The simplest way of explaining the Internet is to call it "the network of networks." It's the connection of computer networks around the world into one entity, so to speak. It's not one big computer, but rather numerous networked computers connected together.
When you dial into your Internet service provider (AOL, Earthlink, etc) from home, you are essentially connecting your computer to a network. If you are on campus you connect to the Internet through your school's network, which is connected to the larger Internet network through Peachnet, which is the electronic highway for all educational institutions and libraries throughout the state of Georgia. The "backbone" of all these connections is what you might hear referred to as the "information superhighway."
The Internet started in the 1960s as a way for government researchers to share information. Computers in the '60s were large and immobile and in order to make use of information stored in any one computer, one had to either travel to the site of the computer or have magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system.
Another catalyst in the formation of the Internet was the heating up of the Cold War. The Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred the U.S. Defense Department to consider ways information could still be disseminated even after a nuclear attack. This eventually led to the formation of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the network that ultimately evolved into what we now know as the Internet. ARPANET was a great success but membership was limited to certain academic and research organizations who had contracts with the Defense Department. In response to this, other networks were created to provide information sharing.
January 1, 1983 is considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.
The image above is a scale model of the UNIVAC I (the name stood for Universal Automatic Computer) which was delivered to the Census Bureau in 1951. It weighed some 16,000 pounds, used 5,000 vacuum tubes, and could perform about 1,000 calculations per second. It was the first American commercial computer, as well as the first computer designed for business use. (Business computers like the UNIVAC processed data more slowly than the IAS-type machines, but were designed for fast input and output.) The first few sales were to government agencies, the A.C. Nielsen Company, and the Prudential Insurance Company. The first UNIVAC for business applications was installed at the General Electric Appliance Division, to do payroll, in 1954. By 1957 Remington-Rand (which had purchased the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950) had sold forty-six machines.
There's more to the Internet than the World Wide Web
When we think of the Internet we often think only of the World Wide Web. The Web is one of several ways to retrieve information from the Internet. These different types of Internet connections are known as protocols. You could use separate software applications to access the Internet with each of these protocols, though you probably wouldn't need to. Many Internet Web browsers allow users to access files using most of the protocols. Following are three categories of Internet services and examples of types of services in each category.
File retrieval protocols
This type of service was one of the earliest ways of retrieving information from computers connected to the Internet. You could view the names of the files stored on the serving computer, but you didn't have any type of graphics and sometimes no description of a file's content. You would need to have advanced knowledge of which files contained the information you sought.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
This was one of the first Internet services developed and it allows users to move files from one computer to another. Using the FTP program, a user can logon to a remote computer, browse through its files, and either download or upload files (if the remote computer allows). These can be any type of file, but the user is only allowed to see the file name; no description of the file content is included. You might encounter the FTP protocol if you try to download any software applications from the World Wide Web. Many sites that offer downloadable applications use the FTP protocol.
An example of a FTP Protocol Window:
Gopher
Gopher offers downloadable files with some content description to make it easier to find the file you need. The files are arranged on the remote computer in a hierarchical manner, much like the files on your computer's hard drive are arranged. This protocol isn't widely used anymore, but you can still find some operational gopher sites.
An example of a Gopher Window:
Telnet
You can connect to and use a remote computer program by using the telnet protocol. Generally you would telnet into a specific application housed on a serving computer that would allow you to use that application as if it were on your own computer. Again, using this protocol requires special software.
The following are external links and will open in pop-up windows:
These are the messaging protocols that allow users to communicate both asynchronously (sender and receiver aren't required to both be connected to the Internet at the same time; e.g. email) and synchronously (as with chatting in "real time").
Email
This method of Internet communication has become the standard. A main computer acts as a "post office" by sending and receiving mail for those who have accounts. This mail can be retrieved through any number of email software applications (MS Outlook, Eudora, etc.) or from Web based email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail). Email is an example of asynchronous Internet communication.
Email also provides the ability to access email lists. You can subscribe to an email list covering any number of topics or interests and will receive messages posted by other subscribers. Email communities evolve from interaction between subscribers who have similar interests or obsessions.
Usenet
Usenet is something like a bulletin board or an email list without the subscription. Anyone can post a message to or browse through a Usenet newsgroup. Usenet messages are retained on the serving computer only for a predetermined length of time and then are automatically deleted, whereas email list messages are retained on the serving computer until the account holder downloads them. Many email applications, as well as Web browsers, allow you to set up Usenet newsgroup accounts.
IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
This protocol allows for synchronous communication: users on different computers anywhere in the world can communicate in "real time" or simultaneously. You can instantly see a response to a typed message by several people at the same time. This protocol requires a special software application that can be downloaded from the Web, generally for free.
The following are external links and will open in pop-up windows:
The World Wide Web is the new kid on the block having only been developed in the late 1980s by the European Lab for Particle Physics in Switzerland. This Internet protocol was quickly embraced by the public and has become the most popular way to provide and obtain information from the Internet. The Web offers not only access to files to download, but offers a way to jump from site to site through a series of connecting hyperlinks.
The most distinguishing feature of the Web is the way that text is formatted. A series of "tags" is used to encode and format text, graphics, animation, sound, and other types of files. These tags are called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). These HTML files appear on your computer screen as determined by the tags used in its coding. You can see the "source" HTML coding for any Web page by choosing to "View Source" from your browser's menu bar.
Most browsers allow for access through FTP, Gopher, telnet, and email as well as through the hypertext transfer protocol, although installation of helper applications may be required. These are programs that work with the browser and allow access to a variety of protocols and file types.
A browser is an application you use to view files on the World Wide Web. There are text or terminal-based browsers (such as Lynx) that allow you to view only the text of a file on the Web. Most browsers now are graphical browsers that can be used to view text, graphics, and other multimedia information.
There are many types of Web browsers available, but the most widely used are MS Internet Explorer and Netscape. Both claim to be better and faster than the other, but the choice of which one to use usually becomes a personal one. Because some Web pages are created for specific browsers, it can be important which browser you use. Web pages may look different when accessed by different browsers.
Browsers
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer holds the lion's share of the browser usage today, but it came into the game later than its main competitor.
Microsoft has met with a good deal of criticism in recent years concerning Internet Explorer because of its alleged intent to make IE an integral and necessary element of the Windows operating system. Competitors complained that Microsoft tries to lock them out of the market by making IE the only Web browser effectively usable by the Windows system.
Netscape
Netscape was one of the first commercial browsers on the scene and dominated the browser market until Microsoft got serious about Internet Explorer. There are some Internet users who are fiercely loyal to Netscape and there are sites on the Web that are best viewed using Netscape.
In either of these browsers, if you want to save a Web site that you find useful and want to return to, try using the Favorites (MS Internet Explorer) or Bookmarks (Netscape) function found on the menu bars at the top of the browser screen.
The following are external links and will open in pop-up windows:
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
The Uniform Resource Locator or URL is the "address" of a computer connected to the Internet. While surfing the Web, you'll notice that there is an address or location box at the top of your browser. It's here that you'll see an individual site's address displayed. This address allows you to find the site again, should you forget to bookmark it. You can simply type the URL into the address box, press the Enter key on your computer keyboard and you'll be taken back to the site of the address.
The general format of a Web address is as follows:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
The http in the address stands for "hypertext transfer protocol", the protocol for the World Wide Web, and it tells your browser to look for a site on the Web. A URL could also appear as:
ftp://12.456.789
or
gopher://gopher.uzxy.edu.
The first part of the URL before the colon tells the browser what type of protocol to use. The colon and two back slashes are standard to all URLs. Commonly, the letters WWW (World Wide Web) appear after the two back slashes in many Web addresses, but other letters are also used.
After the first dot, or period, in the URL, is the name of the particular computer followed by another dot and what is known as the domain (.com, .edu, .gov, etc.). The domain indicates the type of group or organization using the address. For instance, all educational institutions have a URL that ends with the domain of .edu.
The vast amount of information available on the Internet can be dizzying. Some authorities estimate the number of documents on the Internet to be in the range of 800 million. Others say the number is unknowable. Fortunately, there are tools available that will sort through the mass of information: search engines or search directories.
Search engines collect information from Web sites and then, more or less, just dump that information into a database. There's more information to choose from in a search engine, but it's more difficult to retrieve relevant information.
Search directories try to impose some sense of order on the information they collect and you're more likely to find information relevant to your research topic, but they don't offer the massive amounts of information that you would find with a search engine. The sites collected are viewed by humans who make decisions about what subject categories the sites might fit into.
Search engines
Search engines are really just massive databases in which information from Internet documents are stored. The information in these databases is collected using a computer program (called a "spider" or a "robot") that scans the Internet and gathers information about individual documents. These special programs work automatically to find documents or they are asked by a creator of a Web site to visit the site to be included in a database.
When you do a search in a search engine, the order in which the results are listed also varies between search engines. Many search engines list the results using relevance ranking. Factors such as:
how often your search terms are on the Web page;
where they are located on the page; and,
how many other Web pages link to the page
...influence how high on the list of hits a page is listed. Many search engines allow Web sites to pay to have their pages listed higher in the results.
There are hundreds of these search engines available on the Web, but they all work in unique ways to collect and organize the information found. The information from Web sites might be gathered from all the words in a site, just the first few sentences in the body of a site, or only from the title or metatags (hidden descriptors of a site's content). Different search engines collect different information, that's why you'll get different results from the same search from different search engines.
Search directories
Directories are best used when you are looking for information that is easily classified, such as "Universities and Colleges in Georgia." You can find the information you need without even typing in a search, but by browsing the directory, starting with a very broad subject category (Education) and working your way through the directory until you come to individual listings for schools in Georgia. You can do the usual search as well, but directories don't collect the same range of sites that a search engine would so you wouldn't be tapping into the wealth of information that you can get from a search engine.
GALILEO also has a database of useful Web sites that are evaluated by educators. These sites are not submitted by the developer nor are they harvested by spiders. They are chosen deliberately for their usefulness for research in the curriculum of the University System of Georgia.
Metasearch engines
These type of search services offer sort of a "one-stop shopping" to the Internet. You can form one search and a metasearch service will send the search to several other search engines and directories simultaneously so that you get the results from all of them in one place. The only problem with this is that you only get the first few results from each listing. If the site you're looking for happens to be listed in the 10th position in a search services results list and the metasearch engine only provides the first 5 results from that list, then you won't find the site you need. If you're only trying to get a general idea of what information is available on the Web, then a metasearch engine would be a good place to start.
The following are external links and will open in pop-up windows:
"dot com" "dot gov" — suffixes and country codes explained
Any information that you use to support ideas and arguments in a research paper should be given some scrutiny. Printed materials that are collected in a library go through an evaluative process as librarians select them to include in their collections. There is also an evaluation of Web sites that are included in search directories, such as Yahoo!, at least to the extent of classifying and placing sites into a categorization scheme. However, sites harvested by "spiders" or "robots" for search engines don't go through any evaluative process.
There are no real restrictions or editorial processes for publishing information on the Web, beyond some basic knowledge of Web page creation and access to a hosting computer. Anyone can publish opinion, satire, a hoax, or plainly false information. To insure that the Web sites you use as information sources are acceptable for research purposes, you should ask questions about those sites. The following are some elements you should look at before deciding to use a Web site as a research resource:
Domain suffix
The term "dot.com" has become a ubiquitous phrase in the English language. The "dot.com" really refers to the domain of a Web site. Sites on the Web are grouped by their URLs according to the type of organization providing the information on the site. For example, any commercial enterprise or corporation that has a Web site will have a domain suffix of .com, which means it is a commercial entity.
The domain suffix provides you with a clue about the purpose or audience of a Web site. The domain suffix might also give you a clue about the geographic origin of a Web site. Many sites from the United Kingdom will have a domain suffix of .uk.
Here follows a list of the most common domain suffixes and the types of organizations that would use them.
.com
Commercial site. The information provided by commercial interests is generally going to shed a positive light on the product it promotes. While this information might not necessarily be false, you might be getting only part of the picture. Remember, there's a monetary incentive behind every commercial site in providing you with information, whether it is for good public relations or to sell you a product outright.
.edu
Educational institution. Sites using this domain name are schools ranging from kindergarten to higher education. If you take a look at your school's URL you'll notice that it ends with the domain .edu. Information from sites within this domain must be examined very carefully. If it is from a department or research center at a educational institution, it can generally be taken as credible. However, students' personal Web sites are not usually monitored by the school even though they are on the school's server and use the .edu domain.
.gov
Government. If you come across a site with this domain, then you're viewing a federal government site. All branches of the United States federal government use this domain. Information such as Census statistics, Congressional hearings, and Supreme Court rulings would be included in sites with this domain. The information is considered to be from a credible source.
.org
Traditionally a non-profit organization. Organizations such as the American Red Cross or PBS (Public Broadcasting System) use this domain suffix. Generally, the information in these types of sites is credible and unbiased, but there are examples of organizations that strongly advocate specific points of view over others, such as the National Right to Life Committee and Planned Parenthood. You probably want to give this domain a closer scrutiny these days. Some commercial interests might be the ultimate sponsors of a site with this suffix.
