A Biologist’s Guide to InternetResourcesUna Smith

SFI WORKING PAPER: 1993-06-038

SFI Working Papers contain accounts of scientific work of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent theviews of the Santa Fe Institute. We accept papers intended for publication in peer-reviewed journals or proceedings volumes, but not papers that have already appeared in print. Except for papers by our externalfaculty, papers must be based on work done at SFI, inspired by an invited visit to or collaboration at SFI, orfunded by an SFI grant.©NOTICE: This working paper is included by permission of the contributing author(s) as a means to ensuretimely distribution of the scholarly and technical work on a non-commercial basis. Copyright and all rightstherein are maintained by the author(s). It is understood that all persons copying this information willadhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may be reposted onlywith the explicit permission of the copyright holder.www.santafe.edu

SANTA FE INSTITUTE

A Biologist's Guide to Internet ResourcesVersion 1.4, 26 May 1993

Una Smith

-*- Contents

Department of BiologyYale UniversityNew Haven, Connecticut 06511

smith-una@yale.edu

1. How to Use this Guide1. Conditions of Use2. How to Get Updates

2. Networking1. Some Mind-Boggling Statistics2. Netiquette3. Usenet

1. Newsgroups of Special Interest2. Special Usenet Hierarchies and Gated Mailing Lists3. Usenet FAQs about Usenet

4. Listserver Mailing Lists1. Commands2. Archives3. Gateways to Usenet

5. Other Mailing Lists6. Newsletters

3. Information Archives1. Bibliographies2. Directories3. Software4. Data

1. Systematic Databases2. Search Engines

5. List of Archives6. Access Tools

1. Telnet2. Anonymous FTP3. Gopher4. Archie5. Veronica6. Wide-Area Information Servers (WAIS)7. World-Wide Web (~)

7. Access by E-mail

4. Commercial Services

5. Useful and Important FAQs1. What's a FAQ and where can I get one?2. Does anyone have an e-mail address for X?3. How do I find a good graduate program?4. Where can I get old newsgroup/mailing list articles?5. Where can I find biology-related job announcements?

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Appendix. Assorted Listserver Mailing Lists

-*- 1. How to Use this Guide

If you find this guide difficult to understand, you might want to readone of the published Internet guidebooks listed in the bibliography and

mentioned several times in this guide. In the interest of brevity, noinformation that is easily obtained elsewhere is duplicated here in anydetail, thus for a full understanding of the resources and tools listedhere it is helpful to read the cited material as well.

-*- 1.1. Conditions of Use

This guide may be freely distributed, provided that the text is not editedin any way beyond removal of the headers; the format may be changed inany way that is convenient for printed or electronic presentation. Thisguide may be freely adapted, provided that the source is acknowledged.However, this guide may not be sold for profit, in either the original oran adapted form, without permission from the author.

If you make significant use of any document, data or software providedvia the Internet, the authors would be grateful if you would cite them orotherwise acknowledge their efforts. Virtually every service or resourcementioned in this guide (and this guide itself) is the un-paid, voluntarycontribution of scientists and students, both graduate and undergraduate.

A suggested citation is:

-*-

Smith, Una R. (1993)Usenet sci.answers.rtfm.mit.edu as file

1.2. How to Get Updates

"A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources."Available via anonymous FTP and e-mail frompub/usenet/news.answers/biology/guide. 30 pages.

This guide is updated more-or-Iess monthly. The most current version isavailable via Usenet, gopher, FTP and e-mail, as follows:

In Usenet, look in sci.bio, sci.answers, or news.answers.

Gopher to sunsite.unc.edu, and choose this sequence of menu items:

Sunsite ArchivesBrowse All Sunsite Archives

academicbiology

ecology+evolution

Or, from any gopher offering other biology gophers by topic, look forthe menu item "Ecology and Evolution [at UNC and Yale]".

Use FTP to rtfm.mit.edu. Use the username "anonymous" and your e-mailaddress as the password. Use the "cd" command to go to thepub/usenet/news.answers/biology/ directory and use "get guide" to copythe file to your computer. The file is actually stored as guide.Z,which is a compressed binary file, but if you specify 11 guide 11 it will beuncompressed and translated to readable ASCII before it is transfered toyour computer. You can also use anonymous FTP to sunsite.unc.edu, wherethis guide is stored as pub/academic/biology/ecology+evolution/FAQ.

If all else fails, send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the text"send usenet/news.answers/biology/guide". Because the guide is so long,you will probably receive it in parts: save each part separately,delete the e-mail headers, and merge the parts.

See section 3.6, Access Tools for more information about retrievinginformation from the Internet.

-*- 2. Networking

-*-

-*-

The Internet has become an excellent place in which to look for academicand professional job announcements, conference announcements and callsfor papers, and important notices about recent events in many fields ofbiology. Generally, notices of all forms appear on the Internet well inadvance of traditional journals and newsletters. Scientific interestgroups, both formal and- informal ones, maintain electronic discussiongroups, directories, digests and newsletters. These resources aredistributed in three principal ways: via Usenet newsgroups, (automated)listserver mailing lists, and mailing lists administered by real people.Increasingly, the two forms of mailing list have "gateways II connectingthem with Usenet newsgroups.

2.1. Some Mind-Boggling Statistics

Recently, approximately 300 thousand articles per week were distributedworldwide through Usenet (Anonymous 1993). This traffic constitutedroughly 40 megabytes per day of announcements, questions and answers,advice and bits of program code, references, heated debates, and data invarious formats. There are now nearly a million registered computerson the Internet, and thus tens of millions of people; an estimated7 million people have accounts on 65 thousand computers carrying Usenet,and nearly 2 million people read Usenet news at least occasionally(Reid 1993b). There are several thousand world-wide Usenet newsgroups,several thousand listserver mailing lists, and several thousand other,generally small mailing lists.

It appears that there are on the order of 10 thousand people who readbiology-related Usenet newsgroups (Reid 1993a), and there may be thatmany using mailing lists for topics in biology. All together, there area hundred or so newsgroups and mailing lists (most via listservers)that may be of particular interest to biologists. They are listed below.

2.2. Netiquette

The professionally-oriented newsgroups and mailing lists follow certainconventions of etiquette. These are none other than those used by mostpeople at public events such as academic conferences. In fact, most ofthe science-related newsgroups (and mailing lists) are very much likemid-sized meetings of any professional society, except that they neverend. The participants come and go as they please, but the discussionsand exchange of ideas and information continue as though they had a lifeof their own.

Submitted articles tend to be of the following types:

Discussions on topics of general interest. Discussions on specifictopics, techniques, or organisms are also frequent.

Announcements of upcoming conferences or other events, calls for papersor grant proposal deadlines. In Usenet, announcements can be set toexpire (and thus disappear from the list of current articles), and maybe limited in their distribution so that they are seen only by readersin the appropriate organization or geographical area (Beware, thisfeature is often leaky; see section 2.3, Usenet).

Academic andfellowships.reserved for

professional job announcements, including many graduateThese are generally posted in newsgroups/mailing lists

such notices, often in advance of publication elsewhere.

Reports or comments on new books, papers, methods or software. Fullcitation of sources is always appropriate and appreciated. Requestsfor references or comments are also welcome and, when posed as specificquestions of general interest, often lead to interesting discussions.

Unacceptable articles include:

Commercial advertizements, political lobbying messages, and anythingnot pertaining directly to the topic or purview of the newsgroup ormailing list. Discussions about some commercial products, especiallybooks and software, are generally allowed as long as they do notconstitute advertisements.

Requests by students for explicit answers to homework and exam or essayquestions are generally not welcome. Requests for help understandingproblems in biology are welcome, but the requester should demonstrateat least a basic understanding of the question.

Some helpful suggestions:

- Read before you post (look before you leap)

Before posting an article for the first time, read the discussions fora week or so. Look for a "FAQ" document that covers frequently askedquestions, before you make the mistake of asking one yourself.

- Always include your full name and e-mail address

Put these at the end of your message, with your usual signature. Youmight want to use a .signature file (standard on most Unix systems, alsoimplemented for Usenet and e-mail readers under VM/CMS) to make thisautomatic. This is necessary because strange things often happen toheaders in e-mail or Usenet articles sent from one network to another.

- Send private replies whenever appropriate

Answers to very esoteric questions are often best sent directly to theperson who asked for help, rather than to the newsgroup; the choice ofwhether to post a (public) reply or send (private) e-mail is a personaldecision. If you send a reply bye-mail, and would prefer that it bekept private, you should say so in your note, because otherwise the otherperson may share your comments with others. If the original posterpromises to post a summary at the outset, then all replies should besent bye-mail, unless they constitute an important re-direction of theoriginal question.

- Summarize the replies to your article

Whenever a question or request for information results in many replies,it is expected that the person who posted the original article willcompile and post a summary of the responses.

Use care when writing summaries

The "best IJ answers should come first.All answers should be separated clearly, and nicely formatted.Redundant, irrelevant or verbose comments, and errors of fact orspelling should be edited out. It is appropriate to use squarebrackets and dots to indicate editing [ ... J.Exercise discretion and tact, to ensure a fair and accurate summary.Unless they asked that their names be withheld, the contributors ofeach answer should be named and thanked, individually or as a group.

Avoid starting nasty arguments or "flame wars"

Be generous when interpreting the arguments of others.Avoid jargon; write as though addressing an educated lay audience.Remember, the exercise will be good for you.

If something you read angers you, save it for a few hours while you dosomething else (don't reply on an empty stomach). Go back to it when

you are calm and relaxed (and you have thought of a good rebuttal!).If you simply must say something highly critical, consider sendingit via personal e-mail, rather than posting or mailing to the group.

- Be careful about quotations, citations and copyrights

The Internet has grown to the point where it has become reasonable tocite documents that exist officially only in an electronic version onthe Internet. And the issue of authenticity and version control hasbecome extremely important. Thus, it has become appropriate to expresscopyrights, and to specify within documents how they mayor may not beused, both within the Internet and in print. Please respect theserestrictions, which are often very generous, and send the author e-mailif you have any doubts about the intended use of any Internet document.

AS a rule of thumb, you may freely cite or quote anything posted to anewsgroup or mailing list in that forum *only*. For citations or quoteselsewhere, it is hoped, even expected, that you will first request expresspermission from the author, which is easy, given the author's e-mailaddress. Although there has been a trend to cite specific articles postedin Usenet, it is generally satisfactory to use the "personal communication ll

formula, but for this reason you should request a specific, personalstatement from the author that is directly relevant to and given in thecontext of the issue that you wish to address.

-*- 2.3. Usenet

Usenet is a convention, in every sense of the word.

Usenet is a system of organized "newsgroupslf sharing many features withtraditional newsletters, mailing lists and focused scientific societies.Usenet is Internet-based (although before the Internet existed it wasdistributed via UUCP) , and strongly developed so that end users needknow only how to interact with the particular Usenet IIreader" programon their computers. Features of Usenet that make it far superior to thetwo types of mailing lists generally include the sorting or "threading"of all articles on a related topic, control of the distribution ofposted articles to hierarchical levels (e.g., the author's university,state, country, or continent--but this feature may "leak"), the abilityto cancel an article even after it has been distributed, and automaticexpiration of dated articles. To test any of these features, especiallythe distribution control, try posting an article to misc.test; yourarticle will receive "echoes" from other sites that receive it.

Usenet is Hfree", but not cheap; because it requires a lot of computerdisk space, and a certain amount of installation and regular maintenancework by a system administrator, not all computer systems carry Usenet.If Usenet is carried locally, it may still be necessary to prod the localUsenet administrator to add the bionet and bit.listserv newsgroups to thelocal "feed". Usenet was created by two Duke University graduate studentsin 1979: see Spafford (1993) for the definitive history of Usenet and alist of Usenet software for virtually every type of computer.

To paraphrase Spafford and Salzenberg (1992): Usenet is *not* a network.Usenet is an anarchy, with no laws and no one in charge. No one has anyreal control outside of their own site. Computer system administratorswho distribute Usenet "feeds" to other sites gain some authority by virtueof being "upstream"; that is, they have some say over what newsgroupstheir "downstream" neighbors can receive. Usenet feeds are stored at eachsite in "spools"; it is common for universities to have Usenet spools onone or two computers, and to allow everyone at the university to readUsenet news via "client" programs that connect to the remote "news server H •

The particular configuration of the Usenet feed to your university ororganization determines whether the distribution control feature of most

-*-

Usenet posting programs will work properly for you. For example, themailing lists for the bionet.* newsgroups are gated on the west coast ofNorth America, and you might think that it is safe to post local itemsin a bionet.* newsgroup if you live elsewhere. But many sites get theirfeed of bionet.* groups directly from the machine that runs the mailinglists, which is definitely outside your geographic area. So your articlewill be distributed at your site, but will not be propagated from yoursite to any other site in your area if it must pass out of your regionand then return through a separate feed to a university in the next city.Furthermore, it is a more efficient use of network resources to get asmuch Usenet traffic as possible from the nearest site available. It isimportant, therefore, to do a little research on Usenet feeds in your areabefore asking your Usenet administrator to add one of the newsgrouphierarchies listed in section 2.3.2, Special Usenet Hierarchies and GatedMailing Lists.

Usenet etiquette:

New users should read the Usenet FAQs posted in news.announce.newusers.

Use the misc.test newsgroup for posting test articles. Be sure totest the distribution feature here. Do not post test articles toother newsgroups.

Use the expiration feature for job and conference announcments.

When posting to more than one newsgroup, use the cross-posting featureso only one copy of your article goes out, but is seen by many people.

Post (and cross-post) sparingly to groups that have associated mailinglists, to give a break to people who must read the groups via e-mail.

The cross-posting of articles to more than one gated newsgroup is stronglydiscouraged, since the e-mail subscribers will get multiple copies of anycross-posted articles. Usenet readers should be aware of proper etiquettefor mailing lists when posting to gated newsgroups.

2.3.1. Newsgroups of Special Interest

An "FlI after the newsgroup name indicates a FAQ is available. "Mil meansthat the newsgroup is moderated. "Gil means that the newsgroup has agateway to a parallel mailing list: see section 2.3.2, Special UsenetHierarchies and Gated Mailing Lists for details.

alt.bbs.internetalt .cyb-sysalt.info-theoryalt.internet.access.wantedalt.internet.servicesalt.lang.sasalt.nativealt.sci.*alt.sustainable.agriculturealt.agriculture.*

F Announcements of new Internet servicesCybernetics and SystemsInformation theory a la Shannon

F Help getting full Internet accessF Announcements of new Internet resources

SAS discussionIndigenous peoples[6 groups]

[2 groups]

bionet.agroforestry Gbionet.announce FGMbionet.biology.computational GMbionet.biology.n2-fixation Gbionet.biology.tropical Gbionet.general FGbionet.genome.* Gbionet.immunology Gbionet.info-theory FGbionet.jobs G

Agroforestry researchAnnouncementsCompo and math. applications in biologyBiological nitrogen fixationTropical biology and ecologyGeneral discussion[3 groups: Arabidopsis and chromosomes]Research in immunologyInformation theory applied to biologyJob opportunities in biology

bionet.journals.contents GMbionet.journals.note Gbionet.molbio.ageing Gbionet.molbio.bio-matrix Gbionet.molbio.embldatabank Gbionet.molbio.evolution Gbionet.molbio.gdb Gbionet.molbio.genbank Gbionet.molbio.gene-linkage Gbionet.molbio.genome-program Gbionet.molbio.methds-reagnts Gbionet.molbio.hiv Gbionet.molbio.proteins Gbionet.molbio.rapd Gbionet.molbio.yeast Gbionet.neuroscience Gbionet.photosynthesis Gbionet.plants Gbionet.population-bio Gbionet.sci-resQurces GMbionet.software Gbionet. software. * Gbionet.users.addresses Gbionet.virology Gbionet.women-in-bio Gbionet.xtallography G

Biological journal TOCsPublication issues in biologyCellular and organismal ageingComputer searches of biological databasesInfo about the EMBL Nucleic acid databaseEvolution, especially molecularThe GDB databaseThe GenBank nucleic acid databaseGenetic linkage analysis.Human Genome Program issuesTips on lab techniques and materialsThe molecular biology of HIVProteins and protein database searchesRandomly Amplified Polymorphic DNAYeast researchers' discussionResearch issues in the neurosciencesPhotosynthesis researchPlant biology, inc. genetics and ecologyPopulation biology, especially theoryInformation about funding agencies, etc.Software for biology, esp. free/shareware[3 groups: acedb, gcg, and sources]Help locating biologists who use e-mailResearch in virologyDiscussion by and about women in biologyProtein crystallography

bit.listserv.biosph-lbit.listserv.devel-lbit.listserv.ecolog-lbit.listserv.edstat-lbit.listserv.ethologybit.listserv.medforumbit.listserv.sas-lbit.listserv.scifraudbit.listserv.spssx-lbit. listserv. stat-lbit.listserv.uigis-lbit.listserv.vpiej-l

comp.infosystems.giscomp.infosystems.gophercomp.infosystems.waiscomp.infosystems.wwwcomp.text.texcomp.theory.cell-automatacomp. theory. dynamic-syscomp.theory.self-org-sys

embnet.news.adminembnet.generalembnet.net-devembnet.rpc

info.grass.programmerinfo.grass.user

math.stat.math

news.announce.irnportantnews.announC8.neWllsersnews.answersnews.lists

sci.answerssci.anthropology

G Biosphere, ecology, Discussion ListG Tech. Transfer in Internat. DevelopmentG Ecological Society of AmericaG Journal of Statistics Education ListG Ethology List

MG Medical Students DiscussionG SAS DiscussionG Discussion of Fraud in ScienceG SPSSX Statistical DiscussionG Statistical consultingG User Interface for GISG Electronic Publishing Discussion List

FG Geograpical Information SystemsF The Internet gopher access toolF The Internet WAIS access tool

The Internet WWW access toolF TeX, LaTeX and related text format systemsG Cellular automata researchG Ergodic theory and dynamic systemsG Topics related to self-organization

G EMBnet news helpline for administratorsG General discussion

Network development discussionTechnical discussion of data transfers

GM GRASS GIS programmer issuesGM GRASS GIS user issues

Mathematical statistics

FM Important notices about UsenetF FAQs for new users of Usenet

FM All FAQ documentsFM Statistics and data about Usenet

GFM FAQs pertaining to scienceAnthropology discussion

sci. archaeologysci.bicsci.bio.technologysci.environmentsci.geo.*sci. research. careerssci.*

Archaeology discussionF General biology discussionG Any topic relating to biotechnology

Discussion of environmental issues[3 groups]Discussion of research careers in science[60 other newsgroups]

-*- 2.3.2. Special Usenet Hierarchies and Gated Mailing Lists

There has been a growing trend in the past few years to link mailing listsand newsgroups, and to create Usenet newsgroup hierarchies that are outsidethe "main stream". Both being new, these two trends often go together.Some main-stream groups (e.g., sCi.answers, sci.bic.technology andcomp.infosystems.gis) are gated to (usually listserver) mailing lists, butmost are not.

None of the Usenet newsgroup hierarchies mentioned below are main-streamones; that is, they do not conform to all Usenet conventions, andconsequently are carried by no more than 30-50% of Usenet sites. This isnot necessarily a bad thing, since few or no readers at most sites arebiologists, and e-mail subscriptions are available for many groups. Ifyour site carries Usenet, but not these hierarcies, a simple request toyour Usenet administrator might be all that's needed to get them too.But see the first part of section 2.3, Usenet for details about what toask for.

bionet.*

For an e-mail subscription to any bionet newsgroup, send e-mail tobiosci@daresbury.ac.uk if you live in Europe, or to biosci@net.bio.netotherwise. Charters (brief descriptions) of some of these groups aregiven in the BIOSCI FAQ, posted in bionet.announce and available viagopher or anonymous FTP from net.bio.net in the directory pub/BIOSCI/or bye-mail on request from biosci@net.bio.net) .

bit.listserv.*

As their names imply, the bit.listserv newsgroups started out as (andremain) listserver mailing lists. Most of these mailing lists becameso successful that gateways to Usenet were added by popular demand. Theappendix includes 100 or so other listserver mailing lists of interestto biologists; those with Usenet gateways are listed in section 2.4.3,Gateways to Usenet. Charters for each of these groups can be obtainedfrom the listserver that administers each one. See sections 2.4,Listserver Mailing Lists and 2.4.1, Commands for details about e-mailsubscriptions and commands for interacting with listserver programs.

comp.theory.*

Send e-mail to Erik Fair, fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu, or see the list ofmailing lists posted regularly in news.answers for details about e-mailsubscriptions.

embnet.*

The European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet) runs a group of Usenetnewsgroups that are distributed in Europe. E-mail subscriptions areavailable from nethelp@embl-heidelberg.de, and these newsgroups can beread and searched via gopher and WAIS on bioftp.unibas.ch. Send generale-mail queries to embnet@comp.bioz.unibas.ch.

info.*

These groups are mailing lists with gateways to usenet at the University

of Illinois. See section 2.5, Other Mailing Lists for e-mail subscriptioninformation, or ask your local Usenet administrator to get these groups.

lter.*

The Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTERnet) has a setup similarto that of EMBnet. Ask helper@lternet.edu about e-mail subscriptions,or see the gopher on lternet.edu.

-*- 2.3.3. Usenet FAQs about Usenet

You are strongly encouraged to read the following introductory andetiquette FAQs before posting any messages to any newsgroup. They arewhat might be considered the "mandatory course" for new users, andare posted frequently in the Usenet newsgroup news.newusers.announce.

See section 5, Useful and Important FAQs for a list of additional FAQsof general use or interest to biologists, section 5.1, What's a FAQ andwhere can I get one? and section 3.6.2, Anonymous FTP for instructionson how to get copies by anonymous FTP or e-mail if you don't have accessto a Usenet reader.

Title

Introductory information

Archive filename

-*-

What is Usenet?Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

about UsenetIntroduction to news.announce

Etiquette issues

A Primer on How to Work With theUsenet Community

'Emily Postnews Answers Your Questionson Netiquette

Hints on writing style for UsenetRules for posting to Usenet

Technical issues

How to Create a New Usenet NewsgroupUSENET Software: History and SourcesHow to become a USENET siteNetNews/Listserv Gateway PolicyUNIX BBS Software FAQ with AnswersIntroduction to the news.answers

newsgroupInstructions for posting to news.answers

2.4. Listserver Mailing Lists

what-is-usenet/part1usenet-faq/part1

news-announce-intro/part1

usenet-primer/part1

emily-postnews/part1

usenet-writing-style/part1posting-rules/part1

creating-newsgroups/part1usenet-software/part1site-setupbit/policyunix-faq/bbs-softwarenews-answers/introduction

news-answers/guidelines

It is very important that you keep a list of all mailing lists to whichyou are subscribed, along with the address of the list administratorand the address you used when you subscribed, if you have more than one.This is because you will need to unsubscribe yourself if you go away onvacation or your address changes. Otherwise any mail sent to you fromthe list may bounce or cause other, sometimes severe problems. And it'seasier to check the address etc. when you want to tell friends how theycan subscribe too.

The appendix at the end of this guide includes most listserver mailing

lists of particular interest or use to biologists. Internet addressesare given whenever possible, and all addresses are in standard Internetformat, with the exception that portions of the Internet node names thatreflect original Bitnet node names are given in uppercase, for theconvenience of readers on Bitnet nodes.

Listservers were developed first many years ago on Bitnet, when EricThomas wrote a computer program named "LISTSERV" that could act likea regular computer user: receiving and sending out e-mail, and keepingfiles. LISTSERV is now used on hundreds of computers around the world,and a number of copy-cat programs with similar features are used at manyother sites. Whichever program is used, these listservers are given thetask of maintaining multiple electronic mailing lists, handling allmembership requests (subscriptions and cancellation of subscriptions, andso on). Many list owners collect monthly logs of all messages sent tothe list, and some also provide files of other information. Eric Thomas'sLISTSERV program does this automatically, and listservers running thisprogram can send "back issue" logs and other files on request.

Anastasios Kotsikonas has written a similar listserver program for useon Unix computers, named 1I1istserv", and the name of a listserver runninghis program is always listserv@<computer address>. This has become avery popular listserver program outside of Bitnet. The basic subscriptionfunctions use commands identical to the LISTSERV program, so these arenot distinguished from true Bitnet LISTSERV listservers.

Mailing lists run by listservers with slightly different command protocolsare listed in section 2.5, Other Mailing Lists, together with mailing listsrun by hand. Other listservers include umailbase" and "MAILSERV", bothwritten for Bitnet nodes in Europe. For documents about using mailbase,send e-mail tomailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the text

send mailbase user-guidesend mailbase user-card

for the lengthly User's Guidefor a short version of the Guide

You can get an extensive topical directory of academic mailing lists,compiled by Diane Kovacs, dkovacs@KENTVM.kent.edu: send e-mail tolistserv@KENTVM.kent.edu with the text

get acadlist readme

Charles Bailey posts a directory, Library-Oriented Lists and ElectronicSerials, to the newsgroup bit.listserv.pacs-l on a regular basis.

Mailing list etiquette:

Whenever possible, Bitnet users should use the Bitnet address of a listand its listserver; Internet users should use the Internet address.

Keep a record of your subscriptions, and a copy of any instructionsthat you receive with your subscription.

Remember to unsubscribe or otherwise turn off your subscriptionsbefore your e-mail address changes or you go away on vacation.

Avoid sending articles to more than one mailing list.

Be concise or, if your article is more than a few hundred lines long,warn your readers in the Subject line.

A note for users on JANET nodes (in the United Kingdom): you may beable to get subscriptions to Bitnet listserver mailing lists vialistserv@earn-relay.ac.uk. Send e-mail to that address with the text

info ?

for more information.a single subscriptionre-distributing it toEurope.

-*- 2.4.1. Commands

This saves electronic transmission costs by havingpropagated across the Atlantic Ocean, and thenmultiple subscribers in the U.K. and elsewhere in

Being computer programs, with nothing else to do, listservers just sitand wait for e-mail to arrive, read it, and perform the appropriate task,usually immediately. They respond only to a small set of commands. Asummary (Thomas 1993) of these commands can be retrieved by sending themessage "send listserv refcard" to any listserver. The main listserveris listserv@BITNIC.educom.edu, but there are many listservers around theworld. Specificially, there is one on each computer for which a mailinglist is mentioned in the appendix. Most listservers maintain more thanone mailing list.

To subscribe to any of these mailing lists, send e-mail to the listserverat the same address. For example, subscriptions to the SmithsonianInstitution's biological conservation list, CONS LINK, may be obtained bysending the message

subscribe conslink <Your Name>

to listserv@SIVM.si.edu. To turn off mail from a list temporarily (e.g.,while you are away on vacation), send the message

set <listname> nomail

and to unsubscribe permanently (e.g., because your e-mail address is aboutto change), send the message

unsubscribe <listname>

Send subscription and other administrative requests to the listserver,not the list; e-mail messages sent directly to the mailing list will(generally) be sent to all the list subscribers. Only the listservercan process subscription requests, and the listserver only knows aboutrequests that it receives directly.

LISTSERV programs of version 1.7f and higher have a very useful featurethat lets you receive a daily digest (actually a concatenation, with atable of contents) instead of many individual articles. Send e-mail tothe apropriate listserver with the message:

set <listname> digest

-*- 2.4.2. Archives

In addition to handling the membership requests for particular mailinglists, most listservers also archive all messages sent to each list inmonthly log files. These files, along with other items contributed bylist subscribers, are archived by the listserver and can be retrievedby e-mail.Listserv@SIVM.si.edu keeps an archive of various lists ofconservation organizations and field stations, several newsletters, anda large collection of bibliographic references relating to biologicalconservation. Listserv@UMDD.umd.edu keeps an archive of job openings andconference announcements submitted to the Ecological Society of America.

Commands for retrieving files from listserver archives are describedin the listserver command reference guide (Thomas 1993), and include:

helpreview <listname>

to get generally useful informationto get the list of subscribers

index <listname>get listserv refcardget listfaq memo

to get the list of archived filesto get a short summary of commandsto get a FAQ about listservers

Sending the message 11 info II to a listserver will result in a list ofinformation guides including:

REFcardFAQPResentGENintroKEYwordsAFDFILEsLPunchJOBDISTributeCOORDinatFILEOwnerDATABASEUDDUDDADMIN

(LISTSERV REFCARD)(LISTFAQ MEMO )(LISTPRES MEMO )(LISTSERV MEMO )(LISTKEYW MEMO )(LISTAFD MEMO )(LISTFILE MEMO )(LISTLPUN MEMO)(LISTJOB MEMO )(LISTDIST MEMO )(LISTCOOR MEMO )(LISTFOWN MEMO )(LISTDB MEMO )(LISTUDD MEMO )(LISTUDDA MEMO )

Command reference cardFrequently Asked QuestionsPresentation of LISTSERV for new usersGeneral information about Revised LISTSERVDescription of list header keywordsDescription of Automatic File DistributionDescription of the file-server functionsDescription of the LISTSERV-Punch file fmt.Description of the Command Jobs featureDescription of Relayed File DistributionInformation about Listserv CoordinationInformation guide for file ownersDescription of the database functionsuser Directory Database User's GuideUDD Administrator's Guide

-*-

-*-

To get anyone of these, send the message "info <keyword>" where <keyword>is, for instance, "REFcard" or "FAQu. Only the portion in capitals isrequired.

2.4.3. Gateways to Usenet

Some of the listserver mailing lists in the appendix below are alsoUsenet newsgroups:

biosph-l@UBVM.Cc.buffalo.edu is bit.listserv.biosph-lbiotech@UMDD.umd.edu is sci.bio.technologydevel-l@AUVM.american.edu is bit.listserv.devel-lecolog-l@UMDD.umd.edu is bit.listserv.ecolog-ledstat-l@jse.stat.ncsu.edu is bit.listserv.edstat-lethology@FINHUTC.hut.fi is bit.listserv.ethologygis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu is comp.infosystems.gisinfo-tex@ is comp.text.tex (gate is list-->group only)medforum@ARIZVMl.ccit.arizona.edu is bit.listserv.medforum (custom gate)sas-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu is bit.listserv.sas-lscifaq-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu is sci.answers (gate is group-->list only)spssx-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu is bit.listserv.spssx-lstat-l@vml.mcgill.ca is bit.listserv.stat-luigis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu is bit.listserv.uigis-lvpiej-l@VTVMl.cc.vt.edu is bit.listserv.vpiej-l

American University has established itself as the clearing house andsemi-official keeper of automated gateways between listserver mailinglists and Usenet newsgroups. Questions about the procedure forestablishing a gateway for any mailing list or newsgroup may be posted tothe Usenet newsgroup bit.admin or sent to news-admin@AUVM.american.edu.A FAQ on this topic appears regularly in the bit.admin newsgroup.

2.5. Other Mailing Lists

Remember to save any instructions you receive about unsubscribing froma mailing list. Mailing lists that do not use listserv-style commandsfor subscribing and unsubscribing include:

Topic or nameSubscription instructions

Mailing list address

American Society of MarnmalogistsSend all subscription requests and submissions to the editor,rnnhvz049@SIVM (via Bitnet) or rnnhvz049@SIVM.si.edu.

Arabidopsis thal. database announcements aatdb-info@weeds.mgh.harvard.eduContact Mike Cherry, curator@weeds.mgh.harvard.edu.

Artificial life digest alife@cognet.ucla.eduSend all subscription requests to alife-request@cognet.ucla.edu.

Behavioral ecology digestb-e-requests@forager.unl.edu

b-e-group@forager.unl.edu

Biological Anthropology, Primatology hurnbio@acc.fau.eduSend "subscribe humbio <Your Name>" to mailserv@acc.fau.edu.

Biological timing and circadian rhythmscbt-general@virginia.edu cbt-general-request@@virginia.edu

Biology information systems biogopher@comp.bioz.unibas.chContact Reinhard Doelz, doelz@urz.unibas.ch.

Bulletin for bryologists bryonet@uni-duisburg.deSend e-mail totheowner.Jan-PeterFrahm.hh216fr@uni-duisburg.de.

Cytometry discussioncytometry@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu cyto-request@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu

Dendrome forest tree genome mapping digestSend all subscription requests and submissions to the editor,dendrome@s27w007.pswfs.gov.

Dinosaurs and other archosaurs dinosaur@donald.wichitaks.ncr.comdinosaur-request@donald.wichitaks.ncr.com

Discover Insight Biosyrn Users' Groupdibug@avogadro.barnard.colurnbia.edu dibug-request@ ...

Entomology discussion ent-list@urn.cc.urnich.eduSend e-mail totheowner.MarkO·Brien.hcfb@urn.cc.urnich.edu.

Environmentalists digest env-link@andrew.crnu.eduSend e-mail to the owner, Josh Knaur, env-link+forms@andrew.cmu.edu.

Fish and Wildlife Biology wildnet@access.usask.caSend e-mail towildnet-request@access.usask.ca

Forestry discussion forest@lists.funet.fiSend e-mail to forest-request@lists.funet.fi

Genstat statistics package discussion genstat@ib.rl.ac.ukSend "subscribe genstat <Your Name>" to listral@ib.rl.ac.uk.

GIS digestSend all subscription requests and submissions to the editor,rrl@leicester.ac.uk.

GIS Users in the United Kingdom geocal@leicester.ac.ukSend II subscribe geocal <Your Name>" to vmsserv@leicester.ac.uk.

Killifish, Cyprinodontidae killie@mejac.palo-alto.ca.usSend e-mail tokillie-request@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us

Neotropical birds discussion avifauna@rcp.peContact phillips@cipa.ec (Roberto Phillips)

Neural networks digest neuron@cattel.psych.upenn.eduSend e-mail to neuron-request@cattell.psych.upenn.edu

Orchids orchids@scuacc.SCU.eduSend "subscribe orchids <Your Name>1I to mailserv@scuacc.SCU.edu.

Plant Taxonomy plant-taxonomy@mailbase.ac.ukSend "join plant-taxonomy <Your Name>" to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk.

Primate discussion primate-talk@primate.wisc.eduSend e-mail totheowner.primate-talk-request@primate.wisc.edu.

Prion Research Digest [unknown]Send e-mail to prion-request@stolaf.edu.

The S statistics package s-news@utstat.toronto.eduSend e-mail to s-news-request@utstat.toronto.edu.

SANET-MG Sustainable Agriculture Network sanet-mg@twosocks.ces.ncsu.eduSend e-mail with the text "subscribe sanet-mg ll or II send guide ll orusend catalog" to almanac@twQsocks.ces.ncsu.edu.

Tropical biology (in Spanish)biologia-request@athena.mit.edu

biologia@athena.mit.edu

Tropical ecology (in Spanish) ecologia@athena.mit.eduSend e-mail to ecologia-request@athena.mit.edu

Young Scientists' Network ysn@zoyd.ee.washington.eduSend e-mail to ysn-request@zoyd.ee.washington.edu with the Subject(not text) "subscribe" or "send info ll

•

Volcano listSend all subscription requests and submissions to the editor,

There is a 4-part FAQ in news.answers (da Silva 1993) that includesbrief descriptions of the charter of each mailing list. This FAQ isstored in FAQ archives in the directory /mailing-lists/.

A very long (1.2 megabytes) list of lists is available via anonymous FTPfrom ftp.nisc.sri.com in netinfo/interest-groups or (in compressed form)netinfo/interest-groups.Z. It can also be obtained via e-mail by sendingthe message "send netinfo/interest-groupsll to mail-server@nisc.sri.com.There is a printed, indexed version, titled "Internet: Mailing Lists ll

,

that can be purchased from Prentice Hall. However, this list is up-datedthrough submissions, and thus is incomplete and not very correct.

-*- 2.6. Newsletters

Many of the mailing lists mentioned in the above section are actuallydigests, where readers' queries and comments are condensed into asingle large document that is distributed periodically. Yet anothervariation on this theme is electronic newsletters. Those not listedelsewhere in this guide include:

* Animal Behavior Society Newsletter. Editor James C. Ha,jcha@u.washington.edu.

* Boissiera. Editor? <burdet@cjb.unige.ch>

* Candollea. Editor? <burdet@cjb.unige.ch>

* Flora Online. A journal for collections-oriented botanists publishedby the Clinton Herbarium, Buffalo Museum of Science, New York USA.

Jon

Editor Richard H. Zander, visbms@UBVMS.bitnet. Available via gopherand anonymous FTP from huh.harvard.edu.

* Bean Bag: Leguminosae Research Newsletter, edited by Charles R. Gunnand Joseph H. Kixkbride, Jr., jkirkbride@asrr.arsusda.gov. Availablevia gopher and anonymous FTP from huh.harvard.edu.

* Botanical Electronic News (BEN), edited by Adolf Ceska, Canada.Available via gopher and anonymous FTP from huh.harvard.edu, andthe wildnet mailing list.

* Environmental Resources Information Network (ERIN) Newsletter, AustraliaAvailable via gopher and anonymous FTP from huh.harvard.edu.

* LTER Data Management Bulletin (DATABITS). Available via gopher onIternet.edu.

* Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics (CED). E-mail subscriptions are availablefrom Daniel Pommert, daniel@lternet.washington.edu, gopher accessavailable via Iternet.edu.

* The Chlamydomonas Newsletter. E-mail subscriptions are available fromMike Adams, adams@ecsuc.ctstateu.edu. You can also get this newslettervia gopher from gopher.duke.edu and via anonymous FTP fromacpub.duke.edu in pub/chlamy/.

The paper journal The Scientist is available in an online version viaanonymous FTP on ds.internic.net, in pub/the-scientist, courtesy of theInstitute for Scientific Information and the NSF Network Service Center.

Michael Strangelove, 441495@acadvrnl.UOTTAWA.ca has compiled a directoryof electronic serials. To retrieve it, send e-mail with the text

get ejournll directryget ejourn12 directry

to listserv@acadvrn1.UOTTAWA.ca.

-*- 3. Information Archives

A number of people have begun to organize the many free biologicalinformation archives, databases and services on the Internet intowell-organized menus using gopher servers. These include Don Gilbert'sIUBIO service on ftp.bio.indiana.edu and Mike Cherry's collection onweeds.mgh.harvard.edu in the United States, Rob Harper's "Finnish EMBnetBioBox ll on gopher.csc.fi in Finland, and Reinhard Doelz's "Informationservers in biology (gopher based)" on gopher.embnet.unibas.ch inSwitzerland.

Yanoff (1993) is an excellent list of unusual and useful Internetservices, a few of which are mentioned in this guide. Services listedinclude: an on-line dictionary, weather maps, a general weather reportservice, an archive of statistical programs and data sets, and variouscomputers allowing public telnet sessions so that people who have Internetaccess but not Usenet can read and post Usenet articles.

Stern (1993) offers an extensive list of anonymous FTP archives offeringmeteorological data.

-*- 3.1. Bibliographies

Many Internet archives have searchable bibliographic databases, completewith abstracts. Only a few are mentioned here.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Climate Data database and the NASAGlobal Change Data Directory are archived via WAIS on ridgisd.er.usgs.gov.

The North American Benthological Society (NABS) offers a bibliography ofrecent literature in benthic biology via a gopher server on gopher.nd.edu.The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has put a bibliographicdatabase and catalog of data sets in a gopher server on lternet.edu. (Theactual data is not available online.) Check the French gopher server ongopher.genethon.fr for bibliographies of sequence analysis and humangenome research papers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Extension Service offers theResearch Results Database (RRDB) , containing brief summaries of recentresearch from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) andEconomic Research Service (ERS), bye-mail. For details, send thee-mail message "send guide" to almanac@esusda.gov. To receive noticesof new RRDB titles, send the message "subscribe usda.rrdb".

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Library on-linedatabase can be accessed for bibliographic searches via anonymous telnetto epaibm.rtpnc.epa.gov. A collection of GIS-related bibliographies isavailable via anonymous FTP from bastet.sbs.ohio-state.edu.

Various Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists provide the tables of contents(TOCs) for current issues of a few journals of interest to biologists.Tom Schneider distributes Unix AWK scripts for converting many of theseTOCs into BibTeX-style bibliography records: these scripts are posted inthe Usenet newsgroup bionet.journals.note. The journal TOCs available inbionet.journals.contents include:

Applied and Environmental MicrobiologyCABIOSEMBO JournalJournal of BacteriologyJournal of Biological ChemistryJournal of VirologyMolecular and Cellular BiologyMolecular MicrobiologyNucleic Acids Research

The CONS LINK listserver mailing list keeps a large bibliography ofconservation biology research papers on its archive (see section 2.4.2,Archives for instructions on accessing listserver archives) .

The American Physiological Society offers TOCs for the followingjournals via gopher on gopher.uth.tmc.edu (port 3300):

Advances in Physiology EducationAmerican Journal of Physiology (6 consolidated journals)Journal of Applied PhysiologyJournal of NeurophysiologyNews in Physiological SciencesPhysiological ReviewsThe Physiologist

Other publishers supporting Internet access to information about theirpublications include

Publisher

Addison-WesleyO'Reilly & AssociatesKluwer Academic Publishers

-*- 3.2. Directories

Address

world.std.comgopher.ora.comworld. std. com

Access

ftpgopherftp

Searchable directories of scientists and research projects currentlyfunded by the u.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), National ScienceFoundation (NSF), Department of Agriculture (USDA), and genome researchersfunded by several other departments, together with several topicaldirectories, are available via gopher on merlot.welch.jhu.edu. Searcheson researcher name, location, and field of interest are supported.

A directory of researchers using Artificial Intelligence in MolecularBiology (AIME) is maintained at the National Library of Medicine. Tobe included, send e-mail to Larry Hunter, hunter@work.nlm.nih.gov.A directory of people who read the bionet.* newsgroups is available viagopher and anonymous FTP from net.bio.net; you can add yourself to thedirectory via gopher or e-mail (see instructions on net.bio.net) .

Several directories of ecologists and plant biologists are kept onhuh.harvard.edu, which is accessible via gopher and anonymous FTP.A directory of tropical biologists is kept in the Ecology and Evolutionsection of the gopher/anonymous FTP archive on sunsite.unc.edu.

-*- 3.3. Software

Several archives specializing in software for biologists are accessiblevia gopher and anonymous FTP. Some of these are listed in section 3.5,List of Archives. The first such archive in South America is theBrazilian Medical Informatics archive, ccsun.unicamp.br. The IUBioarchive on ftp.bio.indiana.edu probably has the best collection in theUnited States. Botanists will appreciate the TAXACOM archive onhuh.harvard.edu.

Also, wuarchive.wustl.edu has an excellent collection of educationalsoftware, especially for teaching mathematics at the college anduniversity levels. The National Center for Supercomputing Applicationshas developed a collection of outstanding software tools for electroniccommunications and image analysis, and makes it publicly available onzaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Many of the latest add-on tools for the popularLaTeX text formatting system are archived on sun.soe.clarkson.edu,while sumex-aim.stanford.edu has a huge archive of Macintosh software,and nic.ddn.mil keeps the important Internet RFC (Request for Comments)documents.

Jan-Peter Frahm has made available via e-mail "A Guide to BotanicalSoftware for MS-DOS Computers". The software is shareware or in thepublic domain. For a copy, write him at hh216fr@duc220.uni-duisburg.de.Bionet.software is a good place to look for information about specificsoftware programs with applications to biology. There are many Usenetgroups devoted to discussion of software, particularly freeware andshareware. The well-known, huge anonymous FTP repositories of softwareare all mentioned in various published guides to the Internet (Kehoe 1992,Krol 1992, Lane and Summerhill 1992, LaQuey and Ryer 1992, Malamud 1992,Tennant et al. 1993), and are part of the common knowledge of many Usenetnewsgroups.

-*- 3.4. Data

The wealth of data available on the Internet is staggering, but it is alsowidely dispersed and often difficult to track down. Rather than compile alist of data sets and pointers to their locations, this guide gives a listof locations with only a name or phrase to suggest what data may be foundthere (see section 3.5, List of Archives). Many Usenet FAQs (see section5, Useful and Important FAQs) and other Internet documents mentioned inthis guide attempt to list available databases, but many more are knownonly by word-of-mouth. The Usenet newsgroup sci.answers (also a mailinglist; see section 2.4.3, Gateways to Usenet) carries many lists that are

-*-

updated frequently.

3.4.1. Repositories

various genome and other cooperative projects are now well established onthe Internet, with large, highly organized databases that support ever morepowerful and complex interactive or batch search queries. Most now supportWAIS and gopher search access, and are listed in section 3.5, List ofArchives. The future utility of these repositories depends on the donationof data by individual researchers. Questions, as well as data submissionsand corrections, can be sent to the relevant administrators via e-mail(after Garavelli 1992):

Database

AAtDB (Arabidopsis thaliana)ACEDB (Caenorhabditis elegans)

BrookhavenDDBJEDEX and JARS (Forest Ecology)EMBL problems, feedback

software submissions, queriesData Library enquiriesData Library submissions

FlyBase (Drosophila)Inst. of Forest Genetics DB (IFGDB)GDBGenBankNCBIPIRSWISS-PROT

Address of administrator

curator@weeds.mgh.harvard.edurd@mrc-lmba.cam.ac.uk and

mieg@kaa.cnrs-mop.frpdb@chm.chm.bnl.govddbjsubs@flat.nig.ac.jpgoforest@gopher.yale.edunethelp@embl-heidelberg.desoftware@embl-heidelberg.dedatalib@embl-heidelberg.dedatasubs@embl-heidelberg.deflybase@nucleus.harvard.eduifgdb@s27w007.pswfs.govhelp@welch.jhu.edugb-sub@life.lanl.govrepository@ncbi.nlm.nih.govfileserv@nbrf.georgetown.edubairoch@cmu.unige.ch

-*-

LiMB, the Listing of Molecular Biology databases (Keen et al. 1992)describes most of these databases, and many more, including the names,regular mail addresses and telephone numbers of their keepers. To getthe current version of LiMB bye-mail, send the text 11 limb-data 11 tobioserve@life.lanl.gov. For information only, send "limb-info". LiMBis available in hardcopy or on floppy disk: contact limb@life.lanl.gov.

