Article View: sci.bio
Article #4614A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources
From: Una Smith
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 19:39
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1993 19:39
2197 lines
111987 bytes
111987 bytes
Archive-name: biology/guide
Last-modified: 13 July 1993
A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources
Version 1.5, 13 July 1993
Una Smith Department of Biology smith-una@yale.edu
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut 06511
-*- Contents
1. How to Use this Guide
1. Conditions of Use
2. How to Get Updates
2. Networking
1. Some Mind-Boggling Statistics
2. Netiquette
3. Usenet
1. Newsgroups of Special Interest
2. Special Usenet Hierarchies and Gated Mailing Lists
3. Usenet FAQs about Usenet
4. Listserver Mailing Lists
1. Commands
2. Archives
3. Gateways to Usenet
5. Other Mailing Lists
6. Newsletters
3. Information Archives
1. Bibliographies
2. Directories
3. Software
4. Data
1. Systematic Databases
2. Search Engines
5. List of Archives
6. Access Tools
1. Telnet
2. Anonymous FTP
3. Gopher
4. Archie
5. Veronica
6. Wide-Area Information Servers (WAIS)
7. World-Wide Web (WWW)
7. Access by E-mail
4. Commercial Services
5. Useful and Important FAQs
1. What's an 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 read
one of the published Internet guidebooks listed in the bibliography and
mentioned several times in this guide. In the interest of brevity, no
information that is easily obtained elsewhere is duplicated here in any
detail, thus for a full understanding of the resources and tools listed
here 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 edited
in any way beyond removal of the headers; the format may be changed in
any way that is convenient for printed or electronic presentation. This
guide may be freely adapted, provided that the source is acknowledged.
However, this guide may not be sold for profit, in either the original or
an adapted form, without permission from the author.
Virtually every service or resource mentioned in this guide (and this
guide itself) is the un-paid, voluntary contribution of scientists and
students, both graduate and undergraduate. Please give credit where due.
If you make significant use of any document, data or software provided
via the Internet, the authors would be grateful if you would cite them or
otherwise acknowledge their efforts. Any publicly available material
should be considered formally published, and cited as such. You need
not acknowledge the administrators of archives from which you obtain data,
software, or other material, but if you find the archive especially useful
in and of itself, please contact the administrator to ask about the
prefered form of acknowledgement.
A suggested citation for this guide is:
Smith, Una R. (1993) "A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources."
Usenet sci.answers. Available via anonymous FTP and e-mail from
rtfm.mit.edu as file pub/usenet/news.answers/biology/guide. 35 pages.
-*- 1.2. How to Get Updates
This guide is updated more-or-less monthly. The most current version is
available via Usenet, gopher, FTP and e-mail, as follows:
- In Usenet, look in sci.bio or sci.answers.
- Gopher to sunsite.unc.edu, and choose this sequence of menu items:
Sunsite Archives
ecology+evolution
Or, from any gopher offering other biology gophers by topic, look for
the menu item "Ecology and Evolution [at UNC and Yale]". The guide is
stored there in two ways: as a file for easy retrieval and as a menu
for browsing.
- FTP to rtfm.mit.edu. Give the username "anonymous" and your e-mail
address as the password. Use the "cd" command to go to the directory
pub/usenet/news.answers/biology/
and use "get guide" to copy the file to your computer. The file is
actually stored as guide.Z, which is a compressed binary file, but if
you specify "guide" it will be uncompressed and translated to readable
ASCII before it is transfered to your computer. You can also use
anonymous FTP to sunsite.unc.edu, where this guide is stored as
pub/academic/biology/ecology+evolution/FAQ.
- Send e-mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the text
"send usenet/news.answers/biology/guide". Because the guide is long,
you will probably receive it in parts: save each part separately,
delete the e-mail headers, and merge them.
See section 3.6, Access Tools for more information about retrieving
information from the Internet.
-*- 2. Networking
The Internet has become an excellent place in which to look for academic
and professional job announcements, conference announcements and calls
for papers, and important notices about recent events in many fields of
biology. Generally, notices of all forms appear on the Internet well in
advance of traditional journals and newsletters. Scientific interest
groups, both formal and informal ones, maintain electronic discussion
groups, directories, digests and newsletters. These resources are
distributed 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" connecting
them with Usenet newsgroups.
-*- 2.1. Some Mind-Boggling Statistics
Recently, approximately 370 thousand articles per week were distributed
worldwide through Usenet (Anonymous 1993). This traffic constituted
roughly 50 megabytes per day of announcements, questions and answers,
advice and bits of program code, references, heated debates, and data in
various formats. There are now nearly a million registered computers
on the Internet, and thus tens of millions of people; an estimated
7 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 read
biology-related Usenet newsgroups (Reid 1993a), and there may be that
many using mailing lists for topics in biology. All together, there are
a 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 certain
conventions of etiquette. These are none other than those used by most
people at public events such as academic conferences. In fact, most of
the science-related newsgroups (and mailing lists) are very much like
mid-sized meetings of any professional society, except that they never
end. The participants come and go as they please, but the discussions
and exchange of ideas and information continue as though they had a life
of their own.
Submitted articles tend to be of the following types:
- Discussions on topics of general interest. Discussions on specific
topics, techniques, or organisms are also frequent.
- Announcements of upcoming conferences or other events, calls for papers
or grant proposal deadlines. In Usenet, announcements can be set to
expire (and thus disappear from the list of current articles), and may
be limited in their distribution so that they are seen only by readers
in the appropriate organization or geographical area (Beware, this
feature is often leaky; see section 2.3, Usenet).
- Academic and professional job announcements, including many graduate
fellowships. These are generally posted in newsgroups/mailing lists
reserved for such notices, often in advance of publication elsewhere.
- Reports or comments on new books, papers, methods or software. Full
citation of sources is always appropriate and appreciated. Requests
for references or comments are also welcome and, when posed as specific
questions of general interest, often lead to interesting discussions.
Unacceptable articles include:
- Commercial advertizements, political lobbying messages, and anything
not pertaining directly to the topic or purview of the newsgroup or
mailing list. Discussions about some commercial products, especially
books and software, are generally allowed as long as they do not
constitute advertisements.
- Requests by students for explicit answers to homework and exam or essay
questions are generally not welcome. Requests for help understanding
problems in biology are welcome, but the requester should demonstrate
at 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 for
a week or so. Look for a "FAQ" document that covers frequently asked
questions, 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. You
might want to use a .signature file (standard on most Unix systems, also
implemented for Usenet and e-mail readers under VM/CMS) to make this
automatic. This is necessary because strange things often happen to
headers 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 the
person who asked for help, rather than to the newsgroup; the choice of
whether to post a (public) reply or send (private) e-mail is a personal
decision. If you send a reply by e-mail, and would prefer that it be
kept private, you should say so in your note, because otherwise the other
person may share your comments with others. If the original poster
promises to post a summary at the outset, then all replies should be
sent by e-mail, unless they constitute an important re-direction of the
original 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 will
compile and post a summary of the responses.
- Use care when writing summaries
- The "best" answers should come first.
- All answers should be separated clearly, and nicely formatted.
- Redundant, irrelevant or verbose comments, and errors of fact or
spelling should be edited out. It is appropriate to use square
brackets and dots to indicate editing [...].
- Exercise discretion and tact, to ensure a fair and accurate summary.
- Unless they asked that their names be withheld, the contributors of
each 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 do
something 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 sending
it 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 to
cite documents that exist officially only in an electronic version on
the Internet. And the issue of authenticity and version control has
become extremely important. Thus, it has become appropriate to express
copyrights, and to specify within documents how they may or may not be
used, both within the Internet and in print. Please respect these
restrictions, which are often very generous, and send the author e-mail
if 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 a
newsgroup or mailing list in that forum *only*. For citations or quotes
elsewhere, it is hoped, even expected, that you will first request express
permission from the author, which is easy, given the author's e-mail
address. Although there has been a trend to cite specific articles posted
in Usenet, it is generally satisfactory to use the "personal communication"
formula, but for this reason you should request a specific, personal
statement from the author that is directly relevant to and given in the
context 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 "newsgroups" sharing many features with
traditional newsletters, mailing lists and focused scientific societies.
