PC Chapter Introduction

One of the greatest tools used by emergency & safety professionals is accurate available information.  We’re sure there are still some individuals out there who have not accepted PC use.  It is far too important a tool not to utilize.  Computers and the Internet now serve as an invaluable source of (near) immediate required information and data.

This chapter does not serve as a course study in how to use computers, their operation or technical data regarding hardware and programming.  It is our intent to outline available software, databases, the Internet, bulletin boards, newsgroups, etc.  All of these tools are presented as to how they are used or available to emergency management & safety professionals.

Emergency & Safety Resource Technology:

There are many valuable tools, which emergency & safety professionals require to perform their jobs.  They might include detectors and personal protective equipment, inspections and analysis gear as well as hazard analysis and mitigation programs.

Tools of the trade also include valued resource and reference materials to compliment the needed services of specialists in a respective field of expertise, enabling them to make informed decisions.

With the inclusion of the many emergency & safety related hardware tools, personnel and other associated devices to allow professionals to properly perform their assignments, there exists an ever-growing abundance of another sort.

Computer technology & The Internet::  The age of information management is upon us and it is vital that as professionals we become enlightened into the awareness of available hardware and software programs and Internet data geared at helping us perform out jobs in a more efficient manner.  It is true, computer based programs are in fact making many tasks typically performed manually more efficient and expeditiously.  For example, OSHA Injury and Accident forms have been hand written, submitted and filed in the past.  There are programs available which enable an individual to perform simple data entry tasks into designated areas of pre-formatted forms that may be sent electronically to the state or government agency required to get it.  Additionally, these programs can perform analysis on total numbers, types and effects, and generate required annual statistics and reports.  Fire departments & states are to receive Tier II & III hazardous materials annual reports, which in an instant, can be transferred on-line.

Computer software programs have been developed for everything from Accident Investigations, ergonomic modeling to risk assessments predictive programs, hazard mitigation and virtual reality training.  The programs will only get better and more effective.  Now that there here, someone must be aware of them, be able to use them and ensure that they are properly updated and maintained just as one would do manually.

So, what, are the right emergency & safety related software programs to have?  Is there a standard? Should there be a standard system? Well you get the point, it can become a bit confusing.  At this still very early stage of the game in technology, we’ve only touched on what might be accomplished for emergency & safety professionals through the use of computers and advanced data management systems.

Aloha

Cameo

Disaster Finder

EM-2000

SoftRisk

Tomes

Hurritrack

It Just Keeps Getting Better All The Time: If you can afford to wait, with some patience until the cost is worth the benefit, most applications will be found to improve dramatically.  The newer version becomes faster, cheaper and easier it seems to use than the original.  The wait for software, databases & IT to evolve into a cost effective alternative may be worth it.  When patient users purchased later IT, they found the more current products could do a great deal more than their predecessor, with a lot less kinks or “bugs” to work out.

You have to jump into the water sometime.  Don’t wait too long or you may miss some valuable programs and services that may be rich with everything you need.  It may seem like a double-edged sword, dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.  You’ll need to be the one that does the research to recognize what you really need.  Or get out into the IT world and start asking, who out there is using something for_____?  Trust us, you’ll get answers, then you’ll need to sift through recommendations to determine further what might be right for you.  It seems like a task but is definitely worth the inquiry.  Don’t just purchase or buy anything, be cause that’s exactly what you’ll get.

Get Used to Changes:

Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” By this standard, emergency & safety software and the Internet is perfect-it.  It changes every single day. In fact, the growth is so fast that it’s difficult for a course like this-or even a magazine article-to have the very latest statistics. There are several measures that indicate the growth of the Internet, including the number of host computers and the number of users.

The Internet and Physical libraries experience lost or damaged resources, but sources of information on the Web frequently alter content or location without record of the change. Many times information that previously existed disappears without a trace never to return to either the same location or another one.

Advances in Emergency & Safety Software:

Software is playing an increasingly important role in systems operations such as emergency management, nuclear reactors, transportation safety, chemical plants, and medical equipment safety. Although system safety engineering techniques have existed for decades, changes and extensions are required for systems that contain digital computers and software.

Long-term goals of software research are to enhance the management of complexity in specification, analysis, design, implementation, and verification of complex, emergency / safety-critical systems, allowing acceptable levels of assurance.

Software and System Safety

Traditional system safety engineering techniques are being extended to handle the new types of accident causes and failure modes that arise with digital system components and the more cognitively complex roles human operators are assuming in high-tech systems.

To work backward from hazardous states to determine what human errors and software behaviors are most critical with respect to hazardous system states.

Human-Technology Automation: Human-Technology automation has led to new types of human errors and accident causes in high-tech systems where humans and computers must cooperate to control a partnership of complex electromechanical systems or physical processes. Humans have not been eliminated from most of these systems, but their role has changed significantly. Some accidents in commercial aircraft and other complex systems have resulted from difficulties in integrating computer and human control.

Software Evolution: Software is not static once it is put into use but requires changes throughout its lifetime.

THE INTERNET: “A Tool of Choice ”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, you have already heard or read about the Internet. As Internet users we are part of a revolution? That sounds a bit strong considering revolution may conjure up a minds image of dramatic social, political, and economic change-like the American Revolution or the Industrial Revolution.

