Archives and models repositories

[Bob L Eberlein]

The MIT System Dynamics in Education project has established an
internet server that will be used, among other things to archive
this list. The following gives some details on how that archiving
will be done. The server will also be used to allow list members to
exchange models over the internet.

The server sysdyn.mit.edu can be reached vie ftp, gopher and WWW.
Infomration from the mailing list is not, however, currently
accessible from WWW. The WWW address is http://sysdyn.mit.edu/

Details on its use:

The list is being archived on the ftp/gopher server sysdyn.mit.edu.
This server is devoted to a number of resources in system dynamics
and you may have fun exploring what is there. The portion of the
server devoted to this mailing list in in the directory sdmailing.
The sdmailing directory has the following subdirectories:

archives
This is an archive of all correspondence from the list and
general information about the list. The correspondence are
listed as YYMM-N.txt. For example 9501-1.txt is the first set
of correspondence for January of 1995.

models
This is a place where models can be posted by list participants
to make them available to others. The models are, by virtue of
being placed here, public domain. You can and should name
yourself as the author of a model, but any protection you might
have from a copyright notice is questionable. The models
subdirectory contains 2 further subdirectories

reviewed
This is a set of models that have been reviewed by me the
moderator and deemed to be of interest. This section includes
a file contents listing which models are here, their filenames,
their author and what they are about.

unreviewed
This is a set of models that have been submitted but not
reviewed. This is a public upload area for use by members
of the list. You may place a model here using anonymous
ftp. The area will be cleaned from time to time with the
models either removed, or put into the reviewed folder.

other
This is a place where other information of interest is being
placed. For example if you have a long conference announcement
or an article that is of interest you can post a brief description
and place the full text here. It has the subdirectories:

reviewed
Information the moderator thinks is of interest to the list.
There is a contents files listing what is here.

unreviewed
This is the public upload area for other information.

Getting Past Correspondence
To get past correspondence you can type

gopher sysdyn.mit.edu

select the sdmailing item, and then the archives item. You will
then see list of correspondence. Select an item to review it.

To use ftp you type

ftp sysdyn.mit.edu

Log in as username anonymous and use your full e-mail address as a
password. Then you can use cd to change directory, ls to list files
and get to get files. Fore example to get the 9501-1.txt file you
would type

your computer> ftp sysdyn.mit.edu
User Name (.) anonymous
password vensim@world.std.com
welcome cd sdmailing
welcome cd archives
get 9501-1.txt
quit

Posting of Models
If you want to post a model we ask that, when possible, you do it
in ASCII format. For Vensim models this means using .mdl format.
For DYNAMO models use .dyn format. For iThink and PowerSim models,
which do not have a ASCII export format, you should place both the
binary form of the model and the equations from the model stored
as text. When you place a model you should also place a brief
description with extension .doc.

When you post a binary model use the extension .binary.software to
specify its form. For example if you had a restaurant model in
iThink you would want to put the three files restaurant.binary.ithink
restaurant.txt and restaurant.doc.


Bob Eberlein
vensim@world.std.com