Usenet is Internet-based (although before the Internet existed it was
distributed via UUCP), and strongly developed so that end users need
know only how to interact with the particular Usenet "reader" program
on their computers. Features of Usenet that make it far superior to the
two types of mailing lists generally include the sorting or "threading"
of all articles on a related topic, control of the distribution of
posted articles to hierarchical levels (e.g., the author's university,
state, country, or continent--but this feature may "leak"), the ability
to cancel an article even after it has been distributed, and automatic
expiration of dated articles. To test any of these features, especially
the distribution control, try posting an article to misc.test; your
article will receive "echoes" from other sites that receive it.
Usenet is "free", but not cheap; because it requires a lot of computer
disk space, and a certain amount of installation and regular maintenance
work by a system administrator, not all computer systems carry Usenet.
If Usenet is carried locally, it may still be necessary to prod the local
Usenet administrator to add the bionet and bit.listserv newsgroups to the
local "feed". Usenet was created by two Duke University graduate students
in 1979: see Spafford (1993) for the definitive history of Usenet and a
list 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 any
real control outside of their own site. Computer system administrators
who distribute Usenet "feeds" to other sites gain some authority by virtue
of being "upstream"; that is, they have some say over what newsgroups
their "downstream" neighbors can receive. Usenet feeds are stored at each
site in "spools"; it is common for universities to have Usenet spools on
one or two computers, and to allow everyone at the university to read
Usenet news via "client" programs that connect to the remote "news server".
The particular configuration of the Usenet feed to your university or
organization determines whether the distribution control feature of most
Usenet posting programs will work properly for you. For example, the
mailing lists for the bionet.* newsgroups are gated on the west coast of
North America, and you might think that it is safe to post local items
in a bionet.* newsgroup if you live elsewhere. But many sites get their
feed of bionet.* groups directly from the machine that runs the mailing
lists, which is definitely outside your geographic area. So your article
will be distributed at your site, but will not be propagated from your
site to any other site in your area if it must pass out of your region
and 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 as
much Usenet traffic as possible from the nearest site available. It is
important, therefore, to do a little research on Usenet feeds in your area
before asking your Usenet administrator to add one of the newsgroup
hierarchies listed in section 2.3.2, Special Usenet Hierarchies and Gated
Mailing 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 to
test the distribution feature here. Do not post test articles to
other newsgroups.
- Use the expiration feature for job and conference announcments.
- When posting to more than one newsgroup, use the cross-posting feature
so only one copy of your article goes out, but is seen by many people.
- Post (and cross-post) sparingly to groups that have associated mailing
lists, 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 strongly
discouraged, since the e-mail subscribers will get multiple copies of any
cross-posted articles. Usenet readers should be aware of proper etiquette
for mailing lists when posting to gated newsgroups.
-*- 2.3.1. Newsgroups of Special Interest
An "F" after the newsgroup name indicates an FAQ is available. "M" means
that the newsgroup is moderated. "G" means that the newsgroup has a
gateway to a parallel mailing list: see section 2.3.2, Special Usenet
Hierarchies and Gated Mailing Lists for details.
alt.bbs.internet F Announcements of new Internet services
alt.cyb-sys Cybernetics and Systems
alt.info-theory Information theory a la Shannon
alt.internet.access.wanted F Help getting full Internet access
alt.internet.services F Announcements of new Internet resources
alt.lang.sas SAS discussion
alt.native Indigenous peoples
alt.sci.* [6 groups]
alt.sustainable.agriculture
alt.agriculture.* [2 groups]
bionet.agroforestry G Agroforestry research
bionet.announce FGM Announcements
bionet.biology.computational GM Comp. and math. applications in biology
bionet.biology.n2-fixation G Biological nitrogen fixation
bionet.biology.tropical G Tropical biology and ecology
bionet.chlamydomonas G Chlamydomonas discussion
bionet.cellbio G Cell biology discussion
bionet.general FG General discussion
bionet.genome.* G [3 groups: Arabidopsis and chromosomes]
bionet.immunology G Research in immunology
bionet.info-theory FG Information theory applied to biology
bionet.jobs G Job opportunities in biology
bionet.journals.contents GM Biological journal TOCs
bionet.journals.note G Publication issues in biology
bionet.molbio.ageing G Cellular and organismal ageing
bionet.molbio.bio-matrix G Computer searches of biological databases
bionet.molbio.embldatabank G Info about the EMBL Nucleic acid database
bionet.molbio.evolution G Evolution, especially molecular
bionet.molbio.gdb G The GDB database
bionet.molbio.genbank G The GenBank nucleic acid database
bionet.molbio.gene-linkage G Genetic linkage analysis.
bionet.molbio.genome-program G Human Genome Program issues
bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts G Tips on lab techniques and materials
bionet.molbio.hiv G The molecular biology of HIV
bionet.molbio.proteins G Proteins and protein database searches
bionet.molbio.rapd G Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA
bionet.molbio.yeast G Yeast researchers' discussion
bionet.neuroscience G Research issues in the neurosciences
bionet.photosynthesis G Photosynthesis research
bionet.plants G Plant biology, inc. genetics and ecology
bionet.population-bio G Population biology, especially theory
bionet.sci-resources GM Information about funding agencies, etc.
bionet.software G Software for biology, esp. free/shareware
bionet.software.* G [3 groups: acedb, gcg, and sources]
bionet.users.addresses G Help locating biologists who use e-mail
bionet.virology G Research in virology
bionet.women-in-bio G Discussion by and about women in biology
bionet.xtallography G Protein crystallography
bit.listserv.biosph-l G Biosphere, ecology, Discussion List
bit.listserv.devel-l G Tech. Transfer in Internat. Development
bit.listserv.ecolog-l G Ecological Society of America
bit.listserv.edstat-l G Journal of Statistics Education List
bit.listserv.ethology G Ethology List
bit.listserv.medforum MG Medical Students Discussion
bit.listserv.sas-l G SAS Discussion
bit.listserv.scifraud G Discussion of Fraud in Science
bit.listserv.spssx-l G SPSSX Statistical Discussion
bit.listserv.stat-l G Statistical consulting
bit.listserv.uigis-l G User Interface for GIS
bit.listserv.vpiej-l G Electronic Publishing Discussion List
bit.org.peace-corps G International Volunteers Discussion Group
comp.infosystems.gis FG Geograpical Information Systems
comp.infosystems.gopher F The Internet gopher access tool
comp.infosystems.wais F The Internet WAIS access tool
comp.infosystems.www The Internet WWW access tool
comp.text.tex F TeX, LaTeX and related text format systems
comp.theory.cell-automata G Cellular automata research
comp.theory.dynamic-sys G Ergodic theory and dynamic systems
comp.theory.self-org-sys G Topics related to self-organization
embnet.news.admin G EMBnet news helpline for administrators
embnet.general G General discussion
embnet.net-dev Network development discussion
embnet.rpc Technical discussion of data transfers
info.grass.programmer GM GRASS GIS programmer issues
info.grass.user GM GRASS GIS user issues
math.stat.math Mathematical statistics
news.announce.important FM Important notices about Usenet
news.announce.newusers F FAQs for new users of Usenet
news.answers FM All FAQ documents
news.lists FM Statistics and data about Usenet
sci.answers GFM FAQs pertaining to science
sci.anthropology Anthropology discussion
sci.archaeology Archaeology discussion
sci.bio F General biology discussion
sci.bio.technology G Any topic relating to biotechnology
sci.environment Discussion of environmental issues
sci.geo.* [3 groups]
sci.image.processing F Scientific image processing
sci.nonlinear Nonlinear dynamical systems
sci.research.careers Discussion of research careers in science
sci.* [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 lists
and newsgroups, and to create Usenet newsgroup hierarchies that are outside
the "main stream". Both being new, these two trends often go together.
Some main-stream groups (e.g., sci.answers, sci.bio.technology and
comp.infosystems.gis) are gated to (usually listserver) mailing lists, but
most are not.
