http://www.ils.unc.edu/inls181/Spring00-01/links.shtml
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 --
Internet Country Codes --
Chat Listings --
MUDs and other gaming/simulation environments
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.
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:
- Follow directions to subscribe/unsubscribe
- 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
- Many lists have very little traffic. If you subscribe to a
"dead" list, consider looking for other lists instead
- 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!).
- Liszt, a very
extensive Web-based directory of mailing lists of all types.
- CataList,
the database of over 12,000 mailing lists maintained by LISTSERV
software. You can also search for particular lists by sending
the message list to any LISTSERV program, such as
listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu. Note: LISTSERV lists only.
- The
Directory of Scholarly and Professional Electronic Conferences, now in
its 14th revision. This is a fully-searchable and indexed listing of
mailing lists and newsgroups of a scholarly or professional
nature. Originated by
Diane Kovacs. Note: Focus on academic/scholarly
lists.
-
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists is very extensive, and includes
a searchable index. It is also posted to the newsgroup
news.answers and so archived via FTP
at rtfm.mit.edu.
Note: More emphasis on non-automated lists (often smaller).
- Tile.Net
has lists of mailing lists, FTP sites, Web pages, and network
newsgroups, but is not as extensive as some other lists. One
useful category to search on is product "vendors."
- The List
of Lists is a long-running list of mailing lists. Unfortunately,
many lists are added but never updated (or deleted), so this can
result in lists for which the information has changed.
- Yahoo! has a category for
Mailing Lists which points to several domain-specific lists-of-lists.
- Want to search archives of mailing lists? Try
FindMail,
which is a searchable index of many mailing lists. This is
somewhat like what Deja.Com does
for network newsgroups, but the contents don't (apparently) expire.
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.
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. Both of
the following have many outdated links.
- Hytelnet's
Free-Net Listing. Some resource listings have not been udpated
since 1993.
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.
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 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.
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.
- Locally to UNC is
Metalab, which contains copies of dozens of popular software
collections. This is virtually one-stop shopping for most of the
freely-available software on the Internet.
- What's missing from SunSITE is usually available at the University
of Illinois' UIArchive,
including copies of the most popular Mac and PC software, security
archives, Linux, and Internet documents.
- Also local is ATN's Shareware
page.
- Shareware.com is maintained
by a consortium of (mostly) small companies that want to make
their shareware more accessible.
- Download.com is a huge
source of freely download-able software, including many free demos
of commercial software.
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 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.
One listing is at the U. California Santa Barbara Library, and
was last updated in March 1998.
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/mags/
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.
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.
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: