Sandra Collins

Disc jockey

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

Sandra Collins is a heroine to dance music fans everywhere, from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Lima, Peru. The jet setting trance-music DJ is, according to Choler Magazine online, “one of the few American trance DJs with a global reputation.” As a female, she also is a great rarity in the male-dominated dance music and live DJ scene. Her photogenic good looks may have gained her entrance and notice in the boys’ club, but Collins proved she had the skills to remain there. Bouncing back and forth to opposite ends of the globe, Collins spins her trance-music mixes for thousands of dance-music fanatics at a time. Her scores of fans are able to take her live sets home in the form of her two mix CDs, Lost in Time and Tranceport III, and one album of original music, Cream.

Collins was practically destined for show business—her uncle is television producer Hall Collins of All in the Family fame, her godfather is “king of comedy” Milton Berle, and her mother, in her heyday, was linked with both Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. Collins began her DJing career in the Phoenix, Arizona, club scene in 1987. She was first interested in industrial music, but became a devotee of dance, DJ, and trance music over time. “I think it was a natural progression,” she said in an interview with Choler Magazine. “Sometimes, when you’re younger, things sound good because you’re kind of rebellious … and hard sounds sound good to you. Then your ears change as you get older.… You progress into something else.”

She initially drew attention as a woman on the male-dominated scene, gaining notoriety for playing “desert rave” parties, but before long she had proven herself as a legitimate DJ. Collins’s style of trance has been called “emotional,” a term that “reveals some gender stereotyping by the mostly male dance-music press,” wrote music critic Martin Johnson in the Washington Post, “but it refers to her occasional use of keening, on-the-verge-of-tears vocals over galloping rhythms.” “It was her incomparable skills behind the decks and her infectious love of the music she plays,” according to Choler Magazine, that earned Collins residencies at some of the most popular clubs across the United States in the 1990s.

She moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s and played regularly at the nightclub Sketchpad there from 1992 to 1995. She shared a residency with DJs Doc Martin and Taylor at the Los Angeles club Metropolis from 1995 to 1998. There, she spun alongside and befriended some of the biggest names in electronica: Sasha of Sasha and Digweed, Carl Cox, the Chemical Brothers, Paul van Dyk, and Orbital. She also met one of her idols, premier DJ Frankie Bones, at a Los Angeles party, and he invited her to play one of her first huge parties, Storm Rave, in New York City. She moved to New York in 1998 and spun alongside Sasha and Digweed, van Dyk, and Cox at the club Twilo. She has also played residencies at Chicago’s Crobar and Utopia in Las Vegas.

Collins admits that between being on tour and in the studio, she rarely has a chance to listen to the boxes of new releases she receives before they come out. But she also admits that she is not as fueled by the newest hottest releases as she is by what genuinely moves her. “I think it’s better to be naive,” she told Choler Magazine. “Just not know anything, just go on the dance floor and not know anybody. Because that’s when you really listen and you stop thinking.” In her down time, she listens to “pretty stuff,” she told Choler Magazine, including electronic composer Vangelis and electronic artists such as Global Communication and William Orbit.

Collins’s live sets can be as short as an hour-and-a-half, but she prefers three. On her CDs, however, she is constrained to just 74 minutes, the length of a CD. CDs represent “my live set as much as they can in 74 minutes,” Collins said in an interview with Choler Magazine. “It kind of represents the way I spin out live.… It’s kind of hard in 74 minutes, but I think I managed OK.”

Collins released her debut mix CD, Lost in Time, on the Los Angeles-based trance label Fragrant. The release earned her a nomination for Best Electronic Artist in the San Francisco BAMMIE Awards, and she was named Best Trance DJ in the 1998 Global DJ Awards. In 1998 she released the 12-inch single “Ode to Our”/“Red,” which sold out in just one day and was subsequently named Trance Release of the Month by XLR8R

For the Record…

Raised in Phoenix, AZ.

Played popular “desert rave” parties, late 1980s; moved to Los Angeles; played at Los Angeles club Sketchpad, 1992–95; shared residency with DJs Doc Martin and Taylor at Los Angeles’ Metropolis club night, 1995–98; released Lost in Time on Los Angeles label Fragrant, 1997; moved to New York City and spun at club Twilo, 1998; played six-hour set at Woodstock ’99, 1999; released Tranceport III on Kinetic, 2000; played with Paul Oakenfold, 2000; released Cream, 2001.