None of the Usenet newsgroup hierarchies mentioned below are main-stream
ones; that is, they do not conform to all Usenet conventions, and
consequently are carried by no more than 30-50% of Usenet sites. This is
not necessarily a bad thing, since few or no readers at most sites are
biologists, and e-mail subscriptions are available for many groups. If
your site carries Usenet, but not these hierarcies, a simple request to
your 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 to
ask for.
bionet.*
For an e-mail subscription to any bionet newsgroup, send e-mail to
biosci@daresbury.ac.uk if you live in Europe, or to biosci@net.bio.net
otherwise, naming the groups that you want. Brief descriptions of some
of these groups are given in the BIOSCI FAQ, posted in bionet.announce
and available via gopher or anonymous FTP from net.bio.net in the
directory pub/BIOSCI/ or by e-mail on request from biosci@net.bio.net.
bit.listserv.*
As their names imply, the bit.listserv newsgroups started out as (and
remain) listserver mailing lists. Most of these mailing lists became
so successful that gateways to Usenet were added by popular demand. The
appendix includes 100 or so other listserver mailing lists of interest
to biologists; those with Usenet gateways are listed in section 2.4.3,
Gateways to Usenet. Charters for each of these groups can be obtained
from the listserver that administers each one. See sections 2.4,
Listserver Mailing Lists and 2.4.1, Commands for details about e-mail
subscriptions and commands for interacting with listserver programs.
comp.theory.*
Send e-mail to Erik Fair, fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu, or see the list of
mailing lists posted regularly in news.answers for details about e-mail
subscriptions.
embnet.*
The European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet) runs a group of Usenet
newsgroups that are distributed in Europe. E-mail subscriptions are
available from nethelp@embl-heidelberg.de, and these newsgroups can be
read and searched via gopher and WAIS on bioftp.unibas.ch. Send general
e-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 subscription
information, or ask your local Usenet administrator to get these groups.
lter.*
The Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTERnet) has a setup similar
to 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 and
etiquette FAQs before posting any messages to any newsgroup. They are
what might be considered the "mandatory course" for new users, and
are posted frequently in the Usenet newsgroup news.newusers.announce.
See section 5, Useful and Important FAQs for a list of additional FAQs
of general use or interest to biologists, section 5.1, What's an FAQ and
where can I get one? and section 3.6.2, Anonymous FTP for instructions
on how to get copies by anonymous FTP or e-mail if you don't have access
to a Usenet reader.
Title Archive filename
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Introductory information
What is Usenet? what-is-usenet/part1
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions usenet-faq/part1
about Usenet
Introduction to news.announce news-announce-intro/part1
Etiquette issues
A Primer on How to Work With the usenet-primer/part1
Usenet Community
Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions emily-postnews/part1
on Netiquette
Hints on writing style for Usenet usenet-writing-style/part1
Rules for posting to Usenet posting-rules/part1
Technical issues
How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup creating-newsgroups/part1
USENET Software: History and Sources usenet-software/part1
How to become a USENET site site-setup
NetNews/Listserv Gateway Policy bit/policy
UNIX BBS Software FAQ with Answers unix-faq/bbs-software
Introduction to the news.answers news-answers/introduction
newsgroup
Instructions for posting to news.answers news-answers/guidelines
-*- 2.4. Listserver Mailing Lists
It is very important that you keep a list of all mailing lists to which
you are subscribed, along with the address of the list administrator
and 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 on
vacation or your address changes. Otherwise any mail sent to you from
the list may bounce or cause other, sometimes severe problems. And it's
easier to check the address etc. when you want to tell friends how they
can subscribe too.
The appendix at the end of this guide includes most listserver mailing
lists of particular interest or use to biologists. Internet addresses
are given whenever possible, and all addresses are in standard Internet
format, with the exception that portions of the Internet node names that
reflect original Bitnet node names are given in uppercase, for the
convenience of readers on Bitnet nodes.
Listservers were developed first many years ago on Bitnet, when Eric
Thomas wrote a computer program named "LISTSERV" that could act like
a regular computer user: receiving and sending out e-mail, and keeping
files. LISTSERV is now used on hundreds of computers around the world,
and a number of copy-cat programs with similar features are used at many
other sites. Whichever program is used, these listservers are given the
task of maintaining multiple electronic mailing lists, handling all
membership requests (subscriptions and cancellation of subscriptions, and
so on). Many list owners collect monthly logs of all messages sent to
the list, and some also provide files of other information. Eric Thomas's
LISTSERV program does this automatically, and listservers running this
program can send "back issue" logs and other files on request.
Anastasios Kotsikonas has written a similar listserver program for use
on Unix computers, named "listserv", and the name of a listserver running
his program is always listserv@<computer address>. This has become a
very popular listserver program outside of Bitnet. The basic subscription
functions use commands identical to the LISTSERV program, so these are
not distinguished from true Bitnet LISTSERV listservers.
Mailing lists run by listservers with slightly different command protocols
are listed in section 2.5, Other Mailing Lists, together with mailing lists
run by hand. Other listservers include "mailbase" and "MAILSERV", both
written for Bitnet nodes in Europe. For documents about using mailbase,
send e-mail to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the text
send mailbase user-guide for the lengthly User's Guide
send mailbase user-card for 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 to
listserv@KENTVM.kent.edu with the text
get acadlist readme
Charles Bailey posts a directory, Library-Oriented Lists and Electronic
Serials, 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 list
and its listserver; Internet users should use the Internet address.
- Keep a record of your subscriptions, and a copy of any instructions
that you receive with your subscription.
- Remember to unsubscribe or otherwise turn off your subscriptions
before 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 be
able to get subscriptions to Bitnet listserver mailing lists via
listserv@earn-relay.ac.uk. Send e-mail to that address with the text
info ?
for more information. This saves electronic transmission costs by having
a single subscription propagated across the Atlantic Ocean, and then
re-distributing it to multiple subscribers in the U.K. and elsewhere in
Europe.
-*- 2.4.1. Commands
Being computer programs, with nothing else to do, listservers just sit
and wait for e-mail to arrive, read it, and perform the appropriate task,
usually immediately. They respond only to a small set of commands. A
summary (Thomas 1993) of these commands can be retrieved by sending the
message "send listserv refcard" to any listserver. The main listserver
is listserv@BITNIC.educom.edu, but there are many listservers around the
world. Specificially, there is one on each computer for which a mailing
list is mentioned in the appendix. Most listservers maintain more than
one mailing list.
To subscribe to any of these mailing lists, send e-mail to the listserver
at the same address. For example, subscriptions to the Smithsonian
Institution's biological conservation list, CONSLINK, may be obtained by
sending 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 about
to 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 listserver
can process subscription requests, and the listserver only knows about
requests that it receives directly.
LISTSERV programs of version 1.7f and higher have a very useful feature
that lets you receive a daily digest (actually a concatenation, with a
table of contents) instead of many individual articles. Send e-mail to
the apropriate listserver with the message:
set <listname> digest
-*- 2.4.2. Archives
In addition to handling the membership requests for particular mailing
lists, most listservers also archive all messages sent to each list in
monthly log files. These files, along with other items contributed by
list subscribers, are archived by the listserver and can be retrieved
by e-mail. Listserv@SIVM.si.edu keeps an archive of various lists of
conservation organizations and field stations, several newsletters, and
a large collection of bibliographic references relating to biological
conservation. Listserv@UMDD.umd.edu keeps an archive of job openings and
conference announcements submitted to the Ecological Society of America.
Commands for retrieving files from listserver archives are described
in the listserver command reference guide (Thomas 1993), and include:
help to get generally useful information
review <listname> to get the list of subscribers
index <listname> to get the list of archived files
get listserv refcard to get a short summary of commands
get listfaq memo to get an FAQ about listservers
Sending the message "info" to a listserver will result in a list of
information guides including:
REFcard (LISTSERV REFCARD) Command reference card
FAQ (LISTFAQ MEMO ) Frequently Asked Questions
PResent (LISTPRES MEMO ) Presentation of LISTSERV for new users
GENintro (LISTSERV MEMO ) General information about Revised LISTSERV
KEYwords (LISTKEYW MEMO ) Description of list header keywords
AFD (LISTAFD MEMO ) Description of Automatic File Distribution
FILEs (LISTFILE MEMO ) Description of the file-server functions
LPunch (LISTLPUN MEMO ) Description of the LISTSERV-Punch file fmt.
JOB (LISTJOB MEMO ) Description of the Command Jobs feature
DISTribute (LISTDIST MEMO ) Description of Relayed File Distribution
COORDinat (LISTCOOR MEMO ) Information about Listserv Coordination
FILEOwner (LISTFOWN MEMO ) Information guide for file owners
DATABASE (LISTDB MEMO ) Description of the database functions
UDD (LISTUDD MEMO ) User Directory Database User's Guide
UDDADMIN (LISTUDDA MEMO ) UDD Administrator's Guide
To get any one of these, send the message "info <keyword>" where <keyword>
is, for instance, "REFcard" or "FAQ". Only the portion in capitals is
required.
-*- 2.4.3. Gateways to Usenet
Some of the listserver mailing lists in the appendix below are also
Usenet newsgroups:
biosph-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu is bit.listserv.biosph-l
biotech@UMDD.umd.edu is sci.bio.technology
devel-l@AUVM.american.edu is bit.listserv.devel-l
ecolog-l@UMDD.umd.edu is bit.listserv.ecolog-l
edstat-l@jse.stat.ncsu.edu is bit.listserv.edstat-l
ethology@FINHUTC.hut.fi is bit.listserv.ethology
gis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu is comp.infosystems.gis
info-tex@ is comp.text.tex (gate is list-->group only)
medforum@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu is bit.listserv.medforum (custom gate)
sas-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu is bit.listserv.sas-l
scifaq-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu is sci.answers (gate is group-->list only)
spssx-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu is bit.listserv.spssx-l
stat-l@vm1.mcgill.ca is bit.listserv.stat-l
uigis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu is bit.listserv.uigis-l
vpiej-l@VTVM1.cc.vt.edu is bit.listserv.vpiej-l
American University has established itself as the clearing house and
semi-official keeper of automated gateways between listserver mailing
lists and Usenet newsgroups. Questions about the procedure for
establishing a gateway for any mailing list or newsgroup may be posted to
the 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 from
a mailing list. Mailing lists that do not use listserv-style commands
for subscribing and unsubscribing include:
Topic or name Mailing list address
Subscription instructions
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabidopsis thal. database announcements aatdb-info@weeds.mgh.harvard.edu
Contact Mike Cherry, curator@weeds.mgh.harvard.edu.
Artificial life digest alife@cognet.ucla.edu
Send all subscription requests to alife-request@cognet.ucla.edu.
Biological Anthropology, Primatology humbio@acc.fau.edu
Send "subscribe humbio <Your Name>" to mailserv@acc.fau.edu.
Biological timing and circadian rhythms
cbt-general@virginia.edu cbt-general-request@@virginia.edu
Biologia y Evolucion (in Spanish) biologia@athena.mit.edu
biologia-request@athena.mit.edu
Biology information systems biogopher@comp.bioz.unibas.ch
Contact Reinhard Doelz, doelz@urz.unibas.ch.
Bulletin for bryologists bryonet@uni-duisburg.de
Send e-mail to the owner, Jan-Peter Frahm, hh216fr@uni-duisburg.de.
Cytometry discussion
cytometry@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu cyto-request@flowcyt.cyto.purdue.edu
Dendrome forest tree genome mapping digest
Send all subscription requests and submissions to the editor,
dendrome@s27w007.pswfs.gov.
Dinosaurs and other archosaurs dinosaur@donald.wichitaks.ncr.com
Send e-mail to dinosaur-request@donald.wichitaks.ncr.com.
Discover Insight Biosym Users' Group dibug@comp.bioz.unibas.ch
Send e-mail to dibug-request@comp.bioz.unibas.ch.
Ecologia (in Spanish) ecologia@athena.mit.edu
Send e-mail to ecologia-request@athena.mit.edu
Entomology discussion ent-list@um.cc.umich.edu
Send e-mail to the owner, Mark O'Brien, hcfb@um.cc.umich.edu.
Environmentalists digest env-link@andrew.cmu.edu
Send e-mail to the owner, Josh Knaur, env-link+forms@andrew.cmu.edu.
Fish and Wildlife Biology wildnet@access.usask.ca
Send e-mail to wildnet-request@access.usask.ca
Forestry discussion forest@lists.funet.fi
Send e-mail to forest-request@lists.funet.fi
Genstat statistics package discussion genstat@ib.rl.ac.uk
Send "subscribe genstat <Your Name>" to listral@ib.rl.ac.uk.
GIS digest
Send all subscription requests and submissions to the editor,
rrl@leicester.ac.uk.
GIS Users in the United Kingdom geocal@leicester.ac.uk
Send "subscribe geocal <Your Name>" to vmsserv@leicester.ac.uk.
Killifish, Cyprinodontidae killie@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Send e-mail to killie-request@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Neotropical birds discussion avifauna@rcp.pe
Contact phillips@cipa.ec (Roberto Phillips)
Neural networks digest neuron-request@cattel.psych.upenn.edu
Send requests and all submissions to the above address. Back issues of
the digest are available via anonymous FTP on cattell.psych.upenn.edu.
Orchids orchids@scuacc.SCU.edu
Send "subscribe orchids <Your Name>" to mailserv@scuacc.SCU.edu.
Plant Taxonomy plant-taxonomy@mailbase.ac.uk
Send "join plant-taxonomy <Your Name>" to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk.
Primate discussion primate-talk@primate.wisc.edu
Send e-mail to the owner, 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.edu
Send e-mail to s-news-request@utstat.toronto.edu.
SANET-MG Sustainable Agriculture Network sanet-mg@twosocks.ces.ncsu.edu
Send e-mail with the text "subscribe sanet-mg" or "send guide" or
"send catalog" to almanac@twosocks.ces.ncsu.edu.
Young Scientists' Network ysn@zoyd.ee.washington.edu
Send e-mail to ysn-request@zoyd.ee.washington.edu with the Subject
(not text) "subscribe" or "send info".
Volcano list
Send all subscription requests and submissions to the editor, Jon Fink, aijhf@ASUACAD (via Bitnet) or aijhf@asuvm.inre.asu.edu.
Note, any mailing lists you may discover at net.bio.net or daresbury.ac.uk
that are not explicitly mentioned in this FAQ are not mentioned *because*
they are actually gated lists for the bionet.* newsgroups. See section
2.3.2, Special Usenet Hierarchies and Gated Mailing Lists for instructions
about subscribing to any bionet.* newsgroup via e-mail.
There is a 4-part FAQ in news.answers (da Silva 1993) that includes
brief descriptions of the charter of each mailing list. This FAQ is
stored in FAQ archives in the directory /mailing-lists/.
A very long (1.2 megabytes) list of lists is available via anonymous FTP
from 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 sending
the message "send netinfo/interest-groups" to mail-server@nisc.sri.com.
There is a printed, indexed version, titled "Internet: Mailing Lists",
that can be purchased from Prentice Hall. However, this list is up-dated
through submissions, and thus is incomplete and not very correct.
-*- 2.6. Newsletters
Many of the mailing lists mentioned in the above section are actually
digests, where readers' queries and comments are condensed into a
single large document that is distributed periodically. Yet another
variation on this theme is electronic newsletters. Those not listed
elsewhere 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 published
by the Clinton Herbarium, Buffalo Museum of Science, New York USA.
Editor Richard H. Zander, visbms@UBVMS.bitnet. Available via gopher
and anonymous FTP from huh.harvard.edu.
* Bean Bag: Leguminosae Research Newsletter, edited by Charles R. Gunn
and Joseph H. Kirkbride, Jr., jkirkbride@asrr.arsusda.gov. Available
via 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, and
the wildnet mailing list.
* Environmental Resources Information Network (ERIN) Newsletter, Australia
Available via gopher and anonymous FTP from huh.harvard.edu, and via
the ERIN gopher on kaos.erin.gov.au.
* LTER Data Management Bulletin (DATABITS). Available via gopher on
lternet.edu.
* Climate/Ecosystem Dynamics (CED). E-mail subscriptions are available
from Daniel Pommert, daniel@lternet.washington.edu, gopher access
available via lternet.edu.
* The Chlamydomonas Newsletter. E-mail subscriptions are available from
Mike Adams, adams@ecsuc.ctstateu.edu. You can also get this newsletter
via gopher from gopher.duke.edu and via anonymous FTP from
acpub.duke.edu in pub/chlamy/.
The paper journal The Scientist is available in an online version via
anonymous FTP on ds.internic.net, in pub/the-scientist, courtesy of the
Institute for Scientific Information and the NSF Network Service Center.
Michael Strangelove, 441495@acadvm1.UOTTAWA.ca has compiled a directory
of electronic serials. To retrieve it, send e-mail with the text
get ejournl1 directry
get ejournl2 directry
to listserv@acadvm1.UOTTAWA.ca.
-*- 3. Information Archives
A number of people have begun to organize the many free biological
information archives, databases and services on the Internet into
well-organized menus using gopher servers. These include Don Gilbert's
IUBIO service on ftp.bio.indiana.edu and Mike Cherry's collection on
weeds.mgh.harvard.edu in the United States, Rob Harper's "Finnish EMBnet
BioBox" on gopher.csc.fi in Finland, and Reinhard Doelz's "Information
servers in biology (gopher based)" on gopher.embnet.unibas.ch in
Switzerland.
Yanoff (1993) is an excellent list of unusual and useful Internet
services, a few of which are mentioned in this guide. Services listed
include: an on-line dictionary, weather maps, a general weather report
service, an archive of statistical programs and data sets, and various
computers allowing public telnet sessions so that people who have Internet
access but not Usenet can read and post Usenet articles.
Stern (1993) offers an extensive list of anonymous FTP archives offering
meteorological data.
-*- 3.1. Bibliographies
Many Internet archives have searchable bibliographic databases, complete
with abstracts. Only a few are mentioned here.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) Climate Data database and the NASA
Global Change Data Directory are archived via WAIS on ridgisd.er.usgs.gov.
The North American Benthological Society (NABS) offers a bibliography of
recent literature in benthic biology via a gopher server on gopher.nd.edu.
The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has put a bibliographic
database and catalog of data sets in a gopher server on lternet.edu. (The
actual data is not available online.) Check the French gopher server on
gopher.genethon.fr for bibliographies of sequence analysis and human
genome research papers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Extension Service offers the
Research Results Database (RRDB), containing brief summaries of recent
research from the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and
Economic Research Service (ERS), by e-mail. For details, send the
e-mail message "send guide" to almanac@esusda.gov. To receive notices
of new RRDB titles, send the message "subscribe usda.rrdb".
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Library on-line
database can be accessed for bibliographic searches via anonymous telnet
to epaibm.rtpnc.epa.gov. A collection of GIS-related bibliographies is
available 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 these
TOCs into BibTeX-style bibliography records: these scripts are posted in
the Usenet newsgroup bionet.journals.note.
The journal TOCs available in bionet.journals.contents include:
Anatomy & Embryology
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Binary
CABIOS
Cell and Tissue Research
Chromosoma
Current Genetics
EMBO Journal
Environmental Physiology
European Journal of Biochemistry
European Journal of Physiology
Experimental Brain Research
Histochemistry
Human Genetics
IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology
Immunogenetics
Journal of Bacteriology
Journal of Biological Chemistry
Journal of Comparative Physiology B: Biochemical, Systemic, and
Journal of Membrane Biology
Journal of Molecular Evolution
Journal of Virology
MGG - Molecular and General Genetics
Mammalian Genome
Microbial Releases
Molecular Microbiology
Molecular and Cellular Biology
Nucleic Acids Research
Plant Cell Reports
Planta
Protein Science
Roux's Archives of Developmental Biology
TAG - Theoretical and Applied Genetics
The CONSLINK listserver mailing list keeps a large bibliography of
conservation 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 following
journals via gopher on gopher.uth.tmc.edu (port 3300):
Advances in Physiology Education
American Journal of Physiology (6 consolidated journals)
Journal of Applied Physiology
Journal of Neurophysiology
News in Physiological Sciences
Physiological Reviews
The Physiologist
Other publishers supporting Internet access to information about their
publications include
Publisher Address Access
--------------------------------------------------------------
Addison-Wesley world.std.com ftp
O'Reilly & Associates gopher.ora.com gopher
Kluwer Academic Publishers world.std.com ftp
-*- 3.2. Directories
Searchable directories of scientists and research projects currently
funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science
Foundation (NSF), Department of Agriculture (USDA), and genome researchers
funded by several other departments, together with several topical
directories, are available via gopher on merlot.welch.jhu.edu. Searches
on researcher name, location, and field of interest are supported.
A directory of researchers using Artificial Intelligence in Molecular
Biology (AIMB) is maintained at the National Library of Medicine. To
be included, send e-mail to Larry Hunter, hunter@work.nlm.nih.gov.
A directory of people who read the bionet.* newsgroups is available via
gopher and anonymous FTP from net.bio.net; you can add yourself to the
directory via gopher or e-mail (see instructions on net.bio.net).
Several directories of ecologists and plant biologists are kept on
huh.harvard.edu, which is accessible via gopher and anonymous FTP.
A directory of tropical biologists is kept in the Ecology and Evolution
section of the gopher/anonymous FTP archive on sunsite.unc.edu.
Richard Thorington keeps a list of mammalogists who use e-mail. To get
yourself on the list (required to receive copies of it), send e-mail to
mnhvz049@SIVM (via Bitnet) or mnhvz049@SIVM.si.edu.
-*- 3.3. Software
Several archives specializing in software for biologists are accessible
via gopher and anonymous FTP. Some of these are listed in section 3.5,
List of Archives. The first such archive in South America is the
Brazilian Medical Informatics archive, ccsun.unicamp.br. The IUBio
archive on ftp.bio.indiana.edu probably has the best collection in the
United States. Botanists will appreciate the TAXACOM archive on
huh.harvard.edu.
Also, wuarchive.wustl.edu has an excellent collection of educational
software, especially for teaching mathematics at the college and
university levels. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications
has developed a collection of outstanding software tools for electronic
communications and image analysis, and makes it publicly available on
zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Many of the latest add-on tools for the popular
LaTeX 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 Botanical
Software for MS-DOS Computers". The software is shareware or in the
public domain. For a copy, write him at hh216fr@duc220.uni-duisburg.de.
Bionet.software is a good place to look for information about specific
software programs with applications to biology. There are many Usenet
groups devoted to discussion of software, particularly freeware and
shareware. The well-known, huge anonymous FTP repositories of software
are 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 Usenet
newsgroups.
-*- 3.4. Data
The wealth of data available on the Internet is staggering, but it is also
widely dispersed and often difficult to track down. Rather than compile a
list of data sets and pointers to their locations, this guide gives a list
of locations with only a name or phrase to suggest what data may be found
there (see section 3.5, List of Archives). Many Usenet FAQs (see section
5, Useful and Important FAQs) and other Internet documents mentioned in
this guide attempt to list available databases, but many more are known
only by word-of-mouth. The Usenet newsgroup sci.answers (also a mailing
list; 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 on
the Internet, with large, highly organized databases that support ever more
powerful and complex interactive or batch search queries. Most now support
WAIS and gopher search access, and are listed in section 3.5, List of
Archives. The future utility of these repositories depends on the donation
of data by individual researchers. Questions, as well as data submissions
and corrections, can be sent to the relevant administrators via e-mail
(after Garavelli 1992):
Database Address of administrator
-------- ------------------------
AAtDB (Arabidopsis thaliana) curator@weeds.mgh.harvard.edu
ACEDB (Caenorhabditis elegans) rd@mrc-lmba.cam.ac.uk and
mieg@kaa.cnrs-mop.fr
Brookhaven pdb@chm.chm.bnl.gov
DDBJ ddbjsubs@flat.nig.ac.jp
EDEX and JARS (Forest Ecology) goforest@gopher.yale.edu
EMBL problems, feedback nethelp@embl-heidelberg.de
software submissions, queries software@embl-heidelberg.de
Data Library enquiries datalib@embl-heidelberg.de
Data Library submissions datasubs@embl-heidelberg.de
FlyBase (Drosophila) flybase@morgan.harvard.edu
Inst. of Forest Genetics DB (IFGDB) ifgdb@s27w007.pswfs.gov
GDB help@welch.jhu.edu
GenBank gb-sub@life.lanl.gov
Microbial Strains Data Net. (MSDN) msdn@bdt.ftpt.br and msdn@phx.cam.ac.uk
NCBI repository@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
PIR fileserv@nbrf.georgetown.edu
SWISS-PROT bairoch@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 get
the current version of LiMB by e-mail, send the text "limb-data" to
bioserve@life.lanl.gov. For information only, send "limb-info". LiMB
is 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 types
of searches via e-mail. For more information, send the text "help" in
e-mail to any one of these servers:
EMBL File Server NetServ@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE
FASTA FASTA@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE
Quicksearch Quick@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE
Swiss-Prot MPsrch Blitz@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE
The Sequence Retrival System (SRS) program for VAX VMS computer systems
is available via anonymous FTP on the Norwegian EMBnet node biomed.uio.no
or 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, consisting
of 6000 specimen records.
The Flora of Mt. Kinabalu; 16,300 specimen records of all vascular
plant collections from the mountain.
E-mail addresses for sending queries are:
Harvard Mint Types: herbdata@huh.harvard.edu
Kellogg Herbarium: herbdata%kbs.decnet@clvax1.cl.msu.edu
Flora of Mt. Kinabalu: herbdata@herbarium.bpp.msu.edu
Send the message "help" to receive a usage guide, and if you think
there might be difficulties with your return address, send that as
well by adding a line with the text "replyaddress=" followed by your
prefered e-mail address.
Anyone who does a lot of field work will appreciate the Geographic Name
Server, which can provide the latitude and longitude, and the elevation
of 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 (no
username needed) and type "help" for instructions.
-*- 3.5. List of Archives
Computer sites supporting some sort of public access, and of some
interest to biologists:
Internet node name Topic/Agency Access method
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ftp.bio.indiana.edu (IN USA) IUBIO Genbank, FlyBase f G
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (MD USA) NCBI f
ftp.embl-heidelberg.de (Germany) EMBL Data Library E f g
coli.polytechnique.fr (France) EMBLnet G
ftp.bchs.uh.edu (TX USA) Genbank, PIR f G
helix.nih.gov (MD USA) Genbank, PDB, PIR etc. G
ncifcrf.gov (MD USA) Biol. Information Theory f
finsun.csc.fi (Finland) Prosite, Rebase-Enzyme G
pdb.pdb.bnl.gov (NY USA) Protein Data Bank G
ftp.tigr.org Inst. for Genomic Rsch. f
golgi.harvard.edu (MA USA) f
megasun.bch.umontreal.ca Molecular evolution G
nic.funet.fi (Finland)
gopher.csc.fi (Finland)
world.std.com A major entry-point f G
sunsite.unc.edu (NC USA) Many subjects E f G t [4]
gopher.ciesin.org Earth Sciences G
pinus.slu.se (Sweden) Agriculture G
locus.nalusda.go (USA) Nat. Agri. Library G
s27w007.pswfs.gov (USA) Forest Genetics G
biomed.uio.no (Norway) Genome T
gopher.embnet.unibas.ch (Switzer.)
biox.embnet.unibas.ch (Switzerland) Genome G
merlot.welch.jhu.edu (MD USA) Genome G
weeds.mgh.harvard.edu (MA USA) Arabidopsis, C. elegans G
mendel.agron.iastate.edu (IA USA) Soy genome G
greengenes.cit.cornell.edu (NY USA) Triticeae genome G
teosinte.agron.missouri.edu (USA) Maize genome G
gopher.duke.edu (NC USA) Chlamydomonas G [2]
picea.cfnr.colostate.edu (CO USA) f
poplar1.cfr.washington.edu (WA USA) Populus genetics f
mobot.org (MO USA) Missouri Bot. Garden f
life.anu.edu.au (Australia) Bioinformatics f G
igc.org (CA USA) EcoNet f
gopher.yale.edu (CT USA) LTERnet, EDEX, JARS g
lternet.edu (WA USA) LTERnet G
spider.ento.csiro.au (Australia) Entomology f
gopher.uth.tmc.edu (port 3300) Physiology G
envirolink.hss.cmu.edu (DE USA) Environment G T [6]
ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu (VA USA) Ecosystems G T
ngdc1.ngdc.noaa.gov (USA) Paleoclimatology f [1]
huh.harvard.edu (MA USA) Harvard Univ. Herbaria f G
simsc.si.edu (DC USA) Smithsonian Inst. f [3]
ucmp1.berkeley.edu (CA USA) Vertebrate museum G
bdt.ftpt.br (Brazil) Biodiversity f G
coli.polytechnique.fr (France) Molecular evolution G
fconvx.ncifcrf.gov (MD USA) Mathematical Biology f
bluehen.ags.udel.edu (DE USA) Entomology G
minerva.forestry.umn.edu (MN USA) Forestry G
ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (CA USA) Biology G
evolution.genetics.washington.edu Evolution f
evolution.bchs.uh.edu (TX USA) Evolution f
martini.eecs.umich.edu (MI USA) Geographic Name Server t [7]
wigeo.wu-wien.ac.at (Austria) Geography G
geogopher.ucdavis.edu (CA USA) Geology G
isdres.er.usgs.gov (VA USA) US Geological Survey f
pippin.memst.edu CERI Earthquake Center G
cdiac.esd.ornl.gov CDIAC f
saturn.soils.umn.edu (MN USA) Geology G
kiawe.soest.hawaii.edu (HA USA) Generic Mapping Tools f
tycho.usno.navy.mil U.S. Naval Observatory t [8]
nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov NSSDC On-Line Service t [9]
granta.uchicago.edu (IL USA) Physics Resources G
xyz.lanl.gov (NM USA) LANL Nonlinear Science G
mentor.lanl.gov (NM USA) LANL Physics G
info.mcs.anl.gov (IL USA) Argonne National Lab. f
stis.nsf.gov (DC USA) Nat. Science Foundation f G
rtfm.mit.edu (MA USA) Usenet FAQ repository e f [5]
jse.stat.ncsu.edu (NC USA) Journal of Stat. Educ. f G
ftp.sas.com (NC USA) SAS-related information f
zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu (IN USA) Supercomputing f
lupulus.ssc.gov Young Scientists Net. f
ksuvxa.kent.edu Directory of lists f
sun.soe.clarkson.edu LaTeX tools f
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 server
G - gopher server plus WAIS index searches
t - public telnet access
T - public telnet access plus e-mail returns of search results
W - 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" 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 "gopher", password "envirolink";
7: Use port 3000, no username, "help" gets instructions;
8: Telnet username "ads";
9: Telnet username "nodis"
-*- 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 computer
and accepts requests to connect over the Internet, a "client" program that
people use to connect to or access these servers, and a standard protocol
that allows many different versions of clients and servers to talk to one
another without difficulty.
Most of the recently published books about the Internet describe these
tools in detail. Kehoe (1992), the first to appear, was offered first
in a free electronic version over the Internet; it is still available
from many anonymous FTP archives around the world, in a directory named
something 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 Network
Resource Tools (May 3, 1993), which is available via e-mail from
listserv@EARNCC.bitnet, by sending the message "get nettools ps" for
a PostScript version or "get nettools memo" 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 telnet
to 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 those
people who do not have the necessary client software on their own
computers, and want to try these tools before going to the trouble of
installing the client software themselves. Although licensing has been
discussed for some of these tools (namely, certain versions of gopher),
at present they are all free, and several are explicitly in the public
domain or carry free GNU licenses.
-*- 3.6.1. Telnet
Telnet allows someone using a computer with full Internet access to access
another computer over the Internet and login there, assuming he or she has
login privileges on that computer as well. Anonymous telnet sessions are
generally not permitted, but occasionally usernames are created with
restricted privileges, for use by the Internet public. Several of these
are 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 used
for file transfers between computers with full Internet access, assuming
you have privileges on both the local and remote computers. Anonymous FTP
is a common practice whereby anyone on the Internet may transfer files from
(and sometimes to) a remote system with the userid "anonymous" and an
arbitrary password. By convention, anonymous FTP users provide their
e-mail addresses when asked for a password. This is useful to those
archive managers who must justify to their bosses the time spent providing
this free (but not cheap) service. Some sites restrict when transfers may
be made from their archives, and most prefer that large transfers be made
only during off-hours (relative to that site).
To receive a short guide to using anonymous FTP, send e-mail with the
text "help" to info@sunsite.unc.edu.
-*- 3.6.3. Gopher
Gopher is a user-interface program that makes FTP and other types of
connections for computer users when they select an item in a menu. It
is an easy way to get stuff off the Internet without having to know
where 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 can
be retrieved via anonymous FTP from boombox.micro.umn.edu. The name
is a clever pun on the "go-for" person who runs errands for people,
and on the burrowing rodent, which pops down a "hole" in the Internet
and comes back up who-knows-where. Bionet.general, bionet.software,
and bionet.users.addresses are good places to learn more about biology-
related gopher services. Comp.infosystems.gopher is the newsgroup
for gopher-related issues in general. The FAQ for this group is stored
on 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 thousands
of anonymous FTP archives around the world. Archie clients for many types
of computer, and documentation, can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from
any archie server (see below) in the /pub/archie/doc/ directory, or by
e-mail from archie-admin@ans.net.