Well, the Internet is a revolution of sorts. It is a Communication Revolution. An age in which a large percentage of our daily activities such as entertainment, education, news, financial transactions, shopping, and communication occur via electronic communications.

The Internet’s growth has been exponential in the past thirty years after the introduction of individual workstations and PCs. 

What Is A Network?  To share information the fastest method is to connect computers together. As the name implies, a computer network represents a collection of individual computers that can share data. The computers are connected with cables or wires that send data back and forth. Wireless networks, which are increasingly popular, use radio, microwave, or infrared transmissions to connect computers.

In an office environment, most systems connect individual PCs in various offices to a separate computer, known as a file server. In most cases, this file server does three important things:

First: It contains the programs that you use, like a spreadsheet or word processor. When you want to use the word processor you ask the file server (usually by entering a menu selection or clicking on an icon) to send the program to your PC. You become a client, asking the file server to serve you. This is where the expression client-server comes from.

Second: The file server takes information that you need to send to other people in your office or company and routes it to them.

Third: The file server can be a gateway to other computer networks, either in your company or outside. A local area network (LAN) is a computer system that connects computers in one office building or local area. A wide area network, or WAN, is a logical extension of a local area network-LANs are connected to each other. By using a WAN you can send your spreadsheet to someone in another state or country.

What does my network have to do with the Internet?

Clearly there are advantages to networking individual computers. The Internet takes the concept even further by connecting networks. The Internet is an affiliation of tens of thousands of private, commercial, academic, and government-supported networks that exist in more than 80 countries around the world. Thus, the Internet really is a network of networks. When you connect your personal computer with the Internet, you can share data and information with all the millions of other people who are connected.

An Internet History Brief:

On January 2, 1969, the United States government gave birth to the Internet when teams of scientists started researching computer networking, experiments focused on creating a packet-switched network-a computer network where information (like a message) gets broken up into little packets that move independently of each other through various networks until they reach their destination.

The Internet as a public one actually started in December 1969/70, as four major computers at universities and NASA were connected. The one thing all the computers connected to the Internet have in common is the use of the Internet Protocol, abbreviated as IP. It allows computers of different types to communicate with each other. Your own computer uses TCP/IP, which stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. TCP/IP software enables it to link to services and networks on the Internet.

In 1991 Tim Berners, now director of the World Wide Web Consortium , created the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http), which connects documents via clickable hyperlinks. Because of this, the Internet has become more graphical, international and easier to use.

This system was first restricted to computer experts, specialists and some scientists to ensure communications could continue in the event other communications systems failure.  If communication lines get destroyed, the little packets can continue to find other lines. If one of the little packets gets lost, the computer that sends the message simply sends another packet.

It was found that the system was a great way to send electronic mail and share information. Over time connections were made to the Internet that let users exchange information.

Physically the backbones to the Internet are transmission lines-fiber-optic wires, microwave and satellite links. They are the equivalent of superhighways that can carry tremendous amounts of traffic (the digital kind) very quickly over long distances.

Data moves through the Internet very much like a trip you take in your car. Consider a journey to visit a friend who lives two states away. You drive down the street, maybe onto a two-lane highway, and then get on a four- or six-lane freeway, cruise to the next state, exit, and weave your way to your friend’s home. An electronic message takes a similar route. It leaves your computer, goes into the backbone where it shoots across the country or around the world, then to a mid-level network that routes the data to the person you sent the message to. International networks have all connected to each other to create a system that is significantly larger and more powerful than its individual parts.

As the commands for email, ftp, and telnet were standardized, it became a lot easier for non-technicians to learn how to use the net and open up use of the Internet to many more people, in particular at universities. Libraries started to make their catalogues available to the world. As more and more universities, libraries and organizations connected, the Internet became harder and harder to track. There was a need for tools to make available resources searchable.

The Internet is everything in computer communication outside your own computer. Internet is the vast network that connects many independent networks in which computers are connected with each other. The Internet is the umbrella network where millions of computers are using servers to communicate with each other, searching for information, sending messages and making your information accessible.

Commercial Use of The Internet

Commerce arrived on the web in the early 90’s. The same year the first search engines were set up and made finding information much easier. The pioneer search engine was Yahoo!. Yahoo started out as a program by two students at Stanford University, to help them locate, identify and edit material stored on the Internet more efficiently. Others followed suit.

Who Owns and  pays for all this?

The Internet itself is free of ownership. Neither private persons, corporations, organizations nor governments own it. Therefore it’s free for every kind of information so far. The technical equipment – like computers, servers, routers, cables and so on – is of course owned by all kinds of organizations, companies, governments and so forth. The Internet is continuously being developed by people and organizations, who voluntarily work out standards for technical needs to run the net. Decisions are made by Internet organizations like InterNic, which also is responsible for all domain names (URLs) of web sites help makes it possible to check your Internet sources.

The first impression is one of being lost in this vast amount of information. Many questions come up: where can I find the information I need, what kind of information can I find and how do I know, whether it is reliable?  From simple searches to more focused ones, from easy questions to expert interviews around the world, from how to check your sources to knowing your rights on the Net.

Greater Hosts Connect More Users:  A host computer can be a mainframe, mini-computer, or microcomputer (like your PC). Each host can provide access to hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands of individuals to the Internet. From a computer at a college that connects to the Internet-where this computer is a gateway for faculty and students to reach the Internet.

As the number of hosts continues to rise, so does the number of people who connect to and use the Internet. This makes sense because the host computers support users.

The Information Superhighway: Open for traffic, but still under construction

Because it connects millions of people (and computers) and enables users, like us, to share ideas, documents, and files, the Internet has been referred to as an “Information Superhighway” computer networks appear to have a lot of similarities with highways. Even the movement of digital information from place to place is referred to as traffic-and there are, traffic jams on the Internet. The Internet is always “under construction,” with new networks, computers, software programs, and information resources being added constantly.

Digital Speed Limits: Just as different roadways have different speed limits, the transmission lines used to send digital information from one computer to another have their own speed limits. Technically these electronic speed limits are known as bandwidth, which is the transmission capacity of a computer or communication channel. Higher bandwidth means faster transmission speed.

Check Your Resources:

Researchers have always had to check their sources. A rule, that also applies to the Net. We should be able to find out, who is behind a web site and how you can verify on-line-stories .

Researchers should really know better than believe everything that’s in print. This was true in the analog age for newspapers and magazines and is equally true for the Internet. The problem seems to be that a lot of individuals tend to believe information, if it looks professional. And whereas it takes a lot of resources to make a professional looking book, newspaper or magazine, it is quite easy to do so on the web.

Everyone who owns a domain has to register it with a Network Information Center (NIC) for the domain to be reachable. Fortunately, this data is publicly available. All you have to do is go to the relevant NIC and type in the domain-name.

For all *.com, *.net this is the INTERNIC. Links to the relevant NIC for all other domain-names can be found at Allwhois.

Viruses and Hoaxes

Sooner or later you will get an email warning you not to open an email with a particular subject stating they allegedly contain a virus. These are simply not true.

Fact is that you cannot get a virus by simply email reading an email. It is simply not possible. If you ever get a mail or fax claiming that an email-virus is in the wild, you might want to take a look at the Computer Incident Advisory Capability at the U.S. Department of Energy who have a rather good collection of known hoaxes.

Note, though, that files (i.e. programs, Word-documents, Excel-spreadsheets etc.) which are attached to an email can contain viruses. But even these viruses can not infect your computer by downloading mail or opening mail. The only way for them to infect your computer is if you run the program or open an infected Word document.

The viruses only activated after the attachment has been launched. Reading the mails themselves was harmless.

If you are still uncertain whether you should publish the warning and you have gone through the homepages of the CIAC and of manufactures of anti-virus software like “Network Associates” or “Symantec“, then call these companies. They have very good PR-departments who are glad to help. In fact these guys are extremely happy to be quoted in the press.

Also notice that in the U.S. it is a felony to send chain letters if they ask for money or anything of value. (See the US Postal Inspection Service information on chain letters)

Employing Traditional Research Techniques on the Web

Conducting Web research with online rationale, that is, consistently entering keywords, or so-called “natural language” queries, at search database sites to locate information on the Web — risks missing myriads of potentially useful resources. The Web is not a database; nor is it “online.” It’s a system more analogous to the size, content, and organization of several massive physical libraries than to an online system comprising countless databases.

Search database sites probe data collected by the site. Sites known as mega search sites, or mega search engines, quickly explore data gathered by several individual search database services. They do not develop their own databases. Neither search database services, nor mega search engines, store or probe all data available on the Web.

Many search database sites require the submission of a URL in order to collect data from an unknown location. Some do not follow all links within a site. Others, called spiders or robots, in theory regularly collect and update data from known sites, cannot access newly discovered locations.  

What strategy should one employ to initiate research on the Web?

Be aware that search database sites and mega engines often yield fruitful results. It is important to note, however, that these resources do not constitute the sole means for obtaining information on the Web.

In using a library we would consult a librarian or the catalog. The catalog or the librarian would in turn refer them to finding aids such as indexes, pathfinders or guides, and to treatises, online databases, CD-ROM products, or other potentially relevant resources within the library’s collection.

The Web then may be considered a vast library, but with notable differences that effect research strategy. For example, no one manages the Web. No one evaluates the quality of resources or assesses the needs of the patrons. No one oversees weeding the collection, archiving information, or making acquisitions. While classic foes like censorship prove difficult in this environment, so does quality control.

If you have knowledge of a particular collection, you would seek guides, indexes, pathfinders or other finding aids.

No, signs nor, maps point to such tools as they do in a physical library. But means for finding the data comprise reading articles on research techniques, using known catalogs to discover others, posting questions to appropriate discussion groups, and using search services.

Utilizing Databases:
Commercial databases are specific databases to which you have to subscribe and pay for in order to use them. Many commercial databases are useful for emergency & safety professionals.

Unlike most services on the WWW, some commercial databases make you pay to access their data. The billing system is different for almost each of them. Some charge subscribers a flat fee, some by articles or lines and some for the time spent in their system. Most of them are quite expensive but allow you quick access to a lot of reliable information.

Before you purchase a database, first think about what you are actually buying.  In order to avoid spending money on novelty items, one has to see if the price of obtaining information via high tech means is worth the money compared to relying on traditional alternatives.  Additionally many professional databases can be fairly complicated to use.

Much of the material that is on-line is also available in print form.  In subscribing to a database service, you may pay as much as $100.00 per hour for the convenience of not dropping by a local or Federal depository library, to look up the material manually.  Be careful we can be stricken by the infatuation with databases/IT and dazzled with the notion of getting the answer to a question by simply dialing-up an all knowing computer.

The following is a simple list of just a few of the literally thousands of databases out there.  Some with fees, others free or charge.  You’ll need to do some searching.

Chemical Safety Directories & Databases on Chemicals:

Disaster, Fire Safety Databases:

www.rmis.refamily.com/db/dbdisast.php

Electronic Databases for Emergency Management

Emergency Management:

http://www.jsu.edu/dept/library/graphic/emman.htm

Emergency Management:

www.emergencymanagement.org

EPA Emergency Response Notification System (ERNS):

Federal Computer Week

www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0408/tec-emerg-04-08-02.asp

Homeland Security:

National Association of Health Data Organizations:

www.nahdo.org

National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center:

National Clearinghouse for Workers’ Safety:

www.wetp.org/wetp

NIOSH:

www.cdc.gov/niosh/database.html

Western States Fire Information Resources:

www.wsfire.com/home.html

XML & Emergency Management

www.xml.coverpages.org/emergencymanagement.html

Larger Cost Based Database Services: (Include but are not limited to)

Lexis-Nexis

LEXIS-NEXIS is the world’s largest information service, providing news as well as legal and financial information.

Dialog Web

Dialogweb allows you to access a collection of over 900 databases. All information is sorted according to specialized areas like business, science, technology and news.

Uncover Web

Uncover Web is owned by “Dialog“. The CARL Uncover Database includes more than 7 million articles in English from 17,000 periodicals.

Time Inc. Picture Collection

This database is any photo-journalists dream: Time Inc. has made its huge collection of photos available online. They have literally millions of pictures from decades of photo-journalism.

GovBot

Is actually an interface to search US-government databases.  GovBot is particularly useful for finding out about legislation, court decisions, and regulations.

Find People:

On the Internet, there are a lot of people who can help you with your research or give you a clue. “Find people” explains how to find a specific person and how to locate experts on a given topic.

How many people are online? The truth is: nobody knows. Perhaps as many as, 140 million. The NUA Internet Surveys or Global Internet Statistics can provide estimates.

While it can already be difficult to find someone in your own city or own country, doing so online can be a nightmare. Very often it will be unsuccessful, no matter how hard you try. But as an emergency or safety professional you will often need to find people to talk to for a specific piece of information.

How to find a specific person

When looking for a specific person, your course of action depends on what you already know.

If you have someone’s name and city, it might be a good idea to check out the various telephone directories which are available online. Simply enter “Telephone Directories” in the search field, and you will provided with score of possible directories to choose from.  It little time consuming but you might get the hit you need. Even today, it might still be simpler to call your telephone company’s directory enquiries instead. For U.S. residents, there’s also a rather good reverse-lookup at Info space. This will tell you the address and name to most U.S. phone numbers.

If you have a name and you are looking for an email address, you need somewhat more luck than ability. After all, there is no central institution to which everyone has to report new addresses. And the few email directories that exist tend to be rather small and very incomplete. MESA alleviates this problem a bit by searching seven email directories simultaneously.

If you have a name and you know which service provider the person uses, the best idea might be to go to the provider’s homepage. They often have a searchable directory of their members. Note that this is not only true for commercial online services but also for many universities and companies. If that fails and you are looking for someone within a specific company or you can also try to send a mail to the postmaster. He’s the one who’s in charge of all the email-addresses and can certainly help you if he has the time and if you ask nicely. Unfortunately postmasters are permanently overworked, but it sure is worth a try. In 99% of all cases you can contact the postmaster by sending a mail to postmaster@… (e.g.: postmaster@tl-media.com, postmaster@sct.se etc.). Don’t bother to try this with big online-services, like AOL, Compuserve etc.

If you just have a name, it gets a bit complicated. First enter the name in the search field of one of the directories you’ve found. Even just using the search field from your browser with the name in “NAME” may work.   In most engines you can do this by putting the name in quotes. This works best if the person you are looking for has a homepage or has published something online. However, it is a very poor method of searching if the person you are looking for has a very common name. If that search doesn’t help, you might want to take a look at Google Groups. This service archives all the messages send to any newsgroup since the middle of 1995 – more than 650 million messages so far. So if whoever you are looking for has posted anything to a newsgroup, you might find his message and therefore his email address there.

How to find experts

Sometimes you might look for an expert in a specific field, rather than for a specific person. Fortunately the Internet has made this much easier than it ever was before. Probably the best way to get in touch with experts is via Profnet, “a collaborative of 4,000 public relations professionals linked by Internet to give journalists and authors convenient access to expert sources”.

Another two interesting resources for finding (mainly American) experts are the 15th Annual Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons and the Community of Science (COS) Expertise database, that claims to give you access to 63,000 experts. A slightly more informal resource is “Pitsco’s Ask an Expert”-Page that is organized around various categories.

