As has been true for the past few years, the principal Internet trait
has been growth--rapid growth. The Net has penetrated the popular
conscience to an ever greater degree. In this rapidly expanding cyber-
realm, commercial organizations dominated the growth in the past
year, outstripping both governmental and educational institutions.
While librarians and information professionals have been most
interested in the commercial information resources, other commercial
endeavors have proliferated. Pizza, flowers, books, and CDs are but
some of the many retail products available over the network links.
Information resources from a broad range of non-commercial sources
continued to appear as well. Large companies and small businesses,
federal agencies and local governments, research centers and
elementary schools have established a presence on the Net with a
gopher server or a World-Wide Web home page.
The options for access to the Internet have grown by leaps and
bounds. Major consumer online services have made moves toward
offering increased Internet services, following Delphi's success.
America Online has been moving the most quickly in that direction, but
CompuServe has also announced plans for offering Internet services.
Many smaller Internet access providers have doubled in size, and new
providers have appeared. SLIP, PPP, and ISDN connection options are
becoming more common, as are customized interfaces. The easier and
more diverse Internet access options have been complemented in the
past year by more robust network interfaces and new network
applications.
Internet navigational tools multiplied and became available in new,
more powerful versions running under a variety of operating systems.
Freeware, shareware, and commercial versions of TCP/IP stacks and
network applications, ranging from telnet clients to complex e-mail
programs to multiprotocol clients, appeared on the market. In a similar
manner to the way that gopher clients became one of the most popular
network tools in 1992 and 1993, Web clients, especially Mosaic,
became the new favorite network tool in 1994.
On the information side of the Net, which is often the raison d'?tre
for the development of the new tools and interfaces, many existing
resources have been expanded, and plenty of new offerings have
appeared. A complete chronicle of the births, deaths, and modifications
to all the interfaces and databases is well beyond the scope of these
pages. Instead, the most important changes to network interfaces and
a very selected list of new or updated databases will be discussed.
INTERFACES
In the early years of Internet information hunting (that dim, dark
past of four years ago), a terminal account on a networked host
provided full access to the necessary Internet navigation tools: e-mail,
telnet, FTP, and a USENET newsreader. Even more recently, the
terminal account still could offer a functional access to the new
generation of tools, such as archie, netfind, WAIS, or gopher, although
the gopher image files could not be directly displayed. But this past
year saw the development of tools that require a direct network
connection or a SLIP or PPP dial-up connection for full functionality.
Principally, 1994 has been the year of Mosaic and the World-Wide Web.
One attractive feature of gopher is that it can run telnet sessions
and file transfers within its own menu structure. Web clients add even
broader functionality by being able to run gopher, telnet, FTP, finger,
and other Net tools from within the Web client. In addition, a WWW
client, such as Mosaic, offers attractive multimedia capabilities.
While Mosaic and other Web clients have been available for a
number of years, they were either limited to X workstations or only
allowed partial WWW functionality. The past twelve months have seen
the development of versions for Windows and the Mac. While some bugs
from the first generation of these clients have been worked out, the
software can still crash, and there is plenty of room for future
enhancements.
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
developed Mosaic, originally for X Window systems. In the past year,
NCSA has also released updated Mosaic versions for Microsoft Windows
and for the Mac. The most recent NCSA Mosaic for MS-Windows, at the
time of writing this column, is version 2.0 alpha 7. Some features still
await implementation and others still have bugs, but the product
continues to improve. The latest MS-Windows Mosaic is a 32-bit
program. While it will run fine with Windows NT, users with Windows
3.1 or Windows for Workgroups will need to install a freely-available
Microsoft add-on program.
The first public alpha release of NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh 2.0
was made available on June 10, 1994. With the announcement, NCSA
stated that "NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh has undergone a major
rewrite in order to bring improved functionality and greater ease of
use to our product." Mosaic for the Macintosh version 2.0 alpha 2 was
then released a few weeks later.
