Online resources for IT
Stephen Bostock September 1999
Keele University, UK

1. Course resources

• Support pages for modules are at

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/Courses/MScDip/support.html
• A list of Internet resources is at http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/Stephen_Bostock/in.html
• There are a series of notes about many Internet services below at

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/Stephen_Bostock/Internet/noteindx.htm
• Reports and Guidelines at NCC Education http://www.ncceducation.co.uk/

look under NCC Education. You need a password from Stephen Bostock to see the reports.

2. Web resources

There are links for searches on the Internet resource page above and off the Keele Home page. There are different types of resource:

• virtual libraries such as
• Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/
• the World Lecture Hall http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/index.html
• and the Virtual University http://www.vu.org/
• general search engines such as those listed on the Internet courses resource page
• subject specific lists and gateways, for computer science, e.g.
• Cardiff University teaching materials http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Teaching/
• the CTI centre for Computing http://www.ulst.ac.uk/misc/cticomp/
• Computer Science Discipline Network http://snipe.ukc.ac.uk/CSDN/ where you should try Computer Science Resources
• http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/Stephen_Bostock/at.html has links to some topics.
• Evaluating the worth of web pages once you have found them:
• The Internet Detective is a tutorial, do it at

http://sosig.ac.uk/desire/internet-detective.html
• Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/college/instruct/web/critical.htm

3. Bibliographic resources

• The BIDS/ATHENS citation database requires that you register with the service, through Keele Information Services.
• The Keele IS has pages of useful information about online resources

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/li/eir/
• of which the best is FirstSearch at OCLC http://www.ref.uk.oclc.org:2000/

but you need the Keele authorization name and password - ask KIS or Stephen Bostock.
• The Keele library catalogue is started by ‘opac’ when logged on to potter; a new web version will be introduced in 1999/00
• Other libraries are available at the COPAC gateway http://copac.ac.uk/copac/

4. Electronic Journals

• The Association for Computing Machinery is an important computing organization. It publishes several journals, which are available at http://www.acm.org/
• Academic Press journals, including computer science journals, are available at Ideal

http://www.janet.idealibrary.com/ Try Browse on the home page, and then choose Maths and Computer Science journals.
• Journal Citation Reports lists many journals in all fields: http://jcrweb.com/
• The eLib project (electronic library) home page: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/elib/intro.html
• There are many newspapers online. The Guardian Online supplement has articles on technology and the Internet: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/

5. Electronic mail

There is an alias for the course mscitft within the computer science network, or mscitft@cs.keele.ac.uk from elsewhere. You will get mail from tutors through this.

6. E-mail lists

Lists are mailing lists that you can join and leave at will automatically maintained by listserver software. There are many thousands of lists worldwide; see the Internet resource page for some indexes of them.

The UK Higher Education listserver site is mailbase.ac.uk. Although you can interact with it entirely by email it is easier to look at its Web site http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/ For example, there are 70 lists concerning computers in some way, including

To join a list you send an email message to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk such as
                   join cmc myfirstname mylastname
after which you get mail from the list.

7. Usenet

Usenet is a system of discussions (‘newsgroups’) through text messages which does not use personal mail boxes but instead the messages are stored centrally at each site. You can use special Reader software you can use Netscape (from menu Window, Newsgroups). You may need to set the Edit, Preferences menus to use the server 'news'. Depending on the browser version, select the news server and then right click to 'Subscribe to Newsgroups', or use Options, Show All Newsgroups. Newsgroups are arranged in a subject hierarchy. There are some 700 newsgroups in the comp (computers) hierarchy. Try looking at some. They are discussions groups on specific topics. They can be a useful resource to read, but think carefully before writing to one. To practice reading and writing to a newsgroup use the local group keele.test. There is a Note on Usenet (see 1. Above).

8. Keele Library Resources

There are leaflets in the Library help desk area about Postgraduate study and research, the Guide to library and information services, COPAC, and the Online catalogue (opac). The Library Online is available on PCs in the Library building. It gives access to CD-ROMS in the library and external links to online databases. However, there is little of interest for Computer Science other than resources listed above. When looking for books, the online bookshops Amazon and BOL are good - see the Internet Resources page (in 1 above).

Books:
Online books at InformIT
Tracy LaQuey, The European Internet Companion, Addison Wesley
Internet Users' Guide to Network Resource Tools, M. Isaacs and TERENA, Addison Wesley