprise when the U.S.A. found that the Soviets had been accessing NTIS, Orbit and other big American databases and literally taking home information on the U.S.A. military, industry and technology by the truckload. Congress quickly cut off funds and access, but not before the Russians had established a source of accurate information on the U.S.A. better than any spy could have supplied.
Researched and written by MARK ANNING, GPO Box 1539, SYDNEY, NSW, 2001.
Viatel mailbox number 266410490. Mark is studying Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney, and works for the Australian Associated Press (AAP).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ END OF DATABASES ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2022 update Please Note: the address above is NOT MY CURRENT ADDRESS.
Thanks to Amigan Software Abandonware Page for the transcription.
A foot note to this story: About a month after publication, I received the following letter from the Credit Reference Association:
Dear Mr Anning,
I have recently read your publication “An Overview of Databases” which was given to me by one of our Data Processing people.
Its contents were interesting and the piece on CRAA generally accurate and up-to-date except for our address which is now as above.
I have enclosed a copy of our latest background paper for your information.
Yours Sincerely,
Andrew Woods,
Assistant General Manager,
Bureau Operations.
°°°°°°
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