Find Mailing Lists & Newsgroups:

Mailing lists and newsgroups help you to get in touch with people who share the same interests or experts around the world.

An example of an Emergency/Safety related directory is:

Emergency Management: Emergency Management Directory

EM Discussion Group: EM-Discussion Group

The Internet is full of information of every kind. You only have to find what you are searching for. More than 40 million people around the world regularly participate in Internet forums. These groups discuss special topics, which you might be interested in. Using email to communicate, there are more than 90,000 mailing lists. There are of course special sites which will help you to find the right group for you.

Find lists in master lists

You can find mailing lists either by searching the World Wide Web for master lists which contain information about all email lists or by sending an email to the listservs. The listservs are the first and still most prevalent type of mailing list processors around. Your mail command will search the master lists on listservs. You can search the 17,500 public listserv lists by sending a simple message to this address: listserv@listserv.net. Leave the subject line of the message head blank, and in the message body write:

list global xyz

Where xyz equals a search string of your choice. For example, sending the command list global emergency will return a list of all known listservs relating to emergency fields, but also including any and all lists that contain the string “emergency”. You can join these lists to keep yourself informed, ask questions or search the existing archives.

Find lists on the web

Another way to find some of the 85,000 mailing lists is by searching the master lists which have a gateway to the World Wide Web. If you want to write about emergency response for example, you simply use the keyword “emergency response” to search the list archives. It will pull up a whole list containing all known mailing lists on the chosen topic. On the Web based search sites you can often choose between searching in mailing lists or in newsgroups or both. Every search site has search tips, which you should read, even if you have the feeling: come on, I already know this. In order to use every possibility – read them. Every site is different, and so are the commands for searching the mailing lists.

Some useful sites to search mailing lists and newsgroups Google Groups http://groups.google.com/ (Formerly: Deja)

Don’t forget about utilizing news groups. This service searches 50,000 present discussion forums and newsgroups for you, and also several archived ones. It is particularly valuable, because it does not only find the right group for you but allows for a full-text-search of all articles written in the newsgroups since 1995.

Liszt
http://www.liszt.com/
A very useful site is “Liszt”. It contains more than 90,000 mailing lists (Jan 1999). Along with “listserv”, “majordomo” and “listproc” lists, this site’s archives contain independently-managed lists that are often hard to locate. Besides mailing lists, directories of newsgroups and even directories of IRC, the Internet Relay Chat Net, are archived on Liszt.

The Directory of Scholarly and Professional E-Conferences
http://www.kovacs.com/directory/

The directory screens, evaluates and organizes mailing lists, newsgroups, MUDs, MOOs, interactive Web chat groups, e-conferences on topics of interest to scholars and professionals, etc.

The amount of information (Feast or Famine)

At the end of the page a word of warning: don’t forget that some of the mailing lists send lots of mail every day, and some only a couple a week. To avoid being flooded by mail you should be careful which ones to choose. To keep on top of your emails you should also take a look at your email programmer’s filter-function. Most good email-programmers have one that allows you to sort your mails by subject or sender, so that for example all private mails appear in one window and all mails from mailing list A in another etc.

Online Search Techniques

Browsers:  Software programs that are used as a windows to acquire and view selected Internet sites and materials. Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, and

AOL are principle browsers.

Before you get used to attempting searches for various information lets just put up a few general tidbits of information on using browsers and some of their elements which they hold for us.

Understanding and decoding URLs

Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs, are the Internet addresses that you see on the Location bars at the top or bottom of your Web browser (e.g., Netscape or Internet Explorer). URLs provide a standard format for the transmission and reception of a wide variety of information types. Here is how they are constructed:

The very key to traveling on the net is the “Uniform Resource Locator”, URL.  Within the Address or Location box of the browser is where we place known URL’s.  As an example the Federal Emergency Management’s home page is: http://www.FEMA.gov

Under most instances your browser’s search feature will kick in if you place just a partial URL in the locator field.  Entering “fema” will result in a search list that will list FEMA’s home page near the top of the search result list.  You can click on that site from there.  It does however help to use the actual known URL.

transfer protocol://servername.domain/directory/subdirectory/filename.filetype

Every URL must have at least the first two elements shown above (the information directly before and after the //). Here are some examples:

ftp://milton.mse.jhu.edu/pub/research.txt
gopher://milton.mse.jhu.edu/databases/

Understanding the different elements of URLs will help you know what to expect before you click on a link. Also you will be able to ascertain what kind of organization or institution the information is coming from. In some cases, you may be able to reconstruct someone’s e-mail address from a URL.

The 1st part: Transfer protocol

The first part of the URL indicates what type of information is being transferred and, usually, what port (or “door”) to the server is being accessed. Here are the most common types:

• http: Hypertext (what you are viewing now: the standard format for the World Wide Web)
• gopher: Gopher format (text only precursor of the Web: still good for text-based information)
• ftp: File Transfer Protocol (Whoa! A computer file is about to be sent to your computer. Proceed with caution if this is new to you.)
• news: Newsgroup format (something like a special interest bulletin board)

The portion of the URL to the left of the colon (:), tells the web browser to use the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to access the hypertext file at the Internet host computer.  The HTTP converts plain text documents with what is called “HyperText Markup Language” (HTML).  This programming format gives us the impressive graphic screens we are now used to seeing when we reach a desired address.  Most addresses today are filled with quite amazing graphics and hyperlinks.