Awards: Global DJ Awards, Best Trance DJ, 1998; URB magazine, Best Female Artist, 1999.

Addresses: Record company —Kinetic Records, 425 W. 13th St., Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10014, website: http://www.kineticrecords.com. Website —Sandra Collins at Kinetic Records: http://www.kineticrecords.com/artists/colins.html.

magazine. Her biggest break came with the single “Flutterby,” which was released on the Hook label out of Scotland and became a standard in dance clubs. It also landed on the cornerstone house and trance music compilations Global Underground by Nick Warren and Bedrock by John Digweed.

In 1999 Collins played for her biggest crowd ever—80,000 people—many of them not even dance-music fans. She played a six-hour set during the opening night of Woodstock ’99 after electronic-music guru Moby. She spun a solid set that got the immense crowd moving. She was later named Best Female Artist of 1999, alongside Grammy-winning R&B and hip-hop star Lauryn Hill, by URB music magazine.

One of Collins’s shining moments took place in August of 2000, when she played a show with British “trance god” DJ Paul Oakenfold at the Roseland Ballroom in New York. The two were friends but had never played together. “Following him, I was a little bit nervous, but it was awesome,” Collins admitted in an interview with Choler Magazine.

For her 2000 album, Tranceport III, Collins was selected to create the third release in a series of popular dance-music mix CDs put out by the Kinetic record label. Oakenfold is a fellow Tranceport alum. Collins chose the music she wanted to use on the CD, and then the licensing process began. Some months passed before she was set to record her mix, and by the time it was set to go, she had tired of the music she had chosen: in the interim, she had overplayed in her live sets the music she had chosen for the CD. Days before the album was due to be finished, she picked new music, created new mixes, and submitted it, her fingers crossed that the record company would be able to secure rights to use her samples. Luckily, licensing was successful, and Tranceport III was released without a hitch. Tranceport III “turns up the emotions and lets the melodies and beats pulse with a vibrance that’s somehow both introspective and anthemic,” according to the Kinetic website. The album climbed to the top spot on CMJ’s electronic music chart in August of 2000.

Collins released Cream, her first recording of original tracks, in 2001. Martin Johnson described the release as “stellar” in the Washington Post, writing that “Collins displays an impressive arsenal of sounds and a solid use of dynamics.” Collins headlined the American Electric Highway Tour alongside the Fluke and Crystal Method, and she also appeared in a Coca-Cola commercial. She has been featured in such major dance-music and lifestyle magazines as XLR8R, URB, Option, Jump, BPM, Sweater, Mixmag, UHF, and Fix.

Selected discography

Lost in Time, Fragrant, 1997.

Tranceport III, Kinetic, 2000.

Cream, Kinetic, 2000.

Sources

Periodicals

Teen People, June 16, 2002, p. 82.

Washington Post, May 5, 2002, p. G2.

Online

“Sandra Collins,” All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (October 29, 2002).

“Sandra Collins,” ARTISTDirect, http://www.artistdirect.com/showcase//club/sandracollins.html (October 29, 2002).

“Sandra Collins,” Kinetic Records, http://www.kineticrecords.com/index2.html (October 29, 2002).

“Tranceported,” Choler Magazine, http://www.choler.com/articles/sandra_collins.shtml (October 29, 2002).

“Women in Dance Music: Sandra Collins,” DMA, http://www.dmadance.com/features/women.collins.asp (October 29, 2002).

—Brenna Sanchez

E-journals and E-publishing

E-journals and E-publishing

Electronic journal (e-journal) publishing on the World Wide Web is a flourishing field, providing users with online access to various journals. However, there is still a lack of standardization among publishers, and users need to be aware that most journals are still published in print, therefore titles available on the web often cover only a small percentage of a journal's back issues. Despite that challenge, the ease of use and universal acceptance of the web has ushered in e-publishing with a flurry.

