Monday, August 24, 1998

Got A Question? From Poetry to Periodic Tables, 'Reference Desk' Has Answers By BIANCA P. FLOYD Need to do some quick or complex calculations? Looking for a one-stop-shopping site to tell you what's new on the Web sites of countries around the world? Pick a subject -- aircraft, astrophysics, bioscience, gems and jewelry, parasites and pesticides, even world postal maps -- and you can find information about it at Martindale's: The Reference Desk. The Web site contains an extensive index to on-line references, including links to -- just for example -- more than 6,700 on-line calculators and thousands of teaching files, multimedia tutorials, and data bases. The site, which is divided into "information centers," also offers links to information on such subjects as the arts, science, sports, and technology, among many others. If it doesn't have a link directly to what you're looking for, it can probably give you ideas about where to look. James Martindale, a consultant to the University of California at Irvine's College of Medicine, created the site in 1994. It is maintained on a server in the university's science library. "I started it when Mosaic first came out at the University of Illinois, and I said, 'That's it. That's the world,'" he says. Mosaic was the first software for browsing the then-new World-Wide Web. "I talked to some of the people at the university and said, 'Let me start a little tiny project, and I'll see what this thing can do.' Within the first or second month," he continues, "a couple of doctors out of Africa got into my site and said, 'That's gold. That's what I want.' And at the time, there were only a few things up, but it gave them more information than they ever had before." Mr. Martindale says he works on the site an average of nine hours a day, five or six days per week, adding new links, updating others, or removing those that are no longer available. "I'll take four or five different centers and go through them completely," he says. "I go through everything. There are thousands of data bases in there. It's really for anybody and everybody -- no matter what their ages, what their professions -- to find something they can use on an everyday basis, whether it's figuring out a mathematical computation or learning how to grow wheat better." Mr. Martindale says most people hear of his site by word of mouth. "I've been very fortunate," he says. "A lot of good people are around to help." He's particularly interested in providing resources for educators, who he believes must embrace the use of new technology in the classroom. He says on-line education opportunities pose no threat to the role faculty members play in students' learning. Only educators, he says, can teach students how to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources of information on line. "Their job is going to be exciting and extremely rewarding," he says. "Someone has to sit down and actually teach people how all this works. Someone still has to stand up and talk about this stuff, and explain what is happening." "The Internet is not radio, television, or a library -- it's a whole new form of interacting," he continues. "It's 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, and it changes every second, so that everybody has a better appreciation of information and knowledge. It doesn't replace anything. It just adds value."