Proposal for Moving the HCI Bibliography to ACM.ORG
Gary Perlman, Director, The HCI Bibliography Project
DRAFT FOR SIGCHI EC COMMENT 30 August 1996
Document URL:
http://www.acm.org/~perlman/bibprop.htm.
Table of Contents
Gary Perlman,
founder and director of the HCI Bibliography (HCIBIB),
proposes to move the HCIBIB from Ohio State University to ACM.ORG,
much as the
SIGGRAPH Bibliography
is offered via the SIGGRAPH.ORG site.
Currently, the project can be accessed at:
http://www.hcibib.org/
- Benefits
-
- would allow the HCIBIB to continue being offered as
a free database that is widely available
(Gary Perlman has left OSU, so space will no longer
be provided to the HCIBIB)
- would more closely align the HCIBIB with SIGCHI,
which has provided financial support to the project
- would help promote ACM/SIGCHI as THE
place to go for HCI, for both members and non-members
(future members)
- might allow the addition of value for members
(e.g., search instead of simple downloads for non-members)
- Costs
-
- About 50-100 megabytes of space will be needed
on ACM.ORG, primarily for the production files,
as the released files comprise about 15 megabytes
(space is currently no problem, and is a small cost)
- Some CPU cycles will be taken by the presence,
especially initially as browsers surf to a new site,
but most cycles will be used by a search capability,
if provided.
Minimal CPU cycles will be needed for database production
as this work is done primarily on a Mac Workstation
donated to the project by Apple.
- Contingencies
-
- ACM may object to offering free information on its server,
so another home might have to be found
- Publishers (copyright holders) may object
to the move from OSU to ACM because ACM
is a publisher/competitor, but:
- publishers will be given the opportunity
to pull their materials,
even though it will mean that they will become
less visible because of the move
- publishers should complain less if
ACM maintains the same free-access
policies as the HCIBIB
- Other SIGs, e.g., SIGGRAPH,
which has a large semi-official bibliography,
may want to mount their bibliographies on ACM.ORG
(although SIGGRAPH may be a bad example
because it moved onto its own server)
The HCI Bibliography (HCIBIB) has been on the Internet since about 1990
and with over 12,000 bibliographic entries, most with abstracts,
has been a primary source of bibliographic information
for the HCI community.
There are over 500 registered users on a mailing list,
representing perhaps 10 times that many users.
SIGCHI has funded part of the development of the HCIBIB,
first by funding a graduate student for a year to help
organize the project, and later through the Chair's Discretionary Fund
to provide a flatbed scanner for the project.
The most immediate motivation is that I have left OSU,
and the HCI Bibliography needs a new home.
Another motivation is that the performance and features of
the OSU CIS servers have been inadequate,
and there have been discussions of moving the HCIBIB to ACM for years.
The HCIBIB has been available primarily via ftp,
and the OSU CIS ftp server often has sever performance problems.
The CIS Web server has often had performance problems, too.
Given that ACM SIGCHI has funded the HCIBIB, and that it
serves the HCI community
(a community SIGCHI wishes to continue to serve),
I think it makes sense for the HCIBIB to move to ACM.ORG
over other potential sites
(e.g., other universities,
my current employer OCLC,
its own server).
Stu Zweben (past ACM President and OSU CIS chair),
offered his view that the HCIBIB has, in his mind,
always been more associated with SIGCHI than OSU.
Another ACM SIG, SIGGRAPH, offers a similar free service,
at its web site: the
ACM SIGGRAPH Online Bibliography Database.
The SIGGRAPH Bibliography, like the SIGGRAPH web site,
is on the SIGGRAPH server, not the ACM server.
As an ACM SIGCHI member and officer (Vice Chair for Publications, 1995-97),
I believe it is important that the ACM Internet presence
be able to offer its members and technical communities what they need,
so that they do not perceive a need to create their own servers.
