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NSF Gives UW-Based Internet Scout Project $3 Million Boost

June 16, 1997

Internet Scout With the help of a three-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), educators and students everywhere on the World Wide Web will continue to “surf smarter, not longer.”

The new grant was made in support of the UW–Madison-based Internet Scout Project, a suite of free web-based services that provide educators, students, and anyone else interested in efficient web surfing with timely and useful information about web sites and other Internet resources.

The primary mission of the Internet Scout Project, according to Susan Calcari, the project’s founder and director, is to provide constantly updated information to the education community and others about valuable on-line resources in the areas of research, general interest, and network tools.

“Our primary customers are faculty, students and staff at educational institutions, including both higher education and K-12, but with an emphasis on higher education,” Calcari said. “Internet Scout continues to be the only daily and weekly source for information about highly selective online educational resources that have been chosen and annotated by librarians, educators, and content specialists.”

The Internet Scout Project is based in the Department of Computer Sciences. Project staff work closely with faculty and staff in the department, one of the top-ranked computer science departments in the nation, to stay abreast of new technologies that will affect the Internet and its graphical interface, the World Wide Web.

Services provided by the Internet Scout Project include:

  • The Scout Report – Read weekly by more than 100,000 people, the Scout Report (now in its fourth year of publication) is a compendium of succinct reviews of the best new or newly-discovered offerings on the Internet.
  • Net-happenings – Established four years ago, Net-happenings is a daily guide to Internet announcements. Read by 25,000 Internet users each day, it provides detailed information about new web sites, news, and resources on the Internet.
  • KIDS Report – Produced by kids for a K-12 audience, the KIDS Report is the only Internet newsletter of its kind. Students from Madison, and Nederland and Boulder, Colo., select and review web sites. The newsletter is read by more than 2,000 students, teachers, and parents twice a month.
  • The Scout Toolkit – Comprised of the most useful tools available, the Scout Toolkit brings together selected subject-specific resource sites, Internet search mechanisms, web tools, Internet publications, and a popular column for users, all neatly and logically ordered and accessible through a simple web site.
  • Scout Report Signpost – Slated to debut July 1, the Scout Report Signpost is a cataloged and searchable archive of three years of the best of the Internet’s resources, as covered in the Scout Report.

According to Calcari, the new NSF grant to the Internet Scout Project allows not only for the continuation of a series of popular services to the education community, but also for the establishment of new services such as subject-specific Scout Reports for science and engineering, social science, and business and economics.

“The new award ensures that the Internet Scout Project will continue to provide information to the community, especially as we move into Internet2 and the Next Generation Internet initiatives supported by the White House,” she said. “We’ll keep people informed about the next generation of applications, and we’ll be at the forefront of research to develop new ways to locate valuable, credible information on the Internet.”