Archie can be used via e-mail, by sending e-mail with a list of commands
to archie@ans.net. For details, send the command "help". Due to the very
high demand for this service, requests should be made via e-mail or clients
rather than telnet-ing to an archie server. Please try to use archie only
outside of working hours, make your query as specific as possible, and use
the archie server nearest you: archie.au in Australia; archie.funet.fi in
Finland; archie.th-darmstadt.de in Germany; archie.doc.ic.ac.uk in Great
Britain; archie.cs.huji.ac.il in Israel; archie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp and
archie.wide.ad.jp in Japan; archie.sogang.ac.kr in Korea; archie.nz in
New Zealand; archie.luth.se in Sweden; archie.ncu.edu.tw in Taiwan;
archie.ans.net, archie.rutgers.edu, archie.sura.net and archie.unl.net
in the United States.
-*- 3.6.5. Veronica
Veronica is a very easy rodent-oriented net-wide index to computerized
archives. Veronica's name is a play on the concepts of both gopher and
archie. (Remember the comic book couple Archie and Veronica? Veronica
does for gopher what archie does for anonymous FTP.) Veronica searches
through hundreds of gopher holes looking for anything that matches a
keyword supplied by the user, and assembles a list of gopher servers that
contain items of interest. Note: veronica checks *titles* of gopher
items only, not their contents.
There is a veronica database specifically for biology resources in the
gopher server on merlot.welch.jhu.edu, under menu item "Search Databases
at Hopkins...". Its name is BOING, or Bio Oriented INternet Gophers.
At present, there are no veronica clients; veronica is a gopher tool.
An informal veronica FAQ is posted regularly in comp.infosystems.gopher
and 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 accessible
by indexing their contents for easy searching and browsing. The client's
user interface is simple, but the concept is so powerful that nearly
everyone with an anonymous FTP archive has spent part of 1992 and 1993
building WAIS indices of all available material (software, data, documents
and other information). In the course of all this effort an enormous
amount of information that has been available for years or even decades
has suddenly become publicly available for the first time all in the past
year. 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) are
available on the anonymous FTP archive at think.com. If your computer
has full Internet access, you can try out WAIS on a Unix system, courtesy
of Thinking Machines Corp., by telnetting to quake.think.com. Use the
username "wais" and give your e-mail address as the password. See the
newsgroup comp.infosystems.wais for more details, or see the WAIS FAQ
(section 5, Useful and Important FAQs).
-*- 3.6.7. World-Wide Web (WWW)
WWW is yet another tool for gathering useful information from the Internet.
It was invented at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN),
Switzerland. WWW looks like a document that users can open and read, but
selecting certain words via mouse or keyboard causes other documents to be
retrieved and opened for inspection. The most powerful aspect of WWW at
present is the ease with which seamless, attractive online documentation
can be created, that is easy to find and browse, no matter where on the
Internet the actual documents are. You can try WWW, 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 are
also full Internet sites, and so do support telnet and FTP. For those
who only have access to computers on Bitnet, Princeton University offers
a file transfer service by e-mail. Bitftp@PUCC.bitnet will send a help
file in response to the message "help". There is an identical server in
Germany: Bitftp@DEARN from within Bitnet/EARN or bitftp@vm.gmd.de from
the Internet. This server should be used only for FTP requests involving
transfers within Europe. If you have neither full Internet access nor an
account on a Bitnet node, you can still get files from anonymous FTP
archives by e-mail courtesy of ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com, which will send
instructions in response to the word "help" followed by "quit" on separate
lines of an e-mail message.
Also, you can retrieve formal Usenet FAQs via e-mail from the Usenet FAQ
repository, rtfm.mit.edu: to get a help file, a list of all the FAQs
stored there, and the latest version of this guide, send e-mail to
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the text
help
index
send usenet/news.answers/biology/guide
-*- 4. Commercial Services
The three most common types of commercial services are (1) restricted-use
computer accounts allowing Internet access (e-mail or full access) via
modem from personal computers, (2) on-line bibliographic databases that
can be searched via modem or over the Internet, and (3) access via modem
or the Internet to private Usenet-style special-interest networks, but
only e-mail access to the rest of the Internet. This third type of
service is rapidly disappearing as vendors add full Internet access to
subscribers to keep them from going to another service vendor.
For the benefit of people without full Internet access (telnet and FTP
in addition to e-mail), Peter Kaminski maintains a list of commercial
access providers (Kaminski 1993). E-mail requests for this list can be
sent 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 Internet
listed in the bibliography, and many other published literature with the
words "Internet", "online" or "database" in the title. There are many
such books available now, as publishers everywhere realize that money
can be made on the new Electronic Frontier.
However, much of the information in these compendium books is out of date
even before the book appears in print. Also, it is generally compiled by
people who are not well acquainted with the materials, and thus poorly
organized. Much of the information was gathered by soliciting data from
administrators or suppliers of databases. This data, in current form,
is best gathered directly from the source, via the Internet. The best
strategy is to learn to cruise the Internet yourself, with the help of a
a "tool" book such as Kehoe (1992) or Krol (1992; or if you can't find
those at your local bookstore, some alternatives are Goldman 1992, Lane
and Summerhill 1992, LaQuey and Ryer 1992, Malamud 1992 or Tennant et al.
1993) and learn where in the Internet to look periodically for notices
about resources of interest to you.
-*- 5. Useful and Important FAQs
You will learn a great deal about the Internet and what it has to offer
if you read some of these FAQs. If you still want to know more, browse
around in Usenet. Also, a number of books have been published recently
that give a very thorough guide to the Internet; see the bibliography
and check your local academic bookstore or university library.
The files below are stored in pub/usenet/news.answers/ in the anonymous
FTP archive on rtfm.mit.edu, and are posted frequently to the Usenet
newsgroups news.answers, comp.answers and sci.answers, as appropriate.
See section 3.6.2, Anonymous FTP for help retrieving these FAQs via e-mail
or FTP. See section 2.3.3, Usenet FAQs about Usenet for a list of titles.
Title Archive filename
--------------------------------------------------------------------
General resources
Gopher [FAQ] gopher-faq
comp.infosystems.wais FAQ wais-faq/getting-started
WAIS FAQ wais-faq/sources
FAQ: College Email Addresses college-email/part[1-3]
FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses finding-addresses
FAQ: International E-mail accessibility mail/country-codes
How to Get Information about Networks network-info/part1
Public Dialup Internet Access List pdial
Updated Internet Services List internet-services
Mailing Lists Available in Usenet bit/gatelist
How to find sources finding-sources
Anonymous FTP List - FAQ ftp-list/faq
Anonymous FTP List - Sites ftp-list/sites[1-3]
Mail Archive Server (MAS) software list mas-software
Scientific resources
A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources biology/guide
Biological Information Theory biology/info-theory
and Chowder Society
Computer Science Technical Report techreport-sites/list
Archive Sites
Computer Graphics Resource Listing graphics/resources-list/
part[1-3]
FAQ in comp.ai.neural-nets neural-net-faq
Sources of Meteorological Data FAQ weather-data
Space FAQ space/* [15 parts]
Amos Bairoch has assembled a very useful list of Molecular Biology
Archives and Mailservers which is available on many FTP sites, and in
the Usenet newsgroup bionet.announce.
Paul Hengen has written an FAQ about new methods in molecular biology for
the bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts newsgroup. It is available via anonymous
FTP on ncifcrf.gov in pub/methods/FAQlist.
Virgil Sealy and Lisa Nyman have written an FAQ for comp.infosystems.gis
(and the gated GIS-L mailing list). You can also get this FAQ by sending
e-mail to gis-faq-request@abraxas.adelphi.edu (no message necessary), or
you can get it via anonymous FTP from dg-rtp.dg.com in the file /gis/faq.
Bill Thoen has written "Internet Resources for GIS/CARTO/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 (including
humans). The most recent version can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from
wuarchive.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 document
that can be retrieved via anonymous FTP from ftp.sura.net, in the pub/nic/
directory, file name medical.resources.<version>. In the same directory
is Wilfred Drew's Not Just Cows, a guide to Internet resources in
agriculture and related sciences; get the file named agricultural.list.
-*- 5.1. What's an FAQ and where can I get one?
