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  Chapter Five: The on-line universe - a
  quick guide to time wasting  and the
  lure of the unread file. The Internet
  and beyond

  Some of the world is now connected by a system of computer networks which send digital

messages along telephone lines or across satellite links whose principal function is to transmit

telephone calls. This has its origins in an American defence initiative to provide alternative

means of communication in the event of nuclear war, but much of the development occurred in

universities who gained access to the network and expanded it internationally transcending its

militay origins. Now there are means by which many people can gain access (at varying cost

and with different degrees of difficulty). These services are free to the members of most

academic institutions and they provide an increasingly wide range of different services, briefly

summarized below. The researcher who ignores them risks expensive myopia. Unfortunately,

the networks suffer from a vast number of incomprehensible acronyms; this should not deter

anyone from exploiting the wealth of information which the networks can provide. In what

follows I give the briefest possible explanations, which are intended to act as a 'bluffers'

guide'. The serious purpose is to provide beginners with a vocabulary so that they can ask for

help from those experts whose job is to serve people undertaking research. Indeed just as

librarians are an under-used resource so too are the staff of university/college computer

services. It is always worth remembering that in broad terms they are there to help.  When

dealing with computer networks it is all too easy to let the jargon and the technicality of it

intimidate one from asking.  There are several possible responses: one can continue in the bliss

of ignorance, one can try to sort it out alone and ignore the work of others who have already

trod the same path for fear of admitting one's ignorance (a very English solution) or be resolute

and insist that the support staff (librarians and computer technicians alike) work to support you!

With that fighting talk,  I sketch some of the terms used

Electronic addresses and Electronic Mail







  The networks link computers in centres around the world, connecting local centres to the world

wide network. Most countries have a single network: in the U.K. this is JANET. The U.S.A.,

naturally, has several, one of the most important being Bitnet. In principle, the fact that more

than one network exists is irrelevant for a user. All the user needs to know in order to make

contact with someone else is their electronic address, typically in the form:

[email protected]. The model is that of the address on a letter. The

machines should, in theory, be able to sort out the rest. Unfortunately the reality is less than

foolproof. I shall now give a basic introduction to what is, in principle, straightforward,

although it can be complex in practice. The general network address of the university

mainframe computer at the University of Oxford in 1990 was 'vax.ox.ac.uk'. In other words,

the computer is the local VAX computer which is in OXford, it is ACademic (commercial

concerns with electronic connections to the academic networks have CO in place of AC), and it

is in the UK. Since the networks originated in the USA their addresses do not have a country

code at the end.  Some of the conventions differ in North America, for example, their academic

institutions are labelled EDU (for EDUcational)in place of AC, and they use COM (for

COMmercial) whereas Europeans use CO.  It is worth knowing a little about the addresses as it

can help explain problems - for example accessing information in North America from Europe

is appreciably slower in the afternoon when America is awake than in the morning when they

are safely asleep! Here the different conventions become useful: from the form of the electronic

address one can distinguish an European from an American academic, and commercial from

educational sites, and hence know when the best time to contact them may be.

Electronic Mail

Electronic mail (often referred to as Email) is the most basic service available on the networks

and often the most useful. This enables electronic text to be sent, for example, from Europe to

America. Depending on the length of the message and the time of transmission, it will reach the

addressee at best in half an hour, and at worst on the following day.  Typically an Email

message consists of the address is being sent to e.g. [email protected] (my current email

address), a line giving the subject: e.g. 'Congratulations on your promotion', or 'Please return

a book to the library', and then the message itself.  When you have finished typing the



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  message, you can either abandon it if you have changed your mind or issue the command that

tells the machine to send the message to the address you have given.  When it arrives at the

other end then it will sit in a electronic 'mailbox' until the recipient gets around to checking their

mail. Some people are keener than others at doing this.  In some cases a letter or fax has to be

sent saying 'Check your email'!  This, of course, rather spoils the point.  Others are assiduous

at checking frequently, and some leave their mail programs running continually in the

background so they know immediately when Email arrives.  Here we have left the technical and

returned to the social habits of real people.  Some people read and answer letters more promptly

than others - irrespective of the medium used to send them!

Once equipped with Email then several further possibilities arise.  The first, most basic and

most important is simply to use it to send messages to people - assuming of course that you can

find their (electronic) address - a task to which I shall return below.  But there are other ways

of using Email which are well worth exploring.

Electronic discussion lists and Netnews

Electronic discussion lists serve as newsletters, where messages can be quickly distributed to a

list of subscribers. A single message sent to 'the list' at its own electronic address is relayed to

the computers of all the subscribers to that list. The messages can then be scanned on screen by

the researcher (or not) and any parts of messages can be printed as a record. Lists enable a

pooling of information and discussion on a variety of different topics, and specialists from a

wide variety of subjects read and contribute to discussions. Submissions from people in the

midst of research provide insights into current developments. For example, much my

information about the history of the codex came from discussion on the 'Humanist' list in

1991. Included in the exchanges were discussions of the literature about early books, which

proved very helpful in guiding my reading in the subject.

The lists are divided between those which are, and those which are not, moderated. Moderated

lists are edited. Not all messages sent to it are distributed, and those which are published will

be grouped together by subject. (Of the moderated lists in the Humanities, some examples are

Humanist, Linguist-l, PACS-L). Unmoderated lists tend to contain long, undisciplined and ill-

informed contributions. There are so many messages that those of interest may be overlooked.



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Subscription to a list (whether moderated or not) is effected by sending an electronic message -

using email - to the appropriate host (the machine from which the messages are distributed to

the subscribers). To subscribe to the Humanist list, send a message to:

[email protected]

saying:

subscribe humanist YourFirstName YourLastName.

If the message said simply:

Help

or

Index


you will be sent some helpful introductory texts.

In fact the machines that host such lists (generically called listservs) are interconnected so that if

a subscription message, such as that above, is sent to the wrong listserv machine it will be

forwarded automatically to the appropriate host.

One effect of subscribing to a list (or lists) is that you will receive lots of Email (if a list is

busy). This can be good - especially if you are interested in a topic), and it is a way to find out

who is interested in a particular subject - you may then choose to write directly to one of the

individuals who have contributed to a discussion, or you can reply to the whole list, thus

continuing the debate. But if you find that you are getting too many Email messages you may

wish to explore Netnews instead. Netnews provides a range of more than a thousand different

subject discussions ranging from knitting and organic cookery through radical politics, and

pornography to marine biology and how to repair a redundant brand of computer... They

function very like discussion lists with one vital difference - there is no subscription

mechanism, and you have to go and look to see what messages have been posted. In that

sense they act more like public bulletin boards on which anyone can post a message. A variety

of different programmes are available that allow one to browse the netnews lists and scan the

subject lines of the messages that have posted. You can then choose which (if any) messages

you want to read. For subjects that you have an occasional interest in this can be an ideal way

of keeping in touch without becoming deluged in unwanted email. Another way (in some but

not all cases) is to read the archives of discussion lists - If you are not concerned with topicality






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  you can access the backfiles - and so could, for example, track down the discussion of the

Codex that occurred on the 'Humanist' list in 1991. I give some more information about this

below.

Bulletin boards

The description of netnews discussion groups as being like electronic bulletin boards leads

naturally to other, related services which undertake other functions of physical bulletin boards.

Rather like netnews groups these take the form of collections of information at a particular

electronic address and you must choose to 'visit' that site rather than the information being

posted to in the form of electronic mail.  The only difference is that as well as email discussions

bulletin boards often include other information as well, for example, reviews of books or

software, and announcements of many different kinds. BUBL and NISS are some U.K.

based Bulletin boards and Echo is a bulletin board for research funded by the European Union.

They publish a variety of files, ranging from conference and funding announcements, or

descriptions of current research, to essays discussing recent publications or research

techniques. I have obtained much of the information in this section from these bulletin boards

and discussion lists. Most of them have sections on current and recently completed research

projects, so they can help the researcher to keep up with current literature and research.

BUBL is dedicated to libraries and information science. It contains much information helpful

for anyone trying either to use or to run a library.

NISS  (National Information Services and Systems) is more general in scope and hence harder

to describe.  NISS provides a focal point for the UK education and research communities to

access information resources worldwide. From within the NISS service there are connections

to HUMBUL, BUBL and the Mailbase server in Newcastle to which I now turn.

Mailbase is a computer system which both hosts discussion lists and provides public access

to a wide variety of information, similar to, but of wider scope than, that carried on any of the

subject-specific bulletin boards just mentioned. There are equivalent U.S. services such as

Comserve. The electronic addresses of these are '[email protected]' and

'[email protected]'. An electronic mail message sent to one of these addresses saying




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  simply 'help' will get you basic information on the service. The machine will work out your

address and send a summary of how to use the service back to you.

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (often abbreviated to WWW) has transformed the internet over the last

few years by being able to offer some promise of a uniformity over the wide variety of different

databases, filestores or catalogues which are stored on a wide range of incompatible computers.

In an ideal world, all resources wherever they are in the world, and whatever computer

language they speak, should be open to access by researchers who need not concern

themselves with the practicalities of obtaining the information from them. WWW and some of

its predecessors which it has incorporated (such as Gopher) has brought us closer to this ideal.

The World Wide Web uses a format (called HTML in the jargon) which allows a document to

link to other documents (allowing hypertextual links), graphic images and (most importantly in

this context) to call up other programs without the computer user having to set them up.  There

are many different programs for most common computer types which can interpret the format

of the WWW.  Such programs are called browsers and once one (and some other programs

such as Telnet which is referred to below) has been installed on your computer then you can

connect to any part of the web and follow connections at whim. This is of immediate

importance when trying to access library catalogues from round the world.  WWW provides

both a route to find the catalogue and help to access it.  Once you have gained access you will

still have to deal with the vagaries of that system - so if Bogata university library catalogue

assumes all its users speak Portuguese then there is nothing that the WWW can do you teach

you Portuguese or their computer a different language.  At starting points such as OLIG in

Oxford (OLIG stands for Oxford Libraries Internet Gateway) you can access lists of all the

online library catalogues in the world.  By selecting a country, you can see a list of all the

catalogues available there, and selecting one of those (usually by clicking with a mouse, or

highlighting the text then typing the return key on the keyboard) the library catalogue will be

accessed (often via the Telnet program which will be launched directly by the WWW browser

you are using).




