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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Information and Library Science

INLS 181: Internet Applications

Resource links

This page contains links to listings and resources that should be helpful for resource review assignments in INLS 181. If you can think of other things that should be here, please email Prof. Newby.

Index

Local resource listings -- Hytelnet -- Listings of Mailing Lists -- Network Newsgroups -- Community Computing Systems -- Internet search engines -- Gopher -- Software -- FTP Listings -- Electronic Journals -- Online Books and Copyright -- Internet Country Codes -- Chat Listings -- MUDs and other gaming/simulation environments

Locally Maintained Resource Lists

Library Catalogs

Listings of OPACs around the world. An OPAC is an "Online Public Access Catalog" -- essentially, a library card catalog. This resource will help to make a "telnet" connection to library catalogs. Note that Hytelnet is created and maintained voluntarily since 1990 by Peter Scott. He's interested in receiving donations to help maintain the project.

Listings of Mailing Lists

The important thing about mailing lists is to follow the instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing. You will generally send email to a special address to subscribe and unsubscribe, NOT to the same address used to post messages to the mailing list.

Over 5,000 mailing lists are open to the public, and many others are closed for private discussion. There are many resources to find out about mailing lists, but it's still likely that you will need to do some additional research to find out whether a list still exists. Some tips:

  1. Follow directions to subscribe/unsubscribe
  2. Don't post to a list until after you've watched the content for a few days or weeks. Get a feel for what the discussion is about
  3. Many lists have very little traffic. If you subscribe to a "dead" list, consider looking for other lists instead
  4. Many lists are very active, with dozens of messages per day. Make sure you check your email frequently after subscribing so your mailbox doesn't get overwhelmed.

The Listings

Each listing has its own area of coverage, and none are exhaustive. You need to check in many different places to be sure whether a list on a particular subject exists (it probably does!).

Network Newsgroups and Online Forums

The list of network news groups that are available at a particular location depends on what groups the service provider has chosen to subscribe to. It's not unusual for schools, for example, to not get the alt.* hierarchy of groups at all.

Web-based discussion forums are similar to newsgroups and mailing lists, except that you go to a particular Web server to participate. One location with a good variety of listings of forum servers is ForumOne.

Community Computing Systems

Community Computing Systems are also called Free-Nets. There is a very wide variety of what they are for, who uses them, and how they are funded.

Unfortunately, there is no authoritative listing. This list has many broken links:

Internet Search Engines

There are oodles of Internet search engines, with many different capabilities. The update frequencies for these tend to vary widely, as does the extent to which you can use Boolean logic and other 'advanced' searching techniques. InfoToday's analysis from October 2001 gives some comparison on features and benefits.

Some of these index Web pages, others are for network news...some do both. This list might not include everything. Email Prof. Newby if your favorite isn't on here.

Also, see Yahoo's category for Search Engines. It includes scores of lesser-known products: http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/Search_Engines

Gopher

Gopher is no longer widely used, but some older information is still available. The best starting points are the Mother Gopher at the University of Minnesota (which has a listing of "All the Gopher Servers in the World") and the Veronica Search Engine, which has a good access point on Mother Gopher. You will find many links that no longer function.

Software

You can buy computer software from the store or by mail order. But there is also a tremendous quantity of software that is freely accessible on the Internet.

Not all of this software is really free: Lots of it is "shareware," which means that if you use the software you must pay a fee. Many companies also choose to give away a portion of their commercial software freely, in the hopes that it will generate customers for their products.

FTP Listings

FTP is used widely to transfer files on the Internet, although today it's more likely you will let your Web browser take care of the details. Some listings of FTP sites are available:

Electronic Journals

Electronic journals are hard to list, because they are often somewhere inbetween a commercial publisher's site, a Web page, and a mailing list, and are frequently irregularly published.

A good listing is at UNC's own library. Visit their main Web page and follow links to electronic journals, indexes, and databases.

Online Books and Copyright

For online books, check out Project Gutenberg, one of the oldest electronic information providers on the Internet.

A nice collection of copyright laws and processes in different countries may be found at The On-Line Books Page.

Internet Country Codes

If you ever wondered where .ES was, this is one way of finding out: A listing of Internet domain names associated with countries. ISO 3166 is updated as needed, as new countries emerge or change their names.

Chat Listings

There are many ways to have live multi-person conversations on the Internet. Historically, the main way was to use IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which is entirely text-based. Today, though, there are many different formats for chatting, including live audio and/or video, and chatting with a graphical avatar.

MUDs and other gaming/simulation environments

MUD is an acronym for Multi-User Domain or Multi-User Dungeon. Variants include MOO, MUSH, MUCK and others. Typically, you interact with a MU* by a plain text window: you telnet to the MU* on a particular Internet port. You get a username/character and then participate in whatever the game offers.

Some MU*s offer graphical environments, many of which are Web-accessible. Others require you to install some custom client software on your computer. In addition, tools exist for people to interact with more than one MU* at a time with a single textual window.

MU*s are usually run by enthusiasts interested in a particular type of game, simulation, fantasy or educational experience. A few are run by particular organizations, however. Many people have conducted research on MU*s, because the people who get involved with them often feel strongly attached to their character and to other players.

There are several lists of MUDs, none of which are authoritative (and all of which change fairly frequently). Try:

For discussion and questions about MU*s, try the MU*-related newsgroups:
Most recently updated: Sunday, 31-May-2009 00:14:25 PDT