3.4.2. Search Engines

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) supports various typesof searches via e-mail. For more information, send the text "help" ine-mail to anyone of these servers:

EMBL File ServerFASTAQuicksearchSwiss-Prot MPsrch

NetServ@EMBL-Heidelberg.DEFASTA@EMBL-Heidelberg.DEQuick@EMBL-Heidelberg.DEBlitz@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE

The Sequence Retrival System (SRS) program for VAX VMS computer systemsis available via anonymous FTP on the Norwegian EMBnet node biomed.uio.noor genetics.upenn.edu (USA).

Three U.S. herbaria now provide e-mail search support of:

Type specimens of the mint family from the Harvard Herbaria,comprising 1100 records.

The complete herbarium catalog of Michigan State University,Kellog Biological Station Herbarium, an NSF LTER site, consistingof 6000 specimen records.

The Flora of Mt. Kinabalu; 16,300 specimen records of all vascularplant collections from the mountain.

E-mail addresses for sending queries are:

Harvard Mint Types:Kellogg Herbarium:Flora of Mt. Kinabalu:

herbdata@huh.harvard.eduherbdata%kbs.decnet@clvax1.cl.msu.eduherbdata@herbarium.bpp.msu.edu

Send the message IIhelpll to receive a usage guide, and if you thinkthere might be difficulties with your return address, send that aswell by adding a line with the text "replyaddress~" followed by yourprefered e-mail address.

Anyone who does a lot of field work will appreciate the Geographic NameServer, which can provide the latitude and longitude, and the elevationof most places in the United States: all cities and counties are covered,as well as some national parks and some geographical features (mountains,rivers, lakes, etc.). Telnet to martini.eecs.umich.edu, port 3000 (nousername needed) and type "help" for instructions.

-*- 3.5. List of Archives

Computer sites supporting some sort of public access, and of someinterest to biologists:

Internet node name Topic/Agency Access method

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (MD USA)ftp.embl-heidelberg.de (Germany)coli.polytechnique.fr (France)fly.bio.indiana.edu (IN USA)ftp.bchs.uh.edu (TX USA)helix.nih.gov (MD USA)ncifcrf.gov (MD USA)finsun.csc.fi (Finland)pdb.pdb.bnl.gov (NY USA)ftp.tigr.orggolgi.harvard.edu (MA USA)megasun.bch.umontreal.canic.funet.fi (Finland)gopher.csc.fi (Finland)

world.std.comsunsite.unc.edu (NC USA)gopher.ciesin.orgpinus.slu.se (Sweden)locus.nalusda.go (USA)

s27w007.pswfs.gov (USA)biomed.uio.no (Norway)gopher.embnet.unibas.ch (Switzer.)biox.embnet.unibas.ch (Switzerland)merlot.welch.jhu.edu (MD USA)weeds.mgh.harvard.edu (MA USA)mendel.agron.iastate.edu (IA USA)greengenes.cit.comell.edu (NY USA)teosinte.agron.missouri.edu (USA)gopher.duke.edu (NC USA)picea.cfnr.colostate.edu (CO USA)poplar1.cfr.washington.edu (WA USA)

mObot.org (MO USA)life.anu.edu.au (Australia)igc.org (CA USA)

NCBI fEMBL Data Library E f gEMBLnet GGenbank GGenbank, PIR f GGenbank, PDB, PIR etc. GBioI. Information Theory fProsite, Rebase-Enzyme GProtein Data Bank GInst. for Genomic Rsch. f

fMolecular evolution G

A major entry-point f GMany subjects E f G t [4]Earth Sciences GAgriculture GNat. Agri. Library G

Forest Genetics GGenome T

Genome GGenome GArabidopsis, C. elegans GSoy genome GTriticeae genome GMaize genome GChlamydomonas G [2]

fPopulus genetics f

Missouri Bot. Garden fBioinformatics f GEcoNet f

gopher.yale.edu (CT USA)Iternet.edu (WA USA)spider.ento.csiro.au (Australia)gopher.uth.tmc.edu (port 3300)envirolink.hss.cmu.edu (DE USA)ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu (VA USA)ngdc1.ngdc.noaa.gov (USA)huh.harvard.edu (MA USA)simsc.si.edu (DC USA)ucmp1.berkeley.edu (CA USA)bdt.ftpt.br (Brazil)coli.polytechnique.fr (France)fconvx.ncifcrf.gov (MD USA)

bluehen.ags.udel.edu (DE USA)minerva.forestry.umn.edu (MN USA)ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (CA USA)evolution.genetics.washington.eduevolution.bchs.uh.edu (TX USA)

martini.eecs.umich.edu (MI USA)wigeo.wu-wien.ac.at (Austria)geogopher.ucdavis.edu (CA USA)isdres.er.usgs.gov (VA USA)pippin.memst.educdiac.esd.ornl.govsaturn.soils.umn.edu (MN USA)kiawe.soest.hawaii.edu (HA USA)tycho.usno.navy.milnssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov

granta.uchicago.edu (IL USA)xyz.lanl.gov (NM USA)mentor.lanl.gov (NM USA)info.mcs.anl.gov (IL USA)

LTERnet, EDEX, JARSLTERnetEntomologyPhysiologyEnvironmentEcosystemsPaleoclimatologyHarvard Univ. HerbariaSmithsonian Inst.Vertebrate museumBiodiversityMolecular evolutionMathematical Biology

EntomologyForestryBiologyEvolutionEvolution

Geographic Name ServerGeographyGeologyUS Geological SurveyCERI Earthquake CenterCD lACGeologyGeneric Mapping ToolsU.S. Naval ObservatoryNSSDC On-Line Service

Physics ResourcesLANL Nonlinear ScienceLANL PhysicsArgonne National Lab.

gG

fGG T [6]G T

f [1]f Gf [3 J

Gf G

Gf

GGG

ff

t [7]GG

fG

fG

ft [8]t [9]

GGG

f

stis.nsf.gov (DC USA)rtfm.mit.edu (MA USA)jse.stat.ncsu.edu (NC USA)ftp.sas.com (NC USA)zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu (IN USA)lupulus.ssc.govksuvxa.kent.edusun.soe.clarkson.edu

Nat. Science FoundationUsenet FAQ repositoryJournal of Stat. Educ.SAS-related informationSupercomputingYoung Scientists Net.Directory of listsLaTeX tools

f Ge f

f Gfffff

[5]

e e-mail file requests (see notes this section for e-mail addresses) .E e-mail search requests (see notes this section).f anonymous FTP (see section 3.7, Access by Email if you cannot use FTP).g gopher serverG gopher server plus WAIS index searchest public telnet accessT public telnet access plus e-mail returns of search resultsW WAIS server plus WAIS index searches

Notes:

1: info@mail.ngdc.noaa.gov;2: chlamy@acpub.duke.edu;3: david@simsc.si.edu;4: info@sunsite.unc.edu, telnet username "swais lf for WAIS seaches,

telnet username "gopher" for plain gopher access;5: see section 3.6.2, Anonymous FTP and section 3.7, Access by E-mail;6: Telnet username II gopher ll

, password "envirolink";7: Use port 3000, no username, "help" gets instructions;8: Telnet username "ads";9: Telnet username "nodis ll

-*- 3.6. Access Tools

All Internet tools share the quirk that they are actually three things:a "server" or "daemon" program that runs all the time on a host computerand accepts requests to connect over the Internet, a IIclient" program thatpeople use to connect to or access these servers, and a standard protocolthat allows many different versions of clients and servers to talk to oneanother without difficulty.

Most of the recently published books about the Internet describe thesetools in detail. Kehoe (1992), the first to appear, was offered firstin a free electronic version over the Internet; it is still availablefrom many anonymous FTP archives around the world, in a directory namedsomething like pub/zen/. Krol (1992) has received excellent reviews.See the bibliography for other books.

A new item: the EARN Association has published a Guide to NetworkResource Tools (May 3, 1993), which is available via e-mail fromlistserv@EARNCC.bitnet, by sending the message "get nettools ps" fora PostScript version or "get nettools memo n for a plain text version.The guide covers almost every tool mentioned here, including example.

A few host computers mentioned in this guide allow the public to telnetto the host, and then use the host computer to access servers via gopher,WAIS or the Web. These arrangements are offered as a courtesy to thosepeople who do not have the necessary client software on their owncomputers, and want to try these tools before going to the trouble ofinstalling the client software themselves. Although licensing has beendiscussed for some of these tools (namely, certain versions of gopher),at present they are all free, and several are explicitly in the publicdomain or carry free GNU licenses.

-*- 3.6.1. Telnet

Telnet allows someone using a computer with full Internet access to accessanother computer over the Internet and login there, assuming he or she haslogin privileges on that computer as well. Anonymous telnet sessions aregenerally not permitted, but occasionally usernames are created withrestricted privileges, for use by the Internet public. Several of theseare listed in section 3.5, List of Archives, and in Yanoff (1993).

-*-

-*-

3.6.2. Anonymous FTP

FTP stands for file transfer protocol, and is the name of a program usedfor file transfers between computers with full Internet access, assumingyou have privileges on both the local and remote computers. Anonymous FTPis a common practice whereby anyone on the Internet may transfer files from(and sometimes to) a remote system with the userid "anonymous" and anarbitrary password. By convention, anonymous FTP users provide theire-mail addresses when asked for a password. This is useful to thosearchive managers who must justify to their bosses the time spent providingthis free (but not cheap) service. Some sites restrict when transfers maybe made from their archives, and most prefer that large transfers be madeonly during off-hours (relative to that site).

3.6.3. Gopher

Gopher is a user-interface program that makes FTP and other types ofconnections for computer users when they select an item in a menu. Itis an easy way to get stuff off the Internet without having to knowwhere the stuff lives. Gopher is free, and there are nice versions

for most types of computers, especially Unix workstations and Macs.It was invented at the University of Minnesota; current versions canbe retrieved via anonymous FTP from boombox.micro.umn.edu. The nameis a clever pun on the Hgo-for" person who runs errands for people,and on the burrowing rodent, which pops down a "hole" in the Internetand comes back up who-knows-where. Bionet.general, bionet.software,and bionet.users.addresses are good places to learn more about biology­related gopher services. Comp.infosystems.gopher is the newsgroupfor gopher-related issues in general. The FAQ for this group is storedon rtfm.mit.edu in the file pub/usenet/news.answers/gopher-faq.There is an entire chapter on gopher in Krol (1992).

-*- 3.6.4. Archie

Archie helps people locate items (documents, software, etc.) in thousandsof anonymous FTP archives around the world. Archie clients for many typesof computer, and documentation, can be retrieved via anonymous FTP fromany archie server (see below) in the /pub/archie/doc/ directory, or bye-mail fromarchie-admin@ans.net.