E-journals have numerous benefits compared to their print versions. For example, most e-journals can be accessed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, making it unnecessary for users to visit libraries in order to make copies of articles. E-journals eliminate the need to track down missing hardcopies or wait for a group of issues to be bound together at the bindery to preserve them for later use. Another benefit is that many e-publishers allow users to download most articles. E-journals are also often an enhanced version of their print counterparts, with embedded links that add value to the journal. Some publishers make particular articles of an e-journal available electronically before the entire issue is available. One of the most important benefits is that multiple users at one location can access the same article at the same time.

Many libraries are making tough choices to save shelf space and labor costs by canceling their print subscriptions and subscribing to electronic versions only. However, they are finding that they rarely save money with this approach because many publishers require libraries to subscribe to the print version in order to access the electronic version. This often adds between 30 and 50 percent of the cost of the print version alone, if not more. Also, some publishers may force a library that wants both print and electronic access to choose one or the other—they may not allow both options.

Regardless of these problems, e-journals continue to offer several advantages. For example, whereas print journals are limited to traditional static text and two-dimensional graphics, e-journals can include sound, video, Java applets , or other multimedia options. References in articles can be dynamically linked to other works, if they are online as well. Articles can also list dynamic links to various examples and other sources, rather than just being limited to the standard citations or two-dimensional images seen in the print versions.

There are two primary criticisms of e-journals: their instability in the publishing market and the lack of a permanent archive (backlog) for many journals. Common complaints include Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that change frequently and servers that crash. Also, many publishers and vendors show little concern over the need to maintain a consistent archive of issues that are made available on the web. This is a matter of great concern to libraries, especially if they choose to cancel print subscriptions in favor of access to e-journals. Libraries need to ensure that all years of a title are available to its patrons.

Relationship to Traditional Research

Many scholarly journals are available as e-journals. In fact, some scholarly e-journals that have a significant impact on their respective fields are available for free. Attitudes toward papers published in e-journals are gradually changing, making them more accepted. At the same time, scholars continue to have concerns about how to view e-journals in the peer review process, the integrity of publishing in e-journals, and the use of such publications for tenure and promotion decisions. This process is evolving and changing, largely due to a movement underway between various scientific societies and universities to transform and have an impact on scholarly publishing. Leading this movement is an initiative called "Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)" <http://www.arl.org/sparc/> with the goal of "returning science to scientists."

Authentication and Verification

There are primarily two methods for accessing e-journals: by password and by Internet Protocol (IP) authentication. Passwords work well for people with individual subscriptions, but in a library setting, it becomes cumbersome to keep patrons apprised of password information. Therefore, although passwords are an effective way to provide users with access when they are using the journals from off-site, IP authentication is the most efficient way for an institution to provide access to its e-journals for users who want to access the information while on-site. If organizations use the IP authentication method, they have to inform the publisher of all the possible IP addresses for their institution. IP authentication works by providing the user with a certificate or token that certifies their identity within an organization. When the identity of the user is verified, the user is either passed on to the publisher's server or to a server that acts as a proxy. This method can sometimes be expensive and complex, and there is a need for an organization to maintain a local server with an access control list of eligible users. Another challenge is that some publishers limit the number of simultaneous users, which can present its own set of problems.

Another type of authentication technique built upon public keys and certificates for establishing a user's identity is X.509. A user is required to provide an encrypted certificate with personal information about his or her identity. This certificate is then paired with the user's public key information that can be seen by other servers. Certificates can be created with special software or received from third party organizations known as certification authorities. Certificates are sent by a web browser and authentication is handled by a server that accepts these certificates with an access control list of eligible users.

Kerberos is also an authentication scheme based on encrypted credentials. It was created at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is freely available. Kerberos uses hidden tickets that can be used over open networks for authentication. A central server with account information authenticates each ticket and then passes the user through to the resources on that server. Kerberos was developed with an important emphasis on security and uses a strong cryptography protocol that can be used on insecure networks.

Proxy Servers

Proxy servers are important for organizations with a dispersed group of users. An example would be a university whose faculty and students travel worldwide for conferences, internships, and other events. These people may need access to their university library's e-journals while off-campus, and proxy servers provide them with this common means of access.

