With the unprecedented growth of the Internet, I believe
the most common "problem" is
INFO-OVERLOAD
How can a person find out about the availability of information
on a particular topic?
How do you access that information?
Do you read the information right now, or store it to be read later?
If you store the data, how will you categorize it so that it can be
retrieved later?
What are the various "kinds" of information? (different for each person)
Most material available on the Internet is not "peer-reviewed"
which implies there is no guarantee that the information is correct
or valuable or worthwhile.
Just because you "read it in the newspaper", does this make
it true? (maybe, depends on the author [editor] and on the newspaper
[IP name])
This recalls the lessons from Journalism, to answer the questions
Who
(where did you hear about the resource)
What
(anonymous ftp, WWW, gopher, ...)
Where
(the IP address)
When
(dynamic Internet adds a "temporal" quality to information)
Why
(What caught your eye or made you think the site would be "interesting"
From your own point of view, how would you order the above topics
in terms of importance?
History of the Internet, Computing and Supercomputing
FACS is the Foundation for American Communications
http://www.facsnet.org
Note, when you use this site, you will be asked to "register" yourself.
This is free and you will be asked to set up a login and a password. My
guess is this is for them to track the usage and that seems only fair
since they are providing a valuable service free of charge. What do you
think?
This is a nicely filtered overview of the
activities each week that are accessible via the Internet.
The focus is on educationally oriented topics, which is a very
broad focus. It is also kept "timely".
I would recommend
subscribing to this as a List Serve - but keep the response
message with directions on how to get off the list.