But Mosaic is by no means the only option for World-Wide Web
clients. Cello, developed at the Cornell University Legal Information
Institute, runs on MS-Windows, and does not require the 32-bit add-on
that the latest version of Mosaic needs. It takes a rather different and
innovative approach to WWW interface design, and it has its own loyal
cadre of followers.
Other companies and organizations have been busy developing new
W3 clients and other net toys. Microelectronics and Computer
Technology Corporation (MCC), under its EINet trademark has
introduced both a Web client, named WinWeb, and a winWAIS client.
WinWeb (URL: ftp://ftp.einet.net/einet/pc/winweb/winweb.zip) is
designed similar to Mosaic, but like Cello, it does not require the 32-
bit add-on. Another attractive feature with WinWeb is that its default
home page is the EINet Galaxy home page, with its user-friendly
approach to the matrix of the Web. There is also a button in WinWeb to
search EINet Galaxy at any point in your Web wanderings.
Another MCC product, the shareware winWAIS (URL: ftp://ftp.einet.
net/einet/pc/winweb/EWAIS204.ZIP), was chosen to be the official
WAIS client for use by depository libraries for their connection to the
GPO Access WAIS databases. While both winWAIS and WinWeb are MS-
Windows programs, EINet also offers Mac versions in the einet/mac
directory, named macwais and macweb.
Nevertheless, Mosaic is the program often touted as the "killer
application" that will bring the masses to the Net (or the Net to the
masses). Whether Mosaic, or any of its equally able cousins, can live up
to the "killer app" hype, remains to be seen. At this stage, all the
programs certainly have their fair share of problems. They crash
frequently; they can be difficult to set up and install; and depending on
network traffic, they can be downright sluggish.
One recent promising entry into the interface market is The
Internet Adapter (TIA). Most of the other new or updated network tools
do require a direct network connection or at least a SLIP/PPP dial-up
connection. TIA takes a different approach. With TIA loaded on a
regular terminal account, Mosaic, WSGopher, Eudora, WSFTP, and other
high-end tools can be loaded and run on your local machine. The
developers call TIA a "pseudo-SLIP" connection. The user should be able
to run all of the high-end software after connecting to the UNIX shell
account. It will still require loading a TCP/IP stack, SLIP software,
and desired high-end applications, such as Mosaic.
TIA is being marketed both to individual UNIX shell users with
single user licenses and to system administrators with host or site
licenses. Single users can order TIA from SoftAware at 310/314-1466
or softaware@marketplace.com. Those interested in site or host
licenses should contact InterMind at 206/545-7803. However, TIA is
still new software. TIA will only run on certain flavors of UNIX,
although development is underway for other UNIX versions.
DATABASES
New databases, FAQs, gopher servers, newsgroups, mailing lists,
and Web pages have all appeared in the past year. Many organizations
that previously offered a gopher server have now brought up a Web
home page. A somewhat random sampling of useful, interesting, or
unusual entries from the new crop are listed below, along with a more
detailed look at one of the major new entries: UnCover's Reveal
service.
These Web pages offer a taste of the breadth of information options
available to the denizens of the net. Some of the new informational
resources, such as the Lego home page (URL:
http://legowww.itek.norut.no/), are quite narrow in scope or of
interest only to specialists. At the same time, pop culture resources,
such as the Elvis home page (URL:
http://128.194.15.32/~ahb2188/elvishom.html), have attracted wide attention.
For the civic minded, a visit to Project Vote Smart (URL:
gopher://chaos.dac.neu.edu:1112/) is essential before election day.
Sports fans have many opportunities to browse statistics, such as that
offered by the Tennis home page (URL: http://arganet.tenagra.com/
Racquet_Workshop/Tennis.html).
Government agencies continue to view the net as an excellent
means for disseminating their information. The U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office's WWW server at http://www.uspto.gov/ is but one
example. For the student or vivisectionist, there is the interactive
frog dissection kit at http://george.
lbl.gov/ITG.hm.pg.docs/dissect/info.html, which includes views of the
frog in various stages of dissection. For art fans without the airfare to
get to France, the Louvre has a page at
http://www.enst.fr/~pioch/louvre/.
Internet finding aids have seen some changes, modifications, and
additions. A welcome change to an old friend is the new interface to
veronica. Implementations of the newer version, such as that seen at
the URL: gopher://liberty.uc.wlu. edu:70/11/gophers/veronica present
veronica servers in a ranked order. Those at the top of the ranking are
least busy and are thus the most likely to produce results rather than a
"too busy" message. The prepackaged menus can also assist in more
accurate retrieval, albeit from a still imperfect gopher indexing tool.
On the WWW indexing side, a new entry on the scene, the Lycos
search engine (URL: http://fuzine.mt.cs. cmu.edu/cgi-bin/pursuit),
provides an interesting alternative to the CUI Catalog (URL:
http://cui_www. unige.ch/w3catalog). Lycos uses a somewhat unique
search algorithm that gives greater weight to terms that appear early
in a document. The developers do say that they may upgrade the search
engine to "implement more standard Boolean operators."
UNCOVER REVEAL
Certainly one of the most exciting developments of the past year
came from the innovative UnCover Company: the "Reveal" current
awareness service. In keeping with UnCover's efforts to promote the
document delivery side of its business, Reveal has the distinct
advantage of being freely-available to the entire Internet community.
For all those librarians who have supervised a table of contents
current awareness service, using photocopies and routing slips, the
time-saving potential of Reveal is enormous.
The Reveal service sends ascii versions of the table of contents
entries to an individual's e-mail address. Reveal sends a message each
time a new issue from a selected title is received and indexed. The
message can then be used to order individual articles from UnCover. A
sample message can be seen in Figure 1.
Use of Reveal requires setting up a profile with UnCover. However,
except for name and e-mail address, none of the information has to be
input. For those who will be ordering article delivery from UnCover, it
will be more efficient to fill in the profile request as completely as
possible at the beginning.
Once the profile is established, setting up the service is as easy as
finding the periodical title in the database and entering reveal at the
prompt. Though some of the titles indexed in UnCover are not available
for delivery, the table of contents information for those titles is
available both in the regular database and through Reveal. For those
titles, "publisher forbids delivery of this title" will appear at the top
of the message.
There are still the usual UnCover limitations with the Reveal
service. Columns, book reviews, and letters may not be indexed.
Typographical errors are sometimes common. The ascii format, as seen
in Figure 1, contains the necessary information, but could use some
work on layout. Still, the convenience of free e-mail delivery is a
major step forward.
Another useful UnCover modification is the UnCover Complete
service. One of the major limitations with UnCover in the past was the
inability to order older articles that were not included in the database.
In the words of its own help file: "UnCover Complete allows you to
order items from any periodical listed in UnCover, even it if is not
indexed in the database. This includes things from earlier issues of the
journals in UnCover as well as things that are not always indexed, such
as book reviews and letters to the editor. To use UnCover Complete,
simply do a TITLE search and follow the prompts for UnCover
Complete."
AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Can the Net maintain this rate of growth? For perspective, look at
some of the statistics included in the "Internet Index #2" (URL:
http://www.openmarket.com/info/internet-index/94-08.html). Some of the
highlights include: 106 books listed in the "Unofficial Internet Book
List"; 1,600 copies a day of Mosaic downloaded from NCSA; and a
2500% WWW traffic increase between June of 1993 and June of 1994.
Altogether, 1994 has been an exciting year on the Net. With the new
interfaces and new databases, the Internet is becoming more firmly
ensconced in the online information universe. And that universe is
changing daily.
Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess,
Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332,
406/994-6563, greg@notess.com ; http://www.notess.com.
Copyright © 1995, Online Inc. All rights reserved.