The 2nd part: Servername.domain

When you perform a simple yet elegant click of the mouse, your Web browser goes into high gear. It sends a message to a server, or computer where a Web site resides, asking it to send you information. The transfer protocol tells your computer and the server what formats of information need to be interpreted and with what particular features (e.g., I am using Netscape 4.7 or Internet Explorer 6.0). The servername.domain is the address of the server itself: your message has to go somewhere. Most server addresses have three parts:

• actual name of the server (yes, they have feelings, too)
• domain (the institution/organization/enterprise/whatever where the machine lives)
• By country
  • for US and UK, domain type (educational, commercial, network, organizational, governmental, military)
  • A two-letter country code (not always applicable in the US)

Most servers have a name of some kind. It is a fallacy that all Web servers are called “www.” Many are, but that is a simple matter of choice. Look at the URL of the document you are reading: you’re looking at it on the Web, and there is no “www” in it’s name. The domain is key to understanding where the information is coming from. Is it an educational institution, or is it a commercial service such as Prodigy? This is an important consideration when you are trying to evaluate an electronic document. Don’t forget, the Internet is vanity publishing on its largest scale. This doesn’t mean that documents coming from someone’s personal commercial account are not valuable: it means that you have to apply your critical thinking skills.

Two Letter Internet Country Codes

This document will tell you, correctly, that the US uses a two-letter code. This is used inconsistently and does not apply to all domain names in the U.S.

The 3rd part: Directories and subdirectories

Once you have been admitted to a server to get a document or “page”, you need to know where you’re going. Servers act just like your home computer: you keep your word-processing program in a separate directory from your modem software. In fact, your computer probably keeps the word processing documents in a separate subdirectory in the word-processing directory. Computers need to be neat and tidy in order to run efficiently. This is even more true when the computer is sending billions of bytes of information all over the world. The third part of the URL takes you directly to the directory and subdirectory where the page you want lives.

Now, there’s a trick to some of this. Does the URL look like one of the following?

http://server.state.edu/~jsmith/mypage.html
http://www.company.com/users/jsmith/metoo.html
http://bigmachine.neighborhood.net:8001/people/jsmith/myturn.html

When you see a directory or subdirectory

• that begins with a tilde (~) and looks like a person’s name;
• follows a directory called “/users/” or “/people/” and looks like a person’s name;

it’s probably a Web page living on someone’s personal Internet account. You can reconstruct their account name and address and send them an e-mail message. Here’s what the addresses from the examples above would look like:

jsmith@server.state.edu
jsmith@company.com (Notice that the “www.” got dropped)
jsmith@bigmachine.neighborhood.net (Notice that the “:8001” got dropped)

It doesn’t work every time, but it’s still a good bet if you really need to get information from someone. And remember: if the address you reconstruct does not exist, your message will usually be returned to you, so you will know that the address is wrong.

The last part: Filename.filetype

The last part of the URL specifies the individual document you are looking at. If you go to the home page of any particular organization, there’s a good chance that your URL doesn’t include a file name. When you click on anything linking to that page, it probably will have one. Some standard file types include:

• .html or .htm: hypertext (the standard for the Web)
• .gif, .jpg, .bmp: image types (formats of visual images)
• .zip, .tar: compressed files (proceed with caution: these are specially compressed files that will be downloaded onto your hard drive; you need to know if your computer can interpret them, and you need to get an “unzipping” utility)

.ftp, .txt, .pdf, etc……..

Refining your Topic

Before you begin using a library database or search engine, it is a good idea to write down all the keywords and phrases that describe your topic or the information you are seeking. You should also write down any synonyms or related terms for each keyword.

Advanced Searching

The following techniques can be used when searching library databases and by choosing the advanced search option available in most Internet search engines.

Boolean Operators

Boolean searching is based on a system developed by a 19th century mathematician. Most library databases support Boolean searching and most Internet search engines support Boolean searching through their advanced search option. The power of Boolean searching is based on connecting keywords with boolean operators. The three basic operators are AND, OR and NOT. Here is how they work:

The default value for most search engines when using multiple keywords is that they will first list all documents or sites that contain all the words, followed by those which, contain only a few keywords. Most search engines also support looking for phrases, which are marked by quotation marks. Again this rule is not universal, which is why you should read the instructions. Keep in mind that only a few search engines support the boolean operator “OR”.

AND
Type AND between your keywords to narrow your search. The database or search engine will only retrieve those articles or web pages that contain both words. Using AND will decrease the number or hits or articles or web pages in your result list.

Example: school AND crime

Note:Some search engines allow you to type a plus sign (+) in front of a keyword when doing a basic search. This works the same as AND.
Example: +emergency +response

OR
Type OR between your keywords to broaden your search. The database or search engine will retrieve those articles or web pages that contain at least one of these words. Using OR will increase the number of articles or web pages in your result list (especially if not used in combination with AND or NOT). Use OR between keywords that are synonyms or have similar meanings.