In addition to simply providing the data in the HCIBIB,
the Web server at ACM.ORG could provide more functionality,
such as a search service
(which the OSU CIS staff have been unwilling to allow),
or alternative display formats.
This would further enhance SIGCHI's role
as THE place to go for HCI information.
A search service added to to database file access
might be used as a way to promote ACM/SIGCHI membership
by being available only to ACM/SIGCHI members
(and perhaps also be freely available to users in .edu or similar domains)
after being available for free on a trial basis.
Limiting access to ACM/SIGCHI members would help justify
a potentially larger load on the ACM server.
Note that the database itself must
be distributed free of charge because it is part
of the agreement with copyright holders
(a part that helped them permit the HCIBIB's royalty free use of their data).
The HCI Bibliography Project has obtained written permission
from all publishers for which it provides abstracts of publications.
Moving the HCI Bibliography Project to ACM.ORG would allow ACM.ORG
to provide this service (with the provision that there could be
no charge for the service, as per the license agreements).
Because of ACM's non-profit status, there should be no complaints
from publishers, but in case they might complain, they would be
warned in writing in advance of the move,
and given the opportunity to pull out of the HCI Bibliography.
Given the comprehensive nature of the HCI Bibliography,
publishers should be willing to
continue to allow royalty free distribution of abstracted entries
because it serves as a form of free advertising for their publications.
Previously, some publishers who have been reluctant to grant permissions,
eventually granted permission after getting letter of support
from their editorial boards (who are HCIBIB users).
The license with publishers contains the condition that there can be
no charge for the HCIBIB.
ACM may object to this condition, because
presumably, it would mean that access to the files could not be
restricted to members only.
(The reason for the free-distribution
condition is that it allowed the HCIBIB to operate without a budget;
if we charged for the HCIBIB, the publishers would expect a payment,
and the basic nature of the project would change, possibly to one
that could not afford to support itself.)
I propose that ACM SIGCHI distribute the HCIBIB database files,
free of charge and without access restrictions,
via two mechanisms:
- WWW: Linked into the
ACM SIGCHI Website
- Listserv: Via the ACM listserv
as HCIBIB@ACM.ORG
or possibly as HCIBIB-CHI@ACM.ORG
(to match the SIGCHI listserv conventions).
The HCIBIB list would be moderated and allow:
- requests for files
- communication with the HCIBIB staff (Gary Perlman)
- subscription to occasional newsletters
- queries, if search facilities are provided
Additionally, I propose that:
- ACM set up an hcibib
login
on turing.acm.org,
with email address (hcibib@acm.org)
being directed to the
ACM listserv
The above would be offered freely to all Internet users.
If search capabilities were added,
the decision of access restrictions would be left to the
SIGCHI Executive Committee,
based in part on feasibility recommendations from
the
SIGCHI Information Director,
and the
ACM Network Information Manager.
The main costs are in space and in potential impact on the performance
of the Web and listservers.
We do not have good statistics on accesses
to the HCIBIB because most accesses have been via anonymous ftp, with
is not tracked by the OSU CIS servers. The existing listserv for the
HCIBIB gets an average of less than one request per day for an average
of 5-10 files. Given the low cost of storage and the currently minimal
listserv load, the main risk is in load on the ACM Web server. Until
there is a perceived problem, I recommend gathering data on number of
accesses and load impact, so initially, the cost estimates are at most
in the hundreds of dollars.
Size of the HCI Bibliography
- 13 meg in released form, without indexes
- about 50 meg more in production form
Server Traffic for the HCI Bibliography
- No stats from OSU-CIS servers.
- Expected traffic will depend on service level:
| File Access
| Search
|
---|
Listserv
| minimal traffic
(need to check for huge requests (that may fail))
| potentially high
(may want to restrict to SIGCHI members,
.edu domains, and/or restrict access
to certain times of day/night)
|
Web
| minimal
| potentially high
(may need to restrict to SIGCHI members)
maybe we can get stats from the searchable HCIBIB at
Graz,
or from accesses to the
SIGGRAPH Bibliography
|