A proxy server works by masking remote users with the accepted IP address needed to access an e-journal restricted by an IP address. Users configure their browsers to access a proxy server and are prompted to authenticate themselves when they link to an e-journal. Authentication may require a user's name, social security number, student identification number, or other unique piece of information that will identify a user. The most attractive feature of the proxy server is that a user can access a restricted resource from any location. The most important problem with a proxy server, however, is that some publishers refuse access to their e-journals by a proxy server. Also, if all users are funneled through a proxy server, it may create a bottleneck, especially if the proxy server goes down.

Technology and Software

The primary formats used for e-journals are HTML, Adobe Acrobat PDF , Catchword's RealPage, and SGML. PDF has become somewhat of a standard for many e-journals because it is readily available, flexible, and inexpensive. But there has been little agreement between publishers regarding the different formats.

Organizations

For computer sciences, some of the key organizations that publish e-journals are as follows.

• ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Digital Library: <http://www.acm.org/dl/>
• American Mathematical Society Journals: <http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/searchjournals>
• Cambridge Journals Online: <http://journals.cambridge.org/>
• Elsevier Science Direct: <http://www.sciencedirect.com/web-editions/>
• IDEAL: <http://www.apnet.com/www/ap/aboutid.htm>
• IEEE Xplore: <http://www.ieee.org/ieeexplore/>
• JSTOR: <http://www.jstor.org/>
• Kluwer Online: <http://www.wkap.nl/journal/>
• MIT Journals Online: <http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/>
• Oxford University Press Journals: <http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/online/>
• Springer LINK: <http://link.springer-ny.com/>
• Wiley InterScience: <http://www.interscience.wiley.com/>

see also Desktop Publishing; Document Processing; Educational Software.

Melissa J. Harvey

Internet Resources

E-Journals.Org. World Wide Web Virtual Library. <http://www.e-journals.org/>

Gibson, Craig. "Electronic Journals: New Resources, Traditional Research Habits?" Inventio 1, no. 2 (2000). <http://www.doiiit.gmu.edu/Archives/spring00/cgibson.html>

Journal of Electronic Publishing. University of Michigan Press. <http://www.press.umich.edu:80/jep/>

Public Library of Science. <http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/>

E-ZINES

E-zines are magazines published electronically, most often on the World Wide Web. The terms e-zine and Web zine typically refer to the same thing. Initially, a "zine" referred to a niche magazine targeting a small, unique market. However, as the number of mainstream publications that made their way to the Web grew throughout the late 1990s, the term e-zine grew to encompass both niche and mainstream magazines that were published via the Internet. In addition to online content, most e-zines offer interactive features, such as the ability to search current and archived articles for a particular topic or keyword. Many also house message boards, which allow readers to respond to articles. Some e-zines rely solely on advertising to make money, others charge subscription fees, and many rely on both revenue sources.

One of the most well-known e-zines, Slate, is published by Microsoft Corp. Roughly 2.5 million unique readers log on to Slate —which covers news, politics, and culture—each month. The e-zine was created in 1996 by Michael Kinsley, a former New Republic senior editor and co-host of CNN's political commentary program, Crossfire. Readers initially were charged a $19.95 monthly subscription fee. Eventually, the site grew to include MySlate, a site personalization feature, and a discussion forum known as the Fray. In 1999, Slate's managers realized that they were spending more money attempting to recruit paying subscribers than they were securing in subscription fees. According to Slate publisher Scott Moore, as quoted in a September 2001 issue of Econ-tent, "I projected what would happen to our audience if we made Slate free, given that we could take advantage of the distribution power of MSN. I modeled what that would do for our advertising potential, and it looked like there was a lot more upside with that strategy than continuing to slug along selling subscriptions, so that's what we did and it has paid off." Along with traditional banner bars, Slate also relies on larger advertisements and sponsorships agreements, whereby the e-zine posts links to other sites.

