Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

350 online servicesand drugs. The sheer volume of articles (MEDLINE hasmore than 11 million citations dating back to the 1960s)can make it hard to find and evaluate the most relevantmaterial.By far the most extensive information resource todayis the World Wide Web with its millions of sites and pagesof information. There are two basic approaches to findingmaterial on the Web. The first is to use a search engine bytyping in keywords or phrases (see search engine). Eventhough search engines such as Google index only a modestfraction of the available pages on the Web, a searchon a topic such as “database design” can yield from thousandsto millions of possible “hits.” Most search engines doattempt to rank results in decreasing order of matching orrelevance.An alternative approach is to browse the categorized listof topics presented by a site such as Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) or About.com (www.about.com). The advantage ofthis approach is that the site’s researchers have selected thelinks for each topic that they believe to be the most valuable,and the number of possibilities is likely to be moremanageable (see portal).The tremendous increase in personal expression andcollaboration on the Web is opening new channels of information(see blogs and blogging, user-created content,and wikis and Wikipedia). Wikipedia, for example,has some articles that are as reliable and fully documentedas those found in a traditional encyclopedia, while othersmight be best described as “works in progress.” Theresearcher must decide whether a given article or postingis definitive or perhaps just usefully suggestive of furtherresources.Online research remains more an art than a science. Theresearcher must choose the appropriate tools—bibliographicalresources, specialized databases, information services,search engines, and portals—and evaluate and integratethe results so they are useful for a given question or project.Students and researchers now have unprecedented access toinformation, but sophisticated critical thinking skills mustbe employed. In particular, it can be difficult to evaluate thebackground or credentials of the people behind Web sitesthat are not associated with recognized media outlets orother organizations.Further ReadingDornfest, Rael, Paul Bausch, and Tara Calishain. Google Hacks:Tips and Tools for Finding and Using the World’s Information.3rd ed. Sebastapol, Calif.: O’Reilly, 2006.Hock, Randolph. The Extreme Searcher’s Internet Handbook: AGuide for the Serious Searcher. 2nd ed. Medford, N.J.: InformationToday, 2007.Internet Public Library. Available online. URL: http://www.ipl.org/. Accessed August 16, 2007.Research and Documentation Online. Available online. URL:http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/. Accessed August 16,2007.Schlein, Alan M. Find It Online. 4th ed. Tempe, Ariz.: Facts onDemand Press, 2004.Tomaiuolo, Nicholas, Steve Coffman, and Barbara Quint. The WebLibrary: Building a World Class Personal Library with Free WebResources. Medford, N.J.: Information Today, 2004.online servicesThe ability of PC owners to connect to remote computers(see modem) led to the proliferation of both free andcommercial online information services during the 1980s.At one end of the spectrum were bulletin board systems(BBS), many run by hobbyists on PCs connected to a fewphone lines (see bulletin board systems). They offeredusers the ability to read and post messages on various topicsas well as to download or contribute software (see alsoshareware).The growing number of connected PC owners soonoffered entrepreneurs a potential market for a commercialonline information service. One of the oldest, CompuServe,had actually been started in 1969 as a business time-sharingcomputer system. In 1979, it launched a service forhome computer users, offering e-mail and technical supportforums. By the mid-1980s, the service had added anonline chat service called CB Simulator (see chat, online)as well as news content. The service’s greatest strength,however, remained its forums, which offered technicalsupport for just about every sort of computer hardwareor software, together with download libraries containingsystem patches, drivers, utilities, templates, macros, andother add-ons.By then, however, the online service market had becomequite competitive. While CompuServe focused on computer-savvyusers, America Online (AOL), founded in1985 by Steve Case, targeted the growing legion of newPC users who needed an easy-to-navigate interface. AOLgrew steadily, reaching a million customers in 1994 (seeAmerica Online). AOL chat groups became very popular,spawning a vigorous online culture while raising controversiesabout sexual content in some chat “rooms.” A thirdservice, Prodigy, also catered to the new user.Meanwhile, the World Wide Web and the advent ofgraphical Web browsers such as Netscape and MicrosoftInternet Explorer in the mid-1990s led millions of usersto connect to the Internet (see Internet, Web browser,and World Wide Web). Internet service providers (ISPs)offered direct, no-frills access to the Web. CompuServe andAOL soon offered their users access to the Internet as well.However, accessing the Web through an online informationservice was usually more expensive, and often slower, thanusing an ISP and a Web browser directly. Additionally, freeWeb portal services such as Yahoo! began to offer extensiveinformation resources of their own.The Internet thus threatened to shrink the market forthe commercial online services. AOL fought back in the late1990s by cutting its monthly rates to make them competitivewith ISPs, flooding the mails with free disks and trialoffers, bundling introductory packages with new computersystems, and promoting added-value information servicessuch as stock quotes. In 1998, the market consolidatedwhen AOL bought CompuServe, continuing to run the latteras a subsidiary targeted at more sophisticated users.The same year AOL bought Netscape to gain access to itsbrowser technology. Finally, AOL merged with Time-Warner,hoping to leverage the latter’s huge media resources,such as by offering classic TV fare. However, the flagship