Archie can be used via e-mail, by sending e-mail with a list of commandsto archie@ans.net. For details, send the command "help". Due to the veryhigh demand for this service, requests should be made via e-mail or clientsrather than telnet-ing to an archie server. Please try to use archie onlyoutside of working hours, make your query as specific as possible, and usethe archie server nearest you: archie.au in Australia; archie.funet.fi inFinland; archie.th-darmstadt.de in Germany; archie.doc.ic.ac.uk in GreatBritain; archie.cs.huji.ac.il in Israel; archie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp andarchie.wide.ad.jp in Japan; archie.sogang.ac.kr in Korea; archie.nz inNew Zealand; archie.luth.se in Sweden; archie.ncu.edu.tw in Taiwan;archie.ans.net, archie.rutgers.edu, archie.sura.net and archie.nul.netin the United States.

-*- 3.6.5. veronica

Veronica is a very easy rodent-oriented net-wide index to computerizedarchives. Veronica's name is a play on the concepts of both gopher andarchie. (Remember the comic book couple Archie and Veronica? Veronicadoes for gopher what archie does for anonymous FTP.) Veronica searchesthrough hundreds of gopher holes looking for anything that matches akeyword supplied by the user, and assembles a list of gopher servers thatcontain items of interest. Note: veronica checks *titles* of gopheritems only, not their contents.

At present, there are no veronica clients; veronica is a gopher tool.There is a veronica database specifically for biology resources in thegopher server on merlot.welch.jhu.edu, under menu item lISearch Databasesat Hopkins ... ". Its name is BaING, or Bio Oriented INternet Gophers.An informal veronica FAQ is posted regularly in comp.infosystems.gopherand archived on veronica.scs.unr.edu as veronica/veronica-faq.

-*- 3.6.6. Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS)

The idea behind WAIS is to make anonymous FTP archives more accessibleby indexing their contents for easy searching and browsing. The client'suser interface is simple, but the concept is so powerful that nearlyeveryone with an anonymous FTP archive has spent part of 1992 and 1993building WAIS indices of all available material (software, data, documentsand other information). In the course of all this effort an enormousamount of information that has been available for years or even decadeshas suddenly become publicly available for the first time all in the pastyear. WAIS servers are often used as back-end engines for gopher servers.Gopher archives are built by hand, but WAIS bundles and organizes related

items automatically, and thus greatly extends the functionality of gopher.

Good WAIS client programs for the Mac (WAIStation) and PC (PCWAIS) areavailable on the anonymous FTP archive at think. com. If your computerhas full Internet access, you can tryout WArS on a Unix system, courtesyof Thinking Machines Corp., by telnetting to quake.think.com. Use theusername Ifwais lf and give your a-mail address as the password. See thenewsgroup comp.infosystems.wais for more details, or see the WAIS FAQ(section 5, Useful and Important FAQs) .

-*- 3.6.7. World-Wide Web (WNW)

~ is yet another tool for gathering useful information from the Internet.It was invented at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN),Switzerland. ~ looks like a document that users can open and read, butselecting certain words via mouse or keyboard causes other documents to beretrieved and opened for inspection. The most powerful aspect of ~ atpresent is the ease with which seamless, attractive online documentationcan be created, that is easy to find and browse, no matter where on theInternet the actual documents are. You can try~, courtesy of CERN:telnet to info.cern.ch (no username needed) .

-*- 3.7. Access by E-mail

Bitnet does not support telnet or FTP sessions, but many Bitnet nodes arealso full Internet sites, and so do support telnet and FTP. For thosewho only have access to computers on Bitnet, Princeton University offersa file transfer service bye-mail. Bitftp@PUCC.bitnet will send a helpfile in response to the message "help". There is an identical server inGermany: Bitftp@DEARN from within Bitnet/EARN or bitftp@vm.gmd.de fromthe Internet. This server should be used only for FTP requests involvingtransfers within Europe. If you have neither full Internet access nor anaccount on a Bitnet node, you can still get files from anonymous FTParchives bye-mail courtesyofftpmail@decwrl.dec.com. which will sendinstructions in response to the word "help" followed by "quitl! on separatelines of an e-mail message.

Also, you can retrieve formal Usenet FAQs via e-mail from the Usenet FAQrepository, rtfm.mit.edu: to get a help file, a list of all the FAQsstored there, and the latest version of this guide, send e-mail tomail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the text

helpindexsend usenet/news.answers/biology/guide

-*- 4. Commercial Services

The three most common types of commercial services are (1) restricted-usecomputer accounts allowing Internet access (e-mail or full access) viamodem from personal computers, (2) on-line bibliographic databases thatcan be searched via modem or over the Internet, and (3) access via modemor the Internet to private usenet-style special-interest networks, butonly e-mail access to the rest of the Internet. This third type ofservice is rapidly disappearing as vendors add full Internet access tosubscribers to keep them from going to another service vendor.

For the benefit of people without full Internet access (telnet and FTPin addition to e-mail), Peter Kaminski maintains a list of commercialaccess providers (Kaminski 1993). E-mail requests for this list can besent to info-deli-server@netcom.com: use "send PDIAL" as the subject.

The best sources of information about Internet resources, for readers

who do not have access to the Internet, are the books on the Internetlisted in the bibliography, and many other published literature with thewords "Internet", Il online ll or lldatabase" in the title. There are manysuch books available now, as publishers everywhere realize that moneycan be made on the new Electronic Frontier.

However, much of the information in these compendium books is out of dateeven before the book appears in print. Also, it is generally compiled bypeople who are not well acquainted with the materials, and thus poorlyorganized. Much of the information was gathered by soliciting data fromadministrators or suppliers of databases. This data, in current form,is best gathered directly from the source, via the Internet. The beststrategy is to learn to cruise the Internet yourself, with the help of aa "tool" book such as Kehoe (1992) or Kro1 (1992; or if you can't findthose at your local bookstore, some alternatives are Goldman 1992, Laneand Summerhill 1992, LaQuey and Ryer 1992, Malamud 1992 or Tennant et al.1993) and learn where in the Internet to look periodically for noticesabout resources of interest to you.

-*- 5. Useful and Important FAQs

You will learn a great deal about the Internet and what it has to offerif you read some of these FAQs. If you still want to know more, browsearound in Usenet. Also, a number of books have been published recentlythat give a very thorough guide to the Internet; see the bibliographyand check your local academic bookstore or university library.

The files below are stored in pub/usenet/news.answers/ in the anonymousFTP archive on rtfm.mit.edu, and are posted frequently to the Usenetnewsgroups news.answers, camp.answers and sci.answers, as appropriate.See section 3.6.2, Anonymous FTP for help retrieving these FAQs via e-mailor FTP. See section 2.3.3, Usenet FAQs about Usenet for a list of titles.

Title

General resources

Gopher [FAQlcomp.infosystems.wais FAQWAIS FAQFAQ: How to find people's E-mail addressesFAQ: College Email AddressesTop-level international country

domain namesHow to Get Information about NetworksPublic Dialup Internet Access ListUpdated Internet Services ListMailing Lists Available in UsenetHow to find sourcesAnonymous FTP List - FAQAnonymous FTP List - SitesMail Archive Server (MAS) software list

Scientific resources

A Biologist's Guide to Internet ResourcesBiological Information Theory

and Chowder SocietySources of Meteorological Data FAQComputer Graphics Resource Listing

Space FAQComputer Science Technical Report

Archive Sites

Archive filename

gopher-faqwais-faq/getting-startedwais-faq/sourcesfinding-addressescollege-email/part [1-3]top-level-domains

network-info/part1pdialinternet-servicesbit/gatelistfinding-sourcesftp-list/faqftp-list/sites[1-31mas-software

biology/guidebiology/info-theory

weather-datagraphics/resources-list/

part [1-3]space/* [15 parts]techreport-sites/list

-*-

Amos Bairoch has assembled a very useful list of Molecular BiologyArchives and Mailservers which is available on many FTP sites, andin the usenet newsgroup bionet.announce.

Paul Hengen has written a FAQ about new methods in molecular biology forthe bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts newsgroup. It is available via anonymousFTP on ncifcrf.gov in pub/methods/FAQlist.

Virgil Sealy and Lisa Nyman have written a FAQ for comp.infosystems.gis(and the gated GIS-L mailing list). You can also get this FAQ by sendinge-mail to gis-faq-request@abraxas.adelphi.edu (no message necessary), oryou can get it via anonymous FTP from dg-rtp.dg.com in the file /gis/faq.Bill Thoen has written "Internet Resources for GIS/CARTa/Earth Science",which is available via anonymous FTP from csn.org in the COGS/ directory.

Ken Boschert keeps The Electronic Zoo, a list of mailing lists, archives,and dial-up BBS systems that have something to do with animals (includinghumans). The most recent version can be retrieved via anonymous FTP fromwuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/techreports/wustl.edu/compmed/elec_zoo.txt.The list has many items not mentioned in this guide.

Lee Hancock keeps Internet/Bitnet Health Sciences Resources, a documentthat can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from ftp.sura.net, in the pub/nic/directory, file name medical.resources.<version>. In the same directoryis Wilfred Drew's Not Just Cows, a guide to Internet resources inagriculture and related sciences; get the file named agricultural.list.

5.1. What's a FAQ and where can I get one?

There are now hundreds of Internet documents, including this one, writtenexpressly to answer frequently asked questions. They are often referedto in the Usenet community as "FAQs" (sounds like "fax" or "F.A.Qs").You will find them in the Usenet newsgroup news.answers (and subsets insci.answers, camp.answers, and news.answers.newllsers). The Usenet FAQrepository is an anonymous FTP archive on rtfm.mit.edu (RTFM stands forRead The <bleep> Manual), in the directory pub/usenet/news.answers/.See section 3.6.2, Anonymous FTP for details, including instructions forretrieving any Usenet FAQ via e-mail.

-*- 5.2. Does anyone have an e-mail address for X?

Please, don't ask this in a newsgroup or mailing list. It's rude!

The quickest, most efficient way to answer this is to call or write to Xdirectly. If anyone can help you with this, it's X. To date, mostbiologists don't have e-mail addresses, or if they do, they don't readtheir e-mail very often, so you really are better off contacting themdirectly. If you must try to find this information via the computernetworks, please start by reading Kamens (1993a) or Lamb (1993) or therelevant section of one of the books listed in the bibliography. Also,you can check for the latest strategy in bionet.users.addresses. Butwait, there's more: many gopher servers listed in this guide havesearchable directories of biologists (see section 3.2, Directories).

-*- 5.3. How to find a good graduate program?

Go talk to the undergraduate or graduate advisor in your department,if you're a college student. Start browsing through the scientificjournals, and the new book stack in the library. Ask your favoriteprofessors for advice. Sadly, the Internet can not be all things to allpeople, and questions about how to pick graduate programs generally

-*-

-*-

-*-

do not get satisfactory replies.

One way you can use the Internet to explore graduate programs is bybrowsing through campus information directories via gopher.

5.4. Where can I get old newsgroup/mailing list articles?

All the biology-related Usenet newsgroups (since 1991) are archived forsearching via gopher, WAIS, and anonymous FTP on ftp.bio.indiana.edu, inthe directory /usenet/bionet/. The bionet newsgroups (some dating backto 1987) are archived for WAIS and anonymous FTP on net.bio.net. Browsethrough gopher land for additional Usenet newsgroup archives.

Most listserver mailing lists are archived on the computer where theyare administered. To subscribe and get an index of log files on thelistserver archive for the ECOLOG-L mailing list, for example, sende-mail to listserv@UMDD.umd.edu with the text:

subscribe ECOLOG-L Your Nameindex ECOLOG-L

5.5. Where can I find biology-related job announcements?

The bionet.jobs newsgroup is a good place to start, but you might alsowant to check the ECOLOG-L listserver mailing list, which is run bythe Ecological Society of America and carries many job announcements.Most other newsgroups and mailing lists carry occasional job notices.The American Physiological Society offers announcements appearing inThe Physiologist via gopher on gopher.uth.tmc.edu (port 3300). Usenethas several newsgroups devoted to jobs: misc.jobs.*.

