THE MATHWRIGHT LIBRARY NEWSLETTER, January 2001, VOL 3, #1
A publication of Bluejay Lispware
James E. White, Editor

The official publication of the New Mathwright Library and Café:
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This Newsletter, our first of the new millennium, is addressed to those among our subscribers who are teachers. In it, we hope to discuss some things that may be of special interest to the educators in our community. If you have not visited the Mathwright Library in the last few days, please come by. As of January 19, 2001, our Library has a brand new face. We have streamlined and simplified the checkout procedure, and have reorganized the catalog system in order to make it easy for students to find what they want in our growing collection of over 150 interactive WorkBooks. We will describe a few of the strategies that we use to simplify access to the Stacks below. If you have not seen these changes yet, you might like to enter the Library through the "First time back" button to read about them in more detail. Also, if you find a static screen instead of the Library, please return in a day or so. As InterNic propagates the new Library over the World Wide Web, this new Library is coming to a browser near you!

The Library Stacks are now divided into 3 wings comprising over 70 Rooms of WorkBooks, organized according to Title, Subject, Level, and Use. We have added roughly 45 new WorkBooks, including a College Algebra Course sequence in the last month. Among the new WorkBooks are 8 WorkBooks in our 3D Gallery. We are excited about these new WorkBooks, and we think you will be, too. We use OpenGL and the expressive range of 3 Dimensional motions, with rendering of models in 16 million colors to support vibrant and compelling simulations in 3 dimensions. We will be adding new WorkBooks to the 3D Gallery as time permits.

Among the technical improvements to the website are these. You are no longer restricted to the "C:" Drive. Also, it is no longer necessary to "configure your browser" for WebApp, because we no longer use WebApp. WorkBooks all come with accompanying documentation now. As your collection grows, you will no doubt find it convenient to open the brief description of the WorkBook first from the Start Menu to recall what it does.

Each WorkBook is now a self-extracting archive. When you download it, you "install" it once, and it unzips itself, places itself in a directory (anywhere you choose), and creates icons on the Start, Programs, Mathwright Library menu both for the WorkBook and for the documentation that accompanies it, so that you may open and operate it on your computer whenever you like, without having to be connected to the web. And you may preview it, or print the documentation, whenever you like. Now that all of our Library WorkBooks are self-extracting, you may place the Player and the WorkBooks anywhere you like on your machine, as we mentioned.

We have also upgraded the old Library Player 2.1 with a new Player, called (somewhat anachronistically) the Library Player 2000. This new Player is also a self-extracting archive. You "install" it once and it is ready to use. It may be placed anywhere you like on your hard drive. The new Library Player 2000 is required to read the roughly 150 WorkBooks in the Stacks. You may, if you like, uninstall the Player 2.1 and then install Player 2000 in its place, otherwise simply install Player 2000 over it. You will continue to have access to all of the WorkBooks you may have downloaded in the past, and you will gain access to any WorkBooks that you may download from the Mathwright Library and Café in the future. We do supply the old Player 2.1 along with 6 demonstration WorkBooks at the Library for those who might still like to try it out before becoming members of the New Library and Café.

How have we simplified access to the interactive materials? Once a member has downloaded the Library Player 2000, the reader just goes to the Stacks to choose any WorkBook Titles she may want to download to her computer. One finds these titles in several ways:

• They are arranged by level of experience in 64 Subject Rooms and 8 Category Rooms. So a reader may select WorkBooks on a similar subject or category of use, or on the same or nearby levels, just by browsing the Room.
• Readers may use one of the Search Wizards at the entrance to the Stacks to locate WorkBooks by Title, Author name, Topic, Location in Subject or Category Room, Level, or by Keyword. These searches are both refined and flexible, and are much more focused than the searches that were available in the earlier facility.
• A reader may browse an alphabetical listing by Level
• We provide a pictorial "map" of the entire Library facility, with the locations of all the Rooms in the Library by name, so that a reader my jump into a room by clicking its hyperlink on the map. That map is called the Library Directory and may be found at the entrance to the Stacks.
• Readers may view an up-to-the-minute listing (in the Stacks) of WorkBooks arranged according to the number of downloads.

And what is the Café? This is a little corner of the Library where we will explore some of the more experimental developments in educational technology that may be of interest to our visitors, and we will also discuss some contributions that mathematics itself is making to the art of computing. We hope that the topics broached in the Café will continue to be explored in ongoing threaded conversations in the Discussion Room. But that is up to you. Please feel free to continue the discussions. The Discussion room is restricted to registered members of the Library who gain access to read and write using their email address. Since your email address is already registered with us, you already have access to the Discussion Room. Please feel free to contribute, or to ask questions. Visit the Library here on the web, and browse for whatever WorkBooks you might like to read. When you choose one, download it to your computer. When you do that, you may read it whenever you want, on your computer. In this way, you may build your own Mathwright reference library on your own computer and visit this website only when you desire to add to it.

James E. White, Ph.D.
Library Director