There are now hundreds of Internet documents, including this one, written
expressly to answer frequently asked questions. They are often refered
to in the Usenet community as FAQs. You will find them in the Usenet
newsgroup news.answers (and subsets in sci.answers, comp.answers, and
news.answers.newusers). The Usenet FAQ repository is an anonymous FTP
archive on rtfm.mit.edu (RTFM stands for Read The <bleep> Manual), in
the directory pub/usenet/news.answers/. See section 3.6.2, Anonymous
FTP, for details, including instructions for retrieving 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 X
directly. If anyone can help you with this, it's X. To date, most
biologists don't have e-mail addresses, or if they do, they don't read
their e-mail very often, so you really are better off contacting them
directly. If you must try to find this information via the computer
networks, please start by reading Kamens (1993a) or Lamb (1993) or the
relevant section of one of the books listed in the bibliography. Also,
you can check for the latest strategy in bionet.users.addresses. But
wait, there's more: many gopher servers listed in this guide have
searchable 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 scientific
journals, and the new book stack in the library. Ask your favorite
professors for advice. Sadly, the Internet can not be all things to all
people, 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 by
browsing 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 for
searching via gopher, WAIS, and anonymous FTP on ftp.bio.indiana.edu, in
the directory /usenet/bionet/. The bionet newsgroups (some dating back
to 1987) are archived for WAIS and anonymous FTP on net.bio.net. Browse
through gopher land for additional Usenet newsgroup archives.
Most listserver mailing lists are archived on the computer where they
are administered. To subscribe and get an index of log files on the
listserver archive for the ECOLOG-L mailing list, for example, send
e-mail to listserv@UMDD.umd.edu with the text:
subscribe ECOLOG-L Your Name
index 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 also
want to check the ECOLOG-L listserver mailing list, which is run by
the 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 in
The Physiologist via gopher on gopher.uth.tmc.edu (port 3300). Usenet
has several newsgroups devoted to jobs: misc.jobs.*.
-*- Acknowledgements
This guide is Santa Fe Institute Working Paper # 93-06-038.
This guide would not have been written without the financial support and
intellectual tolerance of Duke and Yale Universities; it was organized
(or organized itself) during the 1992 Complex Systems Summer School of
the 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/or
advice on related issues. Harvey Chinn has served as my editor, and
many improvements of organization were suggested by him. Additional
material 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 very
large, even enormous voluntary contributions to the resources mentioned
in this guide, and who are largely responsible for the thing we call the
Internet in its broadest sense. They must all be very proud of what
they have helped to create.
-*- Bibliography
Anonymous (1993) "Total traffic through uunet for the last 2 weeks".
Usenet news.lists, 8 July. Posted by newsstats@uunet.uu.net.
Barr, D. and M. Horton (1993) "Rules for posting to Usenet". Usenet
news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive filename posting-rules/part1.
Brader, M. and J. Schwarz (1993) "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
about Usenet". Usenet news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive filename
usenet-faq/part1.
Crepin-Leblond, O.M.J. (1993) "FAQ: International E-mail accessibility".
Usenet comp.mail.misc. FAQ archive: mail/country-codes.
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[1-3].
Fotis, N.C. (1993) "Computer Graphics Resource Listing". Usenet
comp.graphics. FAQ archive filename graphics/resources-list/part[1-3].
Garavelli, J. (1992) "Announcements of the Protein Information
Repository". Usenet bionet.molbio.proteins, December.
Goldmann, N. (1992) "Online Information Hunting". Windcrest, Blue Ridge
Summit, PA.
Harris, R. (1993) "Computer Science Technical Report Archive Sites".
Usenet comp.doc.techreports. FAQ archive: techreport-sites/list.
Kahin, B. (1992) "Building Information Infrastructure: Issues in
the Development of the National Research and Education Network".
McGraw Hill, New York. 432 pages.
Kamens, J.I. (1993a) "FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses". Usenet
comp.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". Usenet
news.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)". Usenet
alt.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's
Guide 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 from
ftp.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.college.
FAQ archive filename college-email/part[1-3].
Lane, E.S. and C.A. Summerhill (1992) "An Internet Primer for
Information 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) "The Internet Companion: A Beginner's
Guide to Global Networking". Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.,
Reading, MA. 208 pages.
Lawrence, D.C., G. Woods and G. Spafford (1993) "How to Create a New
Usenet Newsgroup". Usenet news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive:
creating-newsgroups/part1.
Leech, J. (1993) "Space FAQ". Usenet sci.astro. 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.admin.
FAQ archive: bit/policy.
McIntosh, J. (1993b) "Mailing Lists Available in Usenet." Usenet
bit.admin. FAQ archive: bit/gatelist.
Prechelt, L. (1993) "FAQ in comp.ai.neural-nets". Usenet
comp.ai.neural-nets. FAQ archive: neural-net-faq.
Reid, B. (1993a) "Usenet Readership Report for January 1993". Usenet
news.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 Rospach and G. Spafford (1993) "Publicly
Accessible Mailing Lists". Usenet news.lists. FAQ archive:
news.lists[1-4].
Smith, Una R. (1993) "A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources."
Usenet sci.bio. FAQ archive: biology/guide.
Spafford, G. (1993) "USENET Software: History and Sources". Usenet
news.admin.misc. FAQ archive filename usenet-software/part1.
Spafford, G. and R. Atkinson (1992) "How to Get Information about
Networks". Usenet news.admin.misc. FAQ archive: network-info/part1.
Spafford, G. and M. Horton (1992) "Introduction to news.announce".
Usenet news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive filename
news-announce-intro/part1.
Spafford, G. and A.J. Offutt VI (1992) "Hints on writing style for
Usenet". Usenet news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive filename
usenet-writing-style/part1.
Spafford, G. and C. Salzenberg (1992) "What is Usenet?". Usenet
news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive filename what-is-usenet/part1.
Spafford, G. and C. Von Rospach (1992) "A Primer on How to Work With the
Usenet Community". Usenet news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive
filename usenet-primer/part1.
Stern, I. (1993) "Sources of Meteorological Data FAQ". Usenet
sci.geo.meteorology. FAQ archive filename weather-data.
Templeton, B. (1991) "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on
Netiquette". Usenet news.announce.newusers. FAQ archive filename
emily-postnews/part1.
Tennant, R., J. Ober and A.G. Lipow (1993) "Crossing the Internet
Threshold: an Instructional Handbook", 1st Edition. Library
Solution Press, San Carlos, CA. 134 pages.
Thomas, E. (1993) "Revised LISTSERV System Reference Library".
Listserv@BITNIC.educom.edu, release 1.7c. Retrievable from any
listserver using the mail message "send listserv refcard".
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". Usenet
comp.bbs.misc. FAQ archive: unix-faq/bbs-software.
Yanoff, S. (1993) "Updated Internet Services List". Usenet
alt.internet.services. Available from rtfm.mit.edu FAQ
archive 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 that
is similar to the "LISTSERV" program for mainframes. "listserv" does not
have as many features as "LISTSERV", but in the interest of brevity these
mailing lists have not been singled out. See section 2.4, Listserver
Mailing Lists for subscription instructions.
An "M" before the descriptive title indicates a moderated list. All
submissions should be sent to the moderator, not the list. The
listserver for such groups can provide the name and e-mail address of
the moderator. "G" indicates a gateway to a Usenet newsgroup; "A"
indicates that the listserver maintains some files for this group.
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
ag-econ@ERS.bitnet Agricultural Economics and ERS Test List
ag-exp-l@vm1.nodak.edu Agricultural Expert Systems
ageng-l@ibm.gwdg.de Agricultural Engineering and Intel. Control
agric-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu Agriculture Discussion
aqua-l@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Aquaculture Discussion List
camel-l@SAKFU00.bitnet Discussion Forum on Camel Research
dairy-l@UMDD.umd.edu Dairy Discussion List
hort-l@VTVM1.cc.vt.edu Va Tech Horticulture Dept. Announcements
hortpgm@VTVM1.cc.vt.edu Va Tech Horticulture Dept. Program
mgarden@WSUVM1.csc.wsu.edu Master Gardeners
newcrops@vm.cc.purdue.edu Discussion list for New Crops
spud@WSUVM1.csc.wsu.edu Potato Research
rusag-l@UMDD.umd.edu Russian Agriculture
vetcai-l@KSUVM.ksu.edu Vet. Medicine Computer Assisted Instruction
vetlib-l@VTVM2.bitnet Veterinary Medicine Library issues and info.
vetmed-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu Veterinary Medicine (Peered)
Anthropology and Archaeology
anct-ne@vm.byu.edu Ancient Near Eastern Studies
anthro-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu General Anthropology Bulletin Board
arch-l@TAMVM1.tamu.edu Archaