As I understand it, AOL's hope for having the Smithsonian on line is to be able to tap into the SI's popularity to attract new accounts. At this point, I don't know that that is happening as much as they had hoped. The Smithsonian Legal Counsel spent nearly a year working out the details of an association with AOL. I'm sure that some form of compensation was was worked out. One "compensation" that I am aware of is the availability of a fair number of accounts for SI people involved in creating various SI features. The AOL/SI venture is not limited to AOL. Other avenues for information dissemination are likely. AOL is just SI's first stab at public information networking. _Richard Efthim, Naturalist Center _National Museum of Natural History _Washington, DC 20560 _(202)357-1503 fax:(202)786-2778 [log in to unmask]