Ironically, while computer scientists developed the technologies that made the information superhighway possible, they have not had an efficient, electronic method for exchanging technical reports. These reports, submitted at the discipline's many conferences, often are the source of the hottest research findings in the field. But it can take as long as two years before papers are published. Previous efforts to make the reports available electronically were unwieldy.

The new forum is called NCSTRL, the Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library, pronounced 'Ancestral,' so named in the hope that it will help to inspire future generations of digital libraries.

With NCSTRL, authors are able to post their reports and colleagues all over the world will have immediate access to them by connecting to http://www.ncstrl.org.

"NCSTRL will provide the widest possible exposure for research results, while computer scientists in government and industry labs as well as graduate students and even undergraduates will be able to call up research results not yet available in printed form," said Alan Selman, professor and chair of computer science at UB and a member of the team that created NCSTRL.

The NCSTRL project has grown rapidly from the experimental digital library efforts undertaken during the past few years, which are the result of projects funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and the National Science Foundation.

NCSTRL was developed by a team from UB, Cornell University, Xerox Corp., the University of Southern California, Stanford University, Old Dominion University, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and government agencies.

"NCSTRL is not primarily about technology," said Barry Leiner, associate director of ARPA's Information Technology Office. "It's about creating a new capability in this country and building the organizational and policy framework to support it."

Selman pointed out that for computer science researchers, particularly those at colleges that do not have a strong research tradition, or who work in industry, such a service will be invaluable. Users can search by author, title or keyword, bringing up well-formatted, readable abstracts and papers, which can be viewed one page at a time or all the pages at once. The reports may then be downloaded.

To contribute to NCSTRL, computer science departments and research labs may download software over the network at no cost. Once software is installed, it takes minutes for authors to post formatted papers to the library. UB computer scientists who wish to post computer science technical reports to NCSTRL can contact Alan Selman at 645-3180 ext. 104.