Inter-Media Column. Internet Resources: WWW

INTER-MEDIA COLUMN

Internet Resources: The World-Wide Web (WWW)

by Michael J. Albright
MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship, v3#2, Fall 1995:44-61

In this issue, we'll explore the "killer app" that now dominates the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW was conceived by the European Center for Particle Research (CERN) as a means of sharing data among scientists and made its debut in 1989. However, the Web did not become a standard desktop icon until the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) unveiled Mosaic as a WWW browser in 1992. Within a year, more than two million persons around the world were regular Mosaic users, and the Web soon made us forget all about Gopher.

The primary architect of Mosaic was actually an undergraduate student employed by the NCSA, Marc Andreessen. In early 1994, Andreessen was invited by Jim Clark, a former Stanford professor who founded Silicon Graphics in 1982 and built it into a Fortune 500 company with $1.5 billion in annual revenues, to join him in a new venture taking the Web into a new dimension. Clark and Andreessen established the Mosaic Communications Corporation in April 1994 and introduced Netscape Navigator as the next

*Page 44*

generation Web browser in September. In November 1994, the company changed its name to Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape issued five million shares of common stock in August 1995, and in case we need any reminder of Netscape's clout in the Internet marketplace, Clark's own shares of Netscape stock are estimated to be worth over $500 million. Just two years out of the University of Illinois and still in his mid-20s, Andreessen is said to be worth more than $50 million.

How fast has the Web grown? According to Matthew Gray of the NetGenesis Corporation, the number of WWW sites grew from 130 in June 1993 (just two and a half years ago) to an estimated 23,500 in June 1995, and the number was doubling every five months. These figures would likely project to 50,000 at press time (November 1995), and indeed, WebCrawler, a division of America Online, counted 40,644 WWW servers online in late September. When Gray's data were collected, one out of every 270 machines on the Internet was a WWW server. These statistics only count the servers, not the "home pages" maintained by individuals, educational institutions, organizations, or companies. Lycos, Inc., estimates that by the end of 1995, more than 10 million individual pages will be on the Web. In fact, the newsletter Internet Index has projected (perhaps not so tongue-in-cheek) that at present growth rates everyone on Earth will have Internet access by the year 2004, so if somebody jokes that everyone and his Aunt Bertha seems to have a WWW home page, the idea may not be too far off.

*Page 45*

Why Is the WWW So Special?

The World-Wide Web brought the "point-and-click" technology of the desktop to the Internet, in the process greatly increasing the potential for interactivity. While such features as graphics, photographs, audio and video were possible with Gopher and other applications, the Web was the first to integrate them into a single screen. The use of multifont text also became possible. And perhaps the most dynamic feature of the Web was hypertext, the ability to link words, phrases, or graphics with other files on the same server or halfway around the world. Hypertext applications have greatly increased our ability to organize information from multiple sources and access any of it with a single click of the mouse.

What Do I Need to Know About the WWW to Use It?

The answer is not much. All three of my children (ages 19, 17, and 12) are experienced Web "surfers," and my 17-year old son quickly learned how to erase his tracks so no one could find out where he'd been. From time to time, I hear stories about preschoolers who are addicted to the Web. Easy access to such a mind-boggling array of Internet resources has become a major social issue. It is as easy to conduct a search on Playboy or your favorite four-letter expletive as it is current legislation or LCD panel vendors.

*Page 46*

Here are three topics with which you should be familiar.

Browsers. To experience the WWW, you first need to have access to software that provides Web access, called a "browser." More than 50 different browsers are commercially available. However, both Netscape and Mosaic are free to sites in the educational community, so commercial sources need not be sought by educators.

After just a year of existence, Netscape now dominates the market. A company called BenLo Park Research tracked 2.1 million visits to 1,727 Web sites over a two-month period between June and August 1995 and found that Netscape was the browser of choice for 83.5 percent of the users. Just 2.9 percent of the contacts came from Mosaic browsers, 2.8 percent from America Online, 1.8 percent from NetCruiser, and 1.1 percent from Prodigy. The wildly popular Yahoo WWW database maintains a script that randomly samples the contacts it receives from an estimated 1.4 million different users per week. For the four-week period ending November 5, 1995, 77.5 percent of the contacts came from Netscape and 11.7 percent from Mosaic.

One other browser merits some mention here. Lynx was developed by the University of Kansas in 1993 to provide WWW access on systems that do not support graphics. Lynx provides interactivity but only accesses the text files of Web servers. Lynx does not provide the point-and-click feature and cannot read graphics files. However, it is the best means of Web access for nearly five percent of Yahoo database users.

*Page 47*

URLs. It is extremely helpful for WWW users to understand the addressing system, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The URL syntax was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to provide a standard means of addressing on the Web. A URL consists of three components:

[protocol] :// [host computer] / [location of directory or file]

The protocol could be http (HyperText Transfer Protocol, the WWW protocol),gopher, telnet, ftp, or even file. (Netscape is a multipurpose browser that can also be used to access Gopher as well as Telnet and FTP sites.) The host computer is the machine on the Internet upon which the desired information resides. The third component is the location of the desired file or directory within the file structure of the host computer. For example, the online version of MC Journal is located at the URL:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/publications/mcjrnl/

In this case, "http" indicates WWW, and "wings.buffalo.edu" is the host computer at SUNY Buffalo. A directory named "publications" exists on that computer, and "mcjrnl" is a subdirectory within the "publications" directory. When you attempt to access a URL and get an error message to the effect that the file does not exist, delete the last component from the URL and try again,

*Page 48*

and repeat the process as many times as necessary until you do access a page that makes sense. Sometimes by working backward and then forward, we can locate information for which we initially had an incorrect URL.

Search Tools. Numerous "search engines" exist for searching the Web. The NetSearch button on Netscape is the best place to start, providing access to InfoSeek, Lycos, and WebCrawler, in addition to several others. Each employs different search strategies that are explained in easily-accessible information files. Another helpful resource is the All-In-One Internet Search page maintained at URL:

http://www.albany.net/~wcross/all1srch.html

How Are Media Centers Using the WWW?

Media centers have jumped on the WWW bandwagon with some enthusiasm. Like anyone else, we use the Web to locate information. For example, many major manufacturers and vendors of the equipment we use have Web sites, including:

Apple Computer, Inc.
http://www.info.apple.com/
IBM
http://www.ibm.com/

*Page 49*

Eastman Kodak Company
http://www.kodak.com/
Sony
http://www.sony.com/
3M Company
http://www.mmm.com/
In Focus Systems
http://www.infs.com/
Extron Electronics
http://www.extron.com/

The Tenet Computer Group has compiled a comprehensive vendor index that links directly to many manufacturer and vendor home pages:
http://www.tenet.com/vendodrs.html

Many professional associations now have WWW home pages. The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) has a Web site under development that will be made public shortly, and the Consortium of College and University Media Centers (CCUMC) is also expected to have a Web site soon. Other associations already online include:

EDUCOM
http://educom.edu/
CAUSE
http://cause-www.colorado.edu/
International Communications Industries Association (ICIA)
http://www.usa.net.icia/

*Page 50*

U.S. Distance Learning Association
http://gopher.usdla.org

In addition to MC Journal, many other professional journals are available in full-text format on the Web. These include:

EDUCOM Review
http://educom.edu/web/edreview.html
CAUSE/EFFECT
http://cause-www.colorado.edu/cause-effect/cause-effect.html
MacWeek
http://www.ziff.com/~macweek/

Several university film-video rental collections are on the Web, including those operated by:

Indiana University, Media Resources
http://www.indiana.edu/~iss/mediares.html
Pennsylvania State University, Audio Visual Services
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/avs/
University of Colorado at Boulder, Academic Media Services
http://ams.colorado.edu/
University of Washington, Classroom Support Services
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~classrm/
University of Minnesota, University Film and Video
http://www.cee.umn.edu/ufv/

*Page 51*

Other useful online resources include:

Distance Education Clearinghouse, University of Wisconsin Extension
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html

Copyright and Intellectual Property Resources, International Federation of Library Association and Institutions
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/services/copyright.htm

National Information Infrastructure
http://www.acl.lanl.gov/sunrise/RelatedInfo/Other_Projects.html

Higher Education Information Resources Alliance(HEIRAlliance)
http://cause-www.colorado.edu/collab/heira.html

Annenberg-CPB Higher Education Project
http://www.cpb.org/annenberg/highered/home.html

Institute for Academic Technology, University of North Carolina http://www.iat.unc.edu/

Many college and university media centers now maintain WWW home pages to provide information to their own customers. Typical features include staff directories, training event schedules, overviews of services, annual reports, listings of projects inhouse, online catalogs for film-video collections, policies and procedures, mission statements, copyright clearinghouses, orientation to media-equipped classrooms, equipment operating instructions, campus cable TV schedules, and links to related sites. A comprehensive listing of media center Web site URLs known to the author is appended at the end of this article.

*Page 52*

Additions or corrections should be sent directly to me at mikealbr@iastate.edu and will be appreciated.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Despite all this excitement, you might hold off on buying that Netscape stock. Last month, I hear a presentation by a high echelon National Science Foundation official, in which he said something like, "Remember how quickly Gopher was forgotten when the World-Wide Web came along? Well, a new technology is out there on the horizon that will make you forget the WWW just as fast....Hot Java." Beta versions of Hot Java are already available for Windows 3.5 and Windows 95, and a Macintosh version is expected soon. (Contact URL http://java.sun.com/ for downloads.) A year from now, I may be writing another MC Journal column extolling the virtues of Hot Java and reminding readers about when we used to surf the World-Wide Web. We'll see what happens.

Michael J. Albright is an Instructional Development Specialist, Media Resources Center, Iowa State University. His e-mail address is mikealbr@iastate.edu.

*Page 53*