Building networks of European researchers: GISDATA on the Internet

The Internet is fast becoming an essential channel for communications and research and is likely to play a pivotal role in recent initiatives at the European level to face up to the challenges of an information society and develop a European data infrastructure. As the diffusion of computer networks in Europe has only recently gained momentum, little is known about the pattern of use and distribution of access. In this paper are presented the findings of monitoring access to the Gopher and World Wide Web servers of a European-wide research programme (GISDATA) collected during 1994 and 1995. The interest of this case study lies in the specific remit of GISDATA to support the development of the European research community in geographic information and geographic information systems and reduce the fragmentation and potential duplications of efforts of research undertaken exclusively at the national scale on issues that by their nature are regional or European in scale. The findings of the monitoring process undertaken confirm the potential of the Internet in raising awareness and disseminating the research activities of the programme. However, they also indicate the extent of bias towards English-speaking countries when information resources are made available via largely text-based navigating tools such as Gopher. By contrast the potential of the more graphically oriented World Wide Web to readdress this bias is demonstrated by the very significant shifts in the distribution of countries accessing the GISDATA Web server. Although further monitoring of access and research into diffusion patterns is necessary, these findings provide a first snapshot of current strengths and weaknesses in accessing network-based information resources in Europe.