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