Example: emergency OR crisis

NOT
Type NOT before a keyword to exclude that keyword from your search. Using NOT will also narrow your search. Using NOT will decrease the number of articles or web pages in your result list. Be careful when deciding whether you should use NOT in your search. The best use of NOT is when you are searching for a keyword that may have multiple meanings.

Example: saturn NOT car

Note:Some search engines allow you to type a minus sign (-) in front of a keyword when doing a basic search. This works the same as NOT.
Example: +saturn -car

Combining Boolean Operators

Use parentheses ( ) to keep combination searches in order. In the example below, the database or search engine will retrieve articles or web pages that must contain the word abuse and at least one of the words in parentheses:

Example: (hazard OR danger) AND response

Truncation / Stemming

Typing the stem or root of a word and an asterisk (*) or question mark (?) at the end will pick of all forms of the root word.

Example: typing emerg* will find emerge, emergence, emergency, emergencies, etc…..

Be careful not to end the stem or root of a word too early. In the example below, the database or search engine will retrieve far too many and various results.

Example: typing emer* will find emerald, emerge, emergence, emergency, emergent, etc.

Note: Check the Help or Tips links available on most library databases and Internet search engines to verify the truncation symbol that should be used for a particular database or search engine (usually an (*) asterisk or (?) question mark). Also, some search engines, such as Yahoo, automatically use truncation without you having to type a truncation symbol.

Example: typing terror will find terror, terrorism, terrorist, terroristic, terrorize.

Wildcard Symbol

Wildcard symbols can be typed in place of a letter or letters within a keyword if you are not sure of the spelling or if there are different forms of the root word.

Example: wom?nr will find both women.

Note: Again, check the Help or Tips links available on most library databases and Internet search engines to verify the wildcard symbol that should be used (usually an (*) asterisk or (?) question mark).

Exact Phrase Searching

Use quotation marks (” “) around keywords to find an exact phrase.

Example: “attention deficit disorder”

Search Engines – Relevancy

Each search engine uses a different relevancy formula that ranks the keywords in your search with where they are found in a web page (ex: title, first paragraph, etc.) as well as how often keywords appear in a web page. The most relevant sites will usually appear on the top of your result list. Most search engine help pages will be vague on how this relevancy formula actually works.

Search Engine Categories

Roughly said, all search engines fall in four categories:

1. Indices: Sometimes also called “spiders” or “crawlers”, these search engines use little programs (robots) to scurry through the web to index every word they come across on every page they visit and follow every link they can find. Common keywords will yield to many hits to deal with. In this category: AltaVista, Google and Hotbot.

• Catalogs: Unlike indices, catalogs are created by humans. Sites must be submitted manually, get a description and are then being put into a certain category. The most important difference between catalogs and indices, is that catalogs only list sites, whereas indices also contain all the pages within a site. Catalogs often give better returns, when searching for a topic (e.g. hazard mitigation, hazard vulnerability) rather then a specific piece of information. Also note, that a site content might change without the catalog being updated. In this category are: About, Britanncia and Yahoo.
• Hybrids: Recently a lot of indices have also began to catalog their information, so that the distinction between index and catalog has become somewhat blurry. In this category: Excite and Lycos.

• Meta search engines These tools do not have a database of their own. Instead they forward your query to a certain number of search-engines simultaneously and they collect the results from all of them. In this category: Dogpile and Metcrawler.

The most important thing is that you understand the concepts of indices and the catalogs. If the Internet is like a library, and the websites are the books in that library, then the catalogs give you author, title and maybe brief abstract of each book whereas the indices search the complete text of all the books and return individual pages and paragraphs to you. This has some important implications.  As a rule of thumb you can say that catalogs are better for searching for topics whereas indices are better suited for searching for specific documents or pieces of information.

Search Engines – Basic Searching

When performing a basic search on most search engines, all you need to do is to type the keywords that describe your topic with a space in between each word. Most search engines will look for each word separately. In other words, typing two or more keywords with just a space in between each word will be interpreted as if you typed the Boolean Operator AND or OR in between your words. Some search engines interpret a space as AND, some interpret a space as OR and other search engines incorporate both Boolean operators. Most search engine help pages will be vague on how basic searching actually works.

Examples:
teenager smoking prevention
attention deficit disorder

Note:

If you type an exact phrase without quotations (” “) when doing a basic search, most search engines will still look for each word separately. This means your result list will include web pages that not only contain the exact phrase (ex: attention deficit disorder) but also web pages that contain a word or words from the exact phrase appearing separately (ex: attention may appear in one paragraph or sentence and disorder will appear in another paragraph or sentence).

Some search engines and what they are good for.

This is just a rough explanation of a couple of search engines. All together there are more then 300 different search engines with different approaches and advantages out on the web. Most of them can be found at Search Engines Worldwide. We picked the biggest and those which we think are most useful to professional researchers.

About
http://www.about.com
Category: Catalog
About.com has developed the catalog-category has only a comparatively small number of links to offer, but these tend to be highly relevant and up to date.