Acknowledgements

This guide would not have been written without the financial support andintellectual tolerance of Duke and Yale Universities; it was organized(or organized itself) during the 1992 Complex Systems Summer School ofthe Santa Fe Institute.

Many, many thanks to

James Beach, Harvey Chinn, Dan Davison, Reinhard Doelz,John Garavelli, Don Gilbert, Rob Harper, Dan Jacobson,David Kristofferson, Francis Ouellette, Renato Sabatini,and Tom Schneider,

who have provided substantial ideas and material for this guide and/oradvice on related issues. Harvey Chinn has served as my editor, andmany improvements of organization were suggested by him. Additionalmaterial and suggestions were contributed by:

David Bridge, Steve Clark, Jemery Day, Josh Hayes, Tom Jacobs,Andy Johnston, Jonathan Kamens, Jim McIntosh, Dean Pentcheff,Jon Radel, Ross Smith, Roy Smith, and Christophe Wolfhugel,

and many, many readers of earlier versions of this guide. Thank you!

There exists a (mostly anonymous) cast of thousands who have made verylarge, even enormous voluntary contributions to the resources mentionedin this guide, and who are largely responsible for the thing we call theInternet in its broadest sense. They must all be very proud of whatthey have helped to create.

-*- Bibliography

Anonymous (1993) "Total traffic through uunet for the last 2 weeks".Usenet news.lists, 8 February. Posted by newsstats@uunet.uu.net.

Barr, D. and M. Horton (1993) "Rules for posting to Usenet". Usenetnews.announC8.newusers. FAQ archive filename posting-rules/partl.

Brader, M. and J. Schwarz (1993) "Answers to Frequently Asked Questionsabout Usenet". usenet news.announC8.newusers. FAQ archive filenameusenet-faq/part1.

Crepin-Leblond, O.M.J. (1993) " Top-level international country domainnames". Usenet comp.mail.misc. FAQ archive: top-level-domains.

Granrose, J., M. Jones and T. Czarnik (1993a) "Anonymous FTP List - FAQ".Usenet comp.misc. FAQ archive: ftp-list/faq.

Granrose, J., M. Jones and T. Czarnik (1993b) "Anonymous FTP List - Sites".Usenet comp.misc. FAQ archive: ftp-list/sites[1-3j.

Fotis, N.C. (1993) "Computer Graphics Resource Listing". Usenetcomp.graphics. FAQ archive filename graphics/resources-list/part[1-3J.

Garavelli, J. (1992) "Announcements of the Protein InformationRepository". Usenet bionet.molbio.proteins, December.

Goldmann, N. (1992) "Online Information Hunting". Windcrest, Blue RidgeSummit, PA.

Harris, R. (1993) "Computer Science Technical Report Archive Sites".Usenet comp.doc.techreports. FAQ archive: techreport-sites/list.

Kahin, B. (1992) "Buildingthe Development of theMcGraw Hill, New York.

Information Infrastructure: Issues inNational Research and Education Network".

432 pages.

Kamens, J.I. (1993a) "FAQ: HOW to find people's E-mail addresses". Usenetcomp.mail.misc. FAQ archive filename finding-addresses.

Kamens, J. I. (1993b) "How to find sources (READ THIS BEFORE POSTING)".Usenet comp.mail.misc. FAQ archive filename finding-sources.

Kamens, J.I. (1993c) "How to become a USENET site". Usenetnews.admin.misc. FAQ archive filename site-setup.

Kamens, J. I. (1993d) "Introduction to the news. answers newsgroup".Usenet news.answers. FAQ archive filename news-answers/introduction.

Kamens, J.I. (1993e) "Mail Archive Server (MAS) software list".Usenet comp.mail.misc. FAQ archive filename mas-software.

Kaminski, P. (1993) "Public Dialup Internet Access List (PDIAL)". Usenetalt.internet.access.wanted FAQ archive filename pdial.

Keen, G" G. Redgrave, J. Lawton, M. Cinkosky, S. Mishra , J. Fickett,and C. Burks (1992) "Access to molecular biology databases".Mathematical Comput. Modelling 16:93-101.

Kehoe, B.P. (1992) "Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner'sGuide to the Internet", 2nd Edition (July). Prentice Hall,Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 112 pages. The 1st Edition, (February)is available in Postscript format via anonymous FTP fromftp.cs.widener.edu and many other Internet archives.

Krol, E. (1992) "The Whole Internet: Catalog & User's Guide".

O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, CA. 376 pages.

Lamb, D. (1993) "FAQ: College Email Addresses". Usenet soc.col1ege.FAQ archive filename college-email/part [1-3] .

Lane, E.S. and C.A. Summerhill (1992) "An Internet Primer forInformation Professionals: A Basic Guide to Networking Technology".Meckler Corporation, Westport, CT. -200 pages. In press.

LaQuey, T.L. (1992?) editor, "The User's Directory of Computer Networks".Digital Press. -1000 pages.

LaQuey, T.L. and J.C. Ryer (1992)Guide to Global Networking".Reading, MA. 208 pages.

liThe Internet Companion: A Beginner'sAddison-Wesley Publishing Co.,

Lawrence, D.C., G. Woods and G. Spafford (1993) "How toUsenet NewsgrouplJ. Usenet news.announce.newusers.creating-newsgroups/part1.

Create a NewFAQ archive:

Leech, J. (1993) "Space FAQ". Usenet scLastro. FAQ archive space/*.

Malamud, C. (1992) "Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue".Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 376 pages.

McIntosh, J. (1993a) "NetNews/Listserv Gateway Policy." Usenet bit. adrnin.FAQ archive: bit/policy.

McIntosh, J. (1993b) "Mailing Lists Available in Usenet." Usenetbit.adrnin. FAQ archive: bit/gatelist.

Reid, B. (1993a) "Usenet Readership Report for January 1993". Usenetnews.lists.

Reid, B. (1993b) "Usenet Readership Summary Report for January 1993".Usenet news.lists.

Schneider, T. (1993) "Biological Information Theory and Chowder Society".Usenet bionet.info-theory. FAQ archive: biology/info-theory.

da Silva, S. and C. Von RospachAccessible Mailing Lists".news.lists[1-4] .

and G. Spafford (1993) "PubliclyUsenet news.lists. FAQ archive:

Smith, Una R. (1993)Usenet sci.bio.

"A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources."FAQ archive: biology/guide.

Spafford, G. (1993) "USENET Software: History and Sources". Usenetnews.adrnin.misc. FAQ archive filename usenet-software/part1.

Spafford, G. and R. Atkinson (1992) "How to Get Information aboutNetworks". Usenet news.adrnin.rnisc. FAQ archive: network-info/part1.

Spafford, G. and M. Horton (1992) "Introduction to news.announce".Usenet news.announC8.newusers. FAQ archive filenamenews-announce-intro/part1.

Spafford, G. and A.J. Offutt VI (1992) "HintsUsenet". Usenet news.announce.newusers.usenet-writing-style/part1.

on writing style forFAQ archive filename

Spafford, G. and C. Salzenberg (1992) "What is Usenet?". Usenetnews.announC8.newusers. FAQ archive filename what-is-usenet/partl.

Spafford, G. and C. Von Rospach (1992) "A Primer on How to Work With theUsenet Communityll. Usenet news.announC6.neWUsers. FAQ archive

filename usenet-primer/part1.

Stern, I. (1993) "Sources of Meteorological Data FAQ". Usenetsci.geo.meteorology. FAQ archive filename weather-data.

Templeton, B. (1991) "Emily Postnews Answers YourNetiquette ll

• Usenet news.announce.neWllsers.emily-postnews/part1.

Questions onFAQ archive filename

Tennant, R., J. Ober and A.G. Lipow (1993) "Crossing theThreshold: an Instructional Handbook", 1st Edition.Solution Press, San Carlos, CA. 134 pages.

InternetLibrary

Thomas, E. (1993) "Revised LISTSERV System Reference Library".Listserv@BITNIC.educom.edu, release 1.7c. Retrievable from anylistserver using the mail message "send listserv refcard ll

•

UofMN Gopher Team (1993) "Gopher Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)".Usenet comp.infosystems.gopher. FAQ archive: gopher-faq.

Wohler, B. (1993) "NN Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) with Answers".Usenet news.software.nn. FAQ archive: nn-faq.

Woodbury, G.W. (1993) "UNIX BBS Software FAQ with Answers". Usenetcomp.bbs.misc. FAQ archive: unix-faq/bbs-software.

Yanoff, S. (1993) "Updated Internet Services List". Usenetalt.internet.services. Available from rtfm.mit.edu FAQarchive as filename internet-services.

-*- Appendix. Assorted Listserver Mailing Lists

Remember, do not send your subscription request to the list itself.

A few of the mailing lists below use a Unix-based "listserv" program thatis similar to the "LISTSERV" program for mainframes. 1I1istserv lf does nothave as many features as "LISTSERV", but in the interest of brevity thesemailing lists have not been singled out. See section 2.4, ListserverMailing Lists for subscription instructions.

An "M" before the descriptive title indicates a moderated list. Allsubmissions should be sent to the moderator, not the list. Thelistserver for such groups can provide the name and e-mail address ofthe moderator. "Gil indicates a gateway to a Usenet newsgrouPi "Allindicates that the listserver maintains some files for this group.

Agriculture and Animal Husbandry

ag-econ@ERS.bitnetag-exp-l@vm1.nodak.eduageng-l@ibm.gwdg.deagric-I@UGA.cc.uga.eduaqua-l@vm.UOGUELPH.cacamel-I@SAKFUOO.bitnetdairy-I@UMDD.umd.eduhort-I@VTVM1.cc.vt.eduhortpgm@VTVM1.cc.vt.edumgarden@WSUVM1.csc.wsu.edunewcrops@vm.cc.purdue.eduspud@WSUVM1.csc.wsu.edurusag-I@UMDD.umd.eduvetcai-I@KSUVM.ksu.eduvetlib-I@VTVM2.bitnetvetmed-I@UGA.cc.uga.edu

Agricultural Economics and ERS Test ListAgricultural Expert SystemsAgricultural Engineering and Intel. ControlAgriculture DiscussionAquaculture Discussion ListDiscussion Forum on Camel ResearchDairy Discussion ListVa Tech Horticulture Dept. AnnouncementsVa Tech Horticulture Dept. ProgramMaster GardenersDiscussion list for New CropsPotato ResearchRussian AgricultureVet. Medicine Computer Assisted InstructionVeterinary Medicine Library issues and info.Veterinary Medicine (Peered)

Anthropology and Archaeology

anct-ne@vm.byu.eduanthro-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.eduarch-l@TAMVM1.tamu.eduhumevo@GWUVM.gwu.edu Mnative-l@TAMVM1.tamu.edupacarc-l@WSUVM1.csc.wsu.edupan@GWUVM.gwu.edu

Biology

Ancient Near Eastern StudiesGeneral Anthropology Bulletin BoardArchaeology ListHuman Evolutionary Research DiscussionIssues pertaining to Aboriginal PeoplesPacific Rim Archaeology Interest ListPhysical Anthropology News List

bee-l@albany.edubio-dost@ege.edu.trbioesr-l@UMCVMB.bitnetbiomch-l@nic.surfnet.nlbnfnet-l@FINHUTC.hut.ficp@opus.hpl.hp.comentobr-l@BRUFMG.bitnetentomo-l@vm.UOGUELPH.caethology@FINHUTC.hut.fiherm@ege.edu.triapwild@vml.nodak.edul-etho@UQAM.bitnetiopi@life.anu.edu.auiubs@life.anu.edu.aulactacid@SEARN.sunet.semicronet@vm.UOGUELPH.carmbl-l@umdd.umd.edusocinsct@albany.eduthphysio@FRMOPll.cnusc.fr