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  WWW also facilitates access to remote information by establishing the connections for the

user. For example, when making an enquiry to a remote database such as a library catalogue or

a collection of documents, WWW will contact the database which contains the information

sought, and connect it to your computer without you, the user, needing to know where to

direct the request. Often, if a user is connected to a remote database, delays, due to

transmission times, will be encountered when the user scrolls through files in search of data.

WWW attempts to reduce these delays by loading each individual screen, file or menu onto

your computer (which itself may be a lengthy process). This can be critical if you are paying

for connections by the second since you can disconnect and read the files offline at your

leisure. Some connection delays, however, occur when the user calls up another file, which

may be located in Newcastle or in Hawaii.

One further development within WWW has been the indexing of documents that have been

published on the web. Once indexed the documents are searchable. At a few sites one can

search though enormous indices of large amounts of what is available on WWW. The results

of your search will be pointers to where those documents are actually to be found. Granted the

limitations of keyword searching already noted above this has proved very successful as a

solution to the mushrooming of information made available via WWW. It also provides a

useful way to find email addresses - provided you are looking for someone whose address is

available on WWW, for example, on a netnews newsgroup then a search on a surname may

reveal the email address of the person you are searching for. Another alternative is to use

WWW to connect to the local centre where person you are searching for is based. Many places

now have searchable telephone and Email directories that are accessible via WWW. Though I

note that my own institution restricts external access to their email and phone directory, a

restriction I find baffling.

WWW has, justifiably, been a spectacular success in the few years since its introduction. Many

different computers now offer a WWW service so that from within the same environment, that

is, within their own computer, the user can consult programmes, texts or library catalogues. To

give a further example, the process of subscribing to discussion lists such as Humanist can be




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  managed using WWW so that by filling in a form when using your WWW browser the

mechanics of subscibing as described above can be greatly simplified.


Perhaps the most frequently encountered problem which WWW does not fully solve is that of

remembering how to disconnect from a remote computer. At present, unless a helpful menu

item is visible on the screen, it is necessary to work through a list of possibilities: stop, end,

exit, quit, finish, logout, logoff, log, done, bye, and goodbye. If none of these work it is

always possible to disconnect by simply quitting from Telnet (if that is the programme you are

using), restarting the computer or even unplugging the machine from the wall!  It is worth

remembering that it is very very hard to break a computer by using it - it may seize up so you

have to restart but after that it should be as good as new.  One attitude to unlearn is the caution

of using a new machine - computers are unlike food processors, drills or cars in that the user

cannot easily injure themselves or others directly through use.
  Electronic journals

  E-journals are periodicals distributed by computer network. They may be sent to subscribers,

in which case they resemble electronic discussion lists. Alternatively, a list of the contents may

be sent, allowing the subscribers to select articles in which they are interested. Some of the

existing E-journals are published on paper following electronic publication, others exist only

'virtually' in the electronic medium.


Having obtained some reading matter whether electronically or on paper and having decided to

read some or part of it there remains the task of extracting something from it in such a way that

later on you can avoid or reduce the need to return to the same source.  This often comes down

to making notes of what you read. Often the act of making notes seems to help fix things in

memory thus paradoxically reducing the need to consult the notes which would only have been

needed if they had not been made!








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  How, then, do we choose what we read? Here is a list of techniques, which is intended to be

suggestive rather than exhaustive.

Table: Factors affecting choice:

Novels and Poetry
  Title, cover and description on jacket
author
publisher
price
reading a page at random
reading first, middle and last pages
recommendation
having read a review
gift
limited choice on holiday

  Manuals
  As for novels PLUS:
Supplied with equipment
reading the contents page
scanning the bibliography

  Textbook
  As for novels PLUS:
abstract
course requirement
scanning the index
scanning the bibliography.

  Academic Journal Article
  As for novels PLUS:
abstract
reading the introduction and conclusions
citation reference
bibliographic cross-reference.

  Academic Monograph
  As for novels PLUS:
reading the introduction and conclusions
scanning the index
reading the contents page
scanning the bibliography
citation reference.
bibliographic cross-reference.


  Similarly there are (at least) six ways of reading a book:

  1) 'linear' reading: cover to cover;

2) reading through the footnotes or endnotes;

3) reading the contents page and then one specific section only;

4) reading the bibliography;

5) checking the index, then the pages referred to for a specific index entry;

  6) Opening the book at random and reading the open page.

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