Alltheweb
http://www.alltheweb.com/
Category: Index
Has an aim to index all the web within one year and to maintain the largest and most up-to-date index of the WWW.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com
Category: Index
AltaVista is the classical index and shows beautifully all the advantages and disadvantages of this category. Simple keywords often return millions of hits. Ensure you read their search tips link. Highly qualified for performing searches specifically making it a favorite for professional researchers

Britannica
http://www.britannica.com
Category: Catalog
Britannica is one of the smallest and finest catalogs on the web. The “Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Internet guide (…) classifies, rates, and reviews thousands of websites. The Britannica Website does also let you access the complete Encyclopaedia Britannica online.

Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com
Category: Meta
A pretty sophisticated meta search tool, Dogpile offers you a range of operators to refine your search. It searches all of the major search engines, plus some news-services, FTP and Usenet.

Excite
http://www.excite.com
Category: Hybrid
Establishes personalized news, an appointment-reminder (by email), a chat and even a buddy client. It holds a link that recommends pages related to the selected site.

Google http://www.google.com
Category: Index
Google is returning excellent results and is a search engine of choice.

Hotbot http://www.hotbot.com
Category: Index
Good graphical interface which allows non-computer-savvy people to refine their searches easily.

Lycos http://www.lycos.com
Category: Hybrid
Lycos has a quite sophisticated “Advanced Search” feature, which alleviates the problems with accuracy somehow.

Metacrawler http://www.metacrawler.com
Category: Meta
The Metacrawler is believed to be the oldest meta engine on the net. Positive features of this engine are it is easy to use interface and has a  low-bandwidth version.

Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com
Category: Catalog
Yahoo’s categories and classifications work generally fine and make it a good and useful tool.

Do you want to know more about search engines, check out “Search Engine Watch”.

Virtual Interviews:

“Virtual interviews” shows you how to conduct journalistic interviews with the tools, the net offers for personal communication: email, real time chat, MOOS and MUDS.

The possibilities offered by the Internet are great when it concerns social relations. Journalists are given the advantage of being able to get in contact with a lot of people throughout the world and gather first-hand information from the original sources – that is, by making virtual interviews with people wherever they are in the world, and at a very cheap price. Several of the tools which have been dealt with in the previous sections – email, IRC, or MOOs and MUDs – allow you to make virtual interviews. What you will find here is an assessment of the pros and cons of each tool that enables us to make journalistic interviews.

A basic distinction

For practical reasons, we will assume a basic distinction about the possible tools for virtual interviews. We will distinguish between real-time communication tools, such as IRC and the forms of inter-personal communication allowed by MOOs and MUDs on one side; and delayed communication tools, that is email, on the other. Real-time communication tools allow interactivity, the exchange of an immediate two-way flow of information. Delayed ones do not. This has certain implications for their performance.

Pros and cons of real-time communication tools

IRC and MOOs and MUDs allow people to meet and interact. IRC is aimed at providing chat, enabling its users to literally talk to each other, in the sense that questions and answers actually follow each other. MOOs and MUDs are virtual environments where people can interact, based on telnet. You visit a MOO, meet interesting people and have a conversation with those people. In both cases, remember to always choose private communication with your interviewee, instead of the public kind which is also possible.

What are the pros of these means of communication for us as journalists? A considerable, interesting point is the environment they are based on. You can choose from an enormous number of IRC channels, which allow you to easily find people related to specific topics – any kind of topics. The same applies to MOOs: among the educational or research-oriented MOOs, you are quite likely to find who you are looking for. Without moving from your desk. Second and most important, both IRC and MOOs and MUDs allow real-time communication, unlike email. In real-time interviews, your interviewee can answer your questions immediately, and you can interact. That makes a difference.

The shortcomings of real-time communication tools are related to their interactivity. What we are used to, as real-time talk, is immediate question and answer. That is possible only partially on IRC, for instance. There still is a considerable delay between the subsequent messages, which sometimes makes the communication quite strange: you might ask a question and get an answer which was intended for the previous question. You have to type your message and submit it quickly, so it is not 100 % interactivity. However, the development is very fast and we are getting closer and closer to “true” real-time.

Interviewing via email

The alternative to the previous methods of virtual interviewing is email. With email, you formulate your questions, mail them to your interviewee, and patiently wait for an answer.

Real-time communication on the Net: it’s still in progress, and the meaning of “real-time” should be taken with some caution – there are still delays and lots of possibilities for misunderstanding. An email user does not expect any interactivity. He/she will formulate the questions as clearly as possible, and very straightforwardly, to reduce the chances of misunderstanding. Moreover, the interviewee has all the time to answer the questions, can reflect about it, and thoroughly explain details. Email is great for research interviews, dealing with complicated or controversial matters. And remember, you can protect your sources and yourself by encrypting the messages with a program called “Pretty Good Privacy” PGP.

Email shortcomings include the time delay between the mail containing your interview, and the mail from your interviewee. Additionally, nothing guarantees that your mail will be answered promptly, and in some cases it might be unsure whether it will be answered at all. A lot of people receive such large amounts of email every day that they have to choose which ones to open and read.

Tools:

Infomine at http://lib-www.ucr.edu
Librarians Index to the Internet at http://www.lii.org

USUS Journalist Organization:

Denise Woetzel – 7/1/02

By Genie Tyburski (Posted December 16, 1996; Archived January 16, 1997)