Biostatistics

Discussion of Bee BiologyBiologists in TurkeyBiological applications of Electron Spin Res.Biomechanics and Movement ScienceBiological Nitrogen Fixation ForumCarnivorous PlantsEntomology in Brazil (in Portuguese)Entomology Discussion List

G EthologyMedicinal and Aromatic Plants DiscussionInternational Arctic Project WildlifeEthologistes/Ethologists

M Int. Organization for Plant InformationM Int. Union of Biological Societies

Lactic Acid Bacteria ForumFungus and Root Interaction DiscussionRocky Mountain Biological LaboratorySocial Insect Biology Research ListThermal Physiology

biomet-l@ALBNYDH2.bitnet Bureau of Biometrics at Albanybmdp-l@vml.mcgill.ca BMDP Software Usersedstat-l@jse.stat.ncsu.edu G Journal of Statistics Education Listmorphmet@CUNYVM.cuny.edu Biological Morphometrics Mailing Listpstat-l@IRLEARN.ucd.ie Discussion of Stats and Programmingqrnlist@tbone.biol.scarolina.edu Quantitative Morphology Listsas-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu G SAS Discussion (Peered)saspac-l@UMSLVMA.umsl.edu SAS Public Access Consortiumspssx-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu G SPSSX Discussion (peered)stat-l@vml.mcgill.ca G Statistical Consulting

Computational biology

complex@life.anu.edu.au M Complex systemscybsys-l@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu Cybernetics and Systemsecosys-l@vm.gmd.de List for ecosystem theory and modelingglosas-l@acadvml.UOTTAWA.ca GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Listinns-l@UMDD.umd.edu International Neural Network Societyndrg-l@WVNVM.wvnet.edu Nonlinear Dynamics Research Groupneural-n@ANDESCOL.uniandes.edu.co Artificial Neural Networks Discussionsmbnet@fconvx.ncifcrf.gov Society for Mathematical Biology

Conservation and Environmental Studies

apaspan@GWUVM.gwu.edu APA Scientific Grassroots Networkaquifer@IBACSATA.bitnet Pollution and grondwater rechargeaseh-l@TTUVM1.bitnet American Soc. of Environmental Historianscomdev@vm.ecs.rpi.edu Communication & international developmentconsbio@UWAVM.u.washington.edu Conservation Biology Listconslink@SIVM.si.edu Discussion on Biological Conservationcturtle@NERVM.nerdc.ufl.edu Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation Listdevel-l@AUVM.american.edu G Technology Transfer in Int. Development

envst-l@BROWNVM.brown.eduicam-l@IRMFAOOl.bitnetitrdbfor@asuvrn.inre.asu.edulaspau-l@HARVARDA.harvard.edumeh2o-l@TAUNIVM.tau.ac.ilnatura-l@UCHCECVM.bitnetnciw-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.eduodp-l@TAMVMl.tamu.edusopren-l@secom.ufpa.br

Ecology

Environmental Studies Discussion ListIntegrated Coastal Area ManagementDendrochronology ForumLatin America Scholarship ProgramMiddle East waterEcology and Envir. Protection in ChileNutrient Cycling Issues - WorldwideOcean Drilling Program Open DiscussionSOPREN discussion re Amazonia (Portuguese)

biosph-l@UBVM.Cc.buffalo.edu G Biosphere, ecology, Discussion Listbiodiv-l@bdt.ftpt.ansp.br Biodiversity networksbird rba@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu National Birding Hotline Cooperativebirdband@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu Bird Bander's Forumbirdchat@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu National Birding Hotline (Chat Line)birdcntr@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu National Birding Hotline (Central)birdeast@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu National Birding Hotline (East)birdwest@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu National Birding Hotline (West)birdtrip@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu Special BIRDCHAT LOGO Projectecolog-l@UMDD.umd.edu G Ecological Society of Americaots-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Organization for Tropical Studiespolpal-l@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Pollination and palynology listsinoecol@MIAMIU.bitnet Sino-Ecologists Club Overseas Forum

Geology and Geography (including GIS)

acdgis-l@AWIIMC12.imc.univie.ac.at Geographic Information Systemsastra-ug@icnucevm.bitnet ASTRA joint database project users groupclimlist@OHSTVMA.acs.ohio-state.edu Climatology Distribution Listcoastgis@IRLEARN.ucd.ie Coastal GIS Distribution Listcpgis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Chinese Professionals GIS Use Listgeograph@FINHUTC.hut.fi Geographygeology@PTEARN.fc.ul.pt Geology Discussion Listgeonet-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu M Geoscience Librarians & Informationgeoref@UNALCOL.bitnet Sistemas de Info. Geo-Ref. (GIS in Spanish)gis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu G Geographic Information Systemsidrisi-l@toe.towson.edu Idrisi Discussion Listimagrs-l@csearn.bitnet Image Processing of Remotely Sensed datamaps-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu Maps and Air Photo Systems Forumquake-l@vm.nodak.edu QUAKE-L Discussion Listseism-l@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu Seismological Data Distributionseismd-l@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu Seismological Discussionstat-geo@UFRJ.bitnet Forum of Quantitative Methods in Geosciencestgis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Temporal Topics on GIS Listucgis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Univ Consort for Geo Info & Analysis Listuigis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu G User Interfaces for Geographic Info. Sys.vigis-l@UWAVM.u.washington.edu Virtual Reality and GIS

Marine biology

brine-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu Brine Shrimp Discussion Listdeepsea@uvvm.uvic.ca Deep Sea and Vent Newsdiatom-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu Research on the diatom algaehypbar-l@TECHNION.technion.ac.il HyperBaric & Diving Medicine Listmarine-l@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Marine Studies/Shipboard Educationmedsea-l@AEARN.bitnet Marine Biology of the Adriatic Sea List

Medicine and medical research

adrnra-l@ALBNYDH2.bitnetamia-37@UMAB.bitnetamied-l@vml.mcgill.cababson@HARVARDA.harvard.edubiomed-l@vml.mcgill.ca

Adirondack Medical Records Association ListAmerican Medical Informatics AssociationAmerican Medical Informatics Association Edu.Discussions on Organizational Design of Acad.Assoc. of Biomedical Communications Directors

biomed-l@NDSUVMl.bitnet Biomedical Ethicscancer-l@WVNVM.wvnet.edu CANCER discussion listclan@FRMOPll.cnusc.fr Cancer Liaison and Action Networkcfs-med@NIHLIST.bitnet Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/CFIDS medical listcocamed@UTORONTO.bitnet Computers in Canadian Medical Educationcompmed@WUVMD.bitnet M Comparative Medicine Listconflist@UCSFVM.bitnet School of Medicine Conference Listcromed-l@AEARN.bitnet CROatian MEDical Listfamily-l@MIZZOUl.bitnet Academic Family Medicine Discussionhealthco@RPITSVM.bitnet Communication in health/medical contexthypermed@UMAB.bitnet Biomedical Hypermedia Instructional Designimia-l@UMAB.bitnet Int. Medical Informatics Assn. Boardiscami@GREARN.csi.forth.gr Computer Assist. Management & Manip. Info.jmedclub@BROWNVM.brown.edu Medical Journal Discussion Clublasmed-l@TAUNIVM.tau.ac.il Laser Medicinemedcons@FINHUTC.hut.fi Medical consulting and case descriptionsmedforum@ARIZVMl.ccit.arizona.edu M Medical Students Discussionmedimage@POLYVM.bitnet Medical Imaging Discussion Listmedlib-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Medical Libraries Discussion Listmednets@NDSUVMl.bitnet Medical Telecommunications Networksmednews@ASUACAD.bitnet M Health Info-Com Network (HICN) Newslettermedphy-l@AWIIMC12.bitnet EFOMP Medical Physics Information Servicesmedstu-l@UNMVMA.bitnet M Medical student discussion listmedsup-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Medical Support Listnnlm-sea@UMAB.bitnet National Network Library of Medicine SEAnutepi@DBOTUIM.bitnet Nutritional Epidemiology Discussion Listoxygen-l@MIZZOU1.bitnet Oxygen Free Radical Biology and Medicinepanet-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Medical Education and Health Informationsmcdcme@WAYNEST1.bitnet Continuing Medical Education Discussion Listsmdm-l@DARTCMS1.bitnet Medical Decision Making List

Molecular biology

biotech@UMDD.umd.edu Gconfocal@UBVM.cc.buffalo.educyan-tox@GREARN.csi.forth.grdis-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.eduebcbbul@HDETUD1.tudelft.nlebcbcat@HDETUD1.tudelft.nlembinfo@IBACSATA.bitnetemflds-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.eduforumbio@scf.fundp.ac.begenetics@INDYCMS.iupui.edulpn-l@BROWNVM.brown.edunibnews@ccsun.unicamp.brrbmi@FRORS13.bitnet

Neurobiology

cogsci-l@vml.yorku.cadasp-l@earn.cvut.csecovis-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.eduneuchile@CUNYVM.cuny.eduneuro-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.eduneurol-l@UICVM.uic.eduneus582@UICVM.uic.edusbnc-l@BRUSPVM.bitnet

Taxonomy and Systematics

class-l@ccvm.sunysb.edumuse-l@HARVARDA.harvard.edumuseum-l@UNMVMA.unm.edurapd-l@vm.byu.eduroots-l@vml.nodak.edutaxacom@HARVARDA.harvard.edu

Biotechnology Discussion ListConfocal Microscopy ListThe Cyanobacterial Toxins Discussion ListDrosophila workers to receive DIS NewsletterComputers in Biotechnology, Rsch. and Edu.Catalogue of 'Biotechnological' softwareEMBNet (European Molecular Biology Network)Electromagnetics in Med., Sci. & Com.Forum on molecular biologyClinical human geneticsLaboratory Primate Newsletter ListNIBNews (Biology and Medical Informatics)Molecular Biology Research Group

Cognitive Science Discussion GroupDigital Acoustic Signal ProcessingTrends in the Ecology of VisionChilean Neurosciences Discussion ListYale Neuroscience programNeuroscience Information ForumMethods in Modern NeuroscienceBrazilian Society of Neurosciences & Compo

Classification and phylogeny estimationMuse Software Discussion ListMuseum discussion listRAPD sequencing discussion listGenealogy listTaxonomic and systematic collections list

Teaching and Research

biocis-l@SIVM.si.edu Biology Curriculum Innovation Studybiopi-l@KSUVM.ksu.edu Secondary Biology Teacher Listconslt-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu Research and Practice in Mentoringgrants-l@JHUVM.hcf.jhu.edu NSF Grants & Contractshpsst-l@QUCDN.queensu.ca History and Philosophy of Science

job-list@FRORS12.bitnetmethods@vm.ecs.rpi.edunavigate@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edunewedu-l@vm.usc.edunihggc-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edunsf-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.eduscifaq-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.eduscifraud@uacsc2.albany.eduvpiej-l@VTVMl.cc.vt.edu Gwisenet@UICVM.uic.edu

Job offers from EARN Institute membersResearch methodology

M Navigating The Internet Workshop ListNew Paradigms in Education List

M NIH Grants and Contracts Distribution ListNSF Information List

G Science FAQ ListDiscussion of Fraud in ScienceElectronic journal discussionsWomen In Science and Engineering NETwork