ASSOCIATES (vol. 1, no. 1, July 1994) - associates.ucr.edu

Table of Contents



		       THE INTERNET GURU
 
			       by
 
			    Brad Eden
		       Librarian Associate
	   Scientific and Technical Information center
		    NASA/Johnson Space Center
			 Houston, Texas
 
 
This inaugural article is the beginning of a regular column
in _ASSOCIATES_ devoted to two perceived needs of library support
staff:
     1) access and information regarding the Internet; and
     2) questions and concerns by library support staff regarding
	anything and everything in the library world.
 
Coming up with an appropriate title for this column has its
problems, and I am therefore asking you, the reader, to help me
find one.  Send your suggestions to:
 
	  bradford@medics.jsc.nasa.gov.
 
The winner will receive (drum roll)(cymbal crash):  an
all-expenses paid trip to their coffee machine (I'm cheap, what
can I say!).
 
In this first article, I would like to mention some aspects of
the Internet that library support staff should know about.  The
majority of you know about e-mail and subscribing to lists
(obviously, or you wouldn't be reading this), but do you also
have access to the real meat and potatoes of the Internet:
gopher, ftp, telnet, and World Wide Web (WWW, Mosaic)?
 
Telnet is a program that allows you to login to another
computer to run software there.  You need to have an Internet
address to the other computer in order to telnet to it, either in
words like "alexia.lis.uiuc.edu" or a numeric address like
"149.184.37.8".  Information on many universities, colleges,
libraries, companies, and governmental departments can be
obtained using the telnet option (some good telnet addresses will
be given in a future column).
 
FTP stands for file transfer protocol, and allows you to copy
files from a remote computer to your local host.  Again, you need
to have the other computer's ftp address.  Once you connect to
the other computer, you need to login.  Usually you type in
"anonymous" as the login, and your Internet address as the
password.  This is called anonymous ftp, and the majority of
computer systems will allow you to access their systems in this
way (more on ftp in a future column).
 
Gopher and WWW require more explanation, space, and time (of
which I have none at the moment), so I will also wait to discuss
these at a future date.  What you can do now, if you do not have
access to these Internet capabilities, is talk to your library
network administrator about expanding your Internet functions.
Usually the TCP/IP software protocol needs to be installed on
your terminal in order to run these options.  Find out before the
next _ASSOCIATES_ issue, and we can explore the Internet
together!
 
In the meantime (change of subject), if you have any
questions, concerns, topics related to library support staff, or
you would like an indepth answer or response to be addressed in
_OUR_ new electronic journal, send it to me (along with your
column title suggestions) to:  bradford@medics.jsc.nasa.gov.
Until next time. . .