A major competitor to Slate, Salon is perhaps a more typical e-zine as it does not have access to the deep pockets and marketing reach of a firm like Microsoft. Salon was created in 1995 to cover political and cultural issues. Its writers included the likes of radio host Garrison Keillor and social activist Camille Paglia. An initial public offering in 1999 raised $35.6 million in capital and resulted in Adobe Systems holding a 15-percent stake in the site. Access to the e-zine was free, as Salon relied solely on advertising to generate revenues. Consequently, Salon was particularly vulnerable to the downturn in online advertising the e-content industry began to see in 2000. That year, the firm lost $19.2 million on sales of $8 million. In response, Salon began working in 2001 to develop and market a subscriber-based site with increased content and no advertising. The e-zine also began cutting costs by laying off marketing employees and implementing a 15-percent pay cut. According to BusinessWeek Online writer Thane Peterson, Salon also was at a disadvantage because it lacked the name recognition of online magazines published by industry giants like The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time. "Established print magazines can constantly remind readers to log onto their Web sites, so, like Slate, they require far less marketing expense than an independent like Salon. "

Another well-known e-zine, TheStreet.com, was created in response to predictions that the number of U.S. households trading stocks electronically, 1.5 million in 1996, would grow exponentially throughout the late 1990s. Hedge fund manager and New York magazine columnist James J. Cramer and New Republic Editor-in-Chief and Chairman Martin Peretz created TheStreet.com in November of 1996. Cramer and Peretz believed that many individual stock traders would be willing to pay for immediate market information, and they charged a monthly subscription fee of $12.95 for access to their financial e-zine, which included performance reports profiling Wall Street analysts, news and commentary on current trading activity, and other articles written by Cramer himself, as well as by Michael Lewis, a senior editor at New Republic.

Shortly after its inception, TheStreet.com began adding interactive features, such as the ability to track mutual fund and stock portfolios in real time. The 30 articles published each day were grouped into four sections: Fund Watch; Company Watch; Truth Serum; and Market Facts. Most articles totaled 800 to 1,000 words, compared to the 1,500 to 2,000 words typical of articles in most businesses publications, a fact which reflected the widespread belief that attention spans for online content were shorter than for print content. In 1998, subscriptions accounted for roughly 70 percent of total sales, while advertising from Charles Schwab, Ameritrade, Fidelity, and other brokerages accounted for the remaining 30 percent. When the firm conducted its IPO in 1999, the starting share price of $19 jumped to $75 during the first day of trading. The following year, TheStreet.com decided to make a general version of its site available for free in an effort to gain a mass market. To meet needs of more active investors, the company offered additional stock analysis content on a new site, RealMoney.com, which charged a monthly subscription fee of $20. A third site, TheStreetPros.com, was designed solely for industry professionals and charged a monthly subscription rate of $40.

Like most other e-zines attempting to reach a mass market, TheStreet.com found profitability elusive. Cost cutting efforts were launched in 2000, and the firm also began pursuing ventures not related to the Internet. Some analysts believe that the most successful online content providers will be those that use the Internet as one of many distribution vehicles. Other analysts believe that smaller, more specialized e-zines, particularly those that offer unique content, are more likely to remain viable contenders. According to an August 2001 article in BusinessWeek Online, "While both Salon and TheStreet raised tens of millions of dollars in flashy IPOs, each has struggled to come close to breaking even. . .just about everybody is still struggling with the question of how to make any money off the business model. . .that's where the new crop of upstarts come in."

Two niche e-zines that came close to profitability in 2001 were investigative news site WorldNet Daily, with roughly 20 employees and 450,000 visitors each month, and community-based spirituality site Belief-net, with more than 950,000 monthly users. In fact, during the first half of 2001, while most other e-zines watched advertising revenues slow to a trickle, Belief-net saw advertising sales grow 300 percent. Like most other e-commerce business models, the e-zine likely will continue to evolve as upstarts find new ways to succeed.

FURTHER READING:

Black, Jane. "On the Web, Small and Focused Pays Off." BusinessWeek Online. August 28, 2001. Available from www.businessweek.com.

Luskin, Donald L. "Walk It Like You Talk It." The Industry Standard. June 14, 2001. Available from www.thestandard.com.

Pack, Thomas. "Slate's Moore Has Faith in Online Ads." EContent. September 2001.

Peterson, Thane. "The Wolf at Salon's Door." BusinessWeek Online. August 7, 2001. Available from www.businessweek.com.

Stern, Gary M. "TheStreet.com : Gaining the Competitive Edge." Link-Up. February 1998.

Taylor, Cathy. "Takin' It to the Street." Mediaweek. November 18, 1996.

SEE ALSO: E-books; Electronic Publishing; TheStreet.com