.mil
Military. This domain suffix is used by the various branches of the Armed Forces of the United States.
.net
Network. You might find any kind of site under this domain suffix. It acts as a catch-all for sites that don't fit into any of the preceding domain suffixes. Information from these sites should be given careful scrutiny.
Country domain suffixes
.au
Australia
.in
India
.br
Brazil
.it
Italy
.ca
Canada
.mx
Mexico
.fr
France
.tw
Taiwan
.il
Israel
.uk
United Kingdom
Authority
Does the site you're evaluating give credit to an author? If no responsible author is listed, is there an indication of any sponsorship? When trying to determine reliability of information given in any medium, you want to have some idea of what the author's credentials are. Are they experts on the topic they are writing about? What is their educational background? Remember, anyone can publish on the Web. They don't have to know what they're talking about.
You also want to check and see if there's a list of sources given for the information on a site, like a bibliography that you would have to provide for a paper you're writing.
Currency
Information that is outdated may be incorrect or incomplete. A well maintained Web site will generally tell you at the bottom of the initial screen when it was last updated and maybe even when it was originally created and made available on the Web.
Links
An informational Web site in which all the hyperlinks are broken might not be a very reliable resource. Broken hyperlinks are not uncommon, due to the ever changing nature of the Web, but when there are many broken links on a Web site, it might be an indication that the site isn't maintained on a regular basis.
URL
The site address can give you clues as to ultimate sponsorship of a site. If you can't determine who wrote the site or who or what is sponsoring the site, try truncating the URL to its root address. This will tell you where the site is being hosted. For example, this site provides information on nutritional RDAs:
http://www.mikeschoice.com/reports/rda.htm.
If you truncate the URL to its root address http://www.mikeschoice.com, you will discover that this is a site selling a mineral supplement. Given the obvious bias, this is probably not the best source of nutritional information.
Another clue to what type of site you're looking at is whether there is a ~ (tilde) symbol in the URL. This symbol usually indicates that the site is a personal Web page and the information should be given careful scrutiny.
Comparison
Always compare the information that you find on a Web site with other information sources. Generally, you wouldn't want to use only Web sites as support for a research paper, so you would be looking at other types of sources such as books, magazine articles, etc. as well. How does the information found in the various formats compare?
GALILEO is found on the Web, but it's not the same as a Web page
GALILEO is a Web site that is a collective of information databases. This information is mostly from previously published printed sources, specifically periodical literature (magazines, newspapers, professional journals). Because this previously published information has undergone a certain amount of editorial scrutiny, you can rely on information from GALILEO to be more credible. That's not to say that you shouldn't apply some evaluative questions to the information in GALILEO, but that you can trust that the writers of the information are generally professional journalists or experts in a field of knowledge. GALILEO also includes a collection of Internet Resources selected by libraries.
The Web is truly a democratic medium. You don't have to have any qualifications to publish on the Web; you don't have to undergo an editorial process to have your site published by a host computer; you don't even have to give factual, verifiable, useful information. You can publish pictures of your cats, if you want to. Anything goes, and often does, on the Web. It's the wild frontier of information.
GALILEO is a fortress in the wilds of the Internet. Personal Web sites and commercial interest sites aren't allowed into the fortress. So, you can have some peace of mind when using the information gathered from the GALILEO databases. You still have to question the information provided, but at least you know that it has been questioned already.
Your professor may require that you use no more than one or two Internet resources for your research. This confuses some students when they are using GALILEO articles as resources. Although GALILEO is indeed an Internet resource, the information provided there has a printed paper counterpart that was published first. GALILEO articles are hard copy printed words that have been digitized and made available on the Internet through GALILEO.
These exercises have been provided to help students learn about library services and researching. They may be used by an instructor as an assignment.
A Trip Abroad
An exercise on evaluating a URL
Logon to the World Wide Web from your computer and access (link will open in a pop-up window) Yahoo!
Type in a search to find information about traveling to somewhere in Europe. Some examples (choose one of these or another European country for your search):
France
England
Germany
Spain
Poland
Belgium
Italy
Greece
When you receive a list of sites, access the first 10 and look at their URLs. Evaluate the URLs and give a short description of where they are coming from and the type of organization sponsoring the site.
