National Institute for Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University (ANU), Canberra ACT 0200

Head:

Dr T. Matthew Ciolek,
Email: tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au
ph +61 (02) 6125 3124
fax: +61 (02) 6257 1893

History:

From August 1991 when the ANU was connected to the Internet till December 1996 RSPAS' online research information services were provided by joint RSPAS/RSSS computer services unit. In January 1997, in response to the ever-growing impact of the Internet-based communications and publishing on scholarly activities world-wide, RSPAS has established a small, specialist body called 'Internet Publications Bureau (IPB).' In January 1999 the IPB became an integral part of the Director's Section, RSPAS.

Functions:

The Bureau facilitates, promotes and supports the School's professional uses of the Internet for scholarly communication, information storage/publishing, and online research.

The Bureau is responsible for development and maintenance of several online scholarly tools. Among them, the most important are:

• Coombsweb - National Institute for Asia and the Pacific Server
  (est. Jan 1994, coombs.anu.edu.au, the world's oldest and most famous Asian Studies online research facility, and the most accessed [approx 5 mln hits a year] and most heavily linked-to website within The Australian National University)
• Asian Studies WWW Vitual Library
  (est. Mar 1994, coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-AsianStudies.html
  In late 2004 the site had a Google [www.google.com] rank #1 out of 12,200,000 Asian studies' online documents world-wide)
• Asian Studies WWW Monitor Electronic Journal
  (est. Apr 1994, ISSN 1329-9778, coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.htm, approx 8,000-10,000 readers world-wide)
• Pacific Studies WWW Vitual Library
  (est. Jun 1995, coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-PacificStudies.html
  In late 2004 the site had a Google rank #1 out of 15,000,000 Pacific studies' online documents world-wide)
• Pacific Studies WWW Monitor Electronic Journal
  (est. Apr 2000, ISSN 1443-8976, coombs.anu.edu.au/pacific-www-monitor.html, approx 1,000 readers world-wide)
• Coombspapers - ANU Social Sciences Anonymous FTP Archive
  (est. Dec 1991, coombs.anu.edu.au/CoombswebPages/Coombspapers.htm, an electronic repository of working papers, bibliographies, directories, theses abstracts and other high-grade research material produced (or deposited) at the RSPAS)

and, finally,

• a series of the RSPAS' scholarly mailing lists,
  including Pacific-Islands-L@coombs.anu.edu.au (est. Jun 1994; over 370 subscribers), and Tibetan-Studies-L@coombs.anu.edu.au (est. Dec 1995; over 620 subscribers).

Copyright © 1999-2007 by RSPAS, ANU. This Web page may be linked to any other Web pages. Contents may not be altered. The RSPAS does not control or endorse the content of third party Web Sites.)

URL http://coombs.anu.edu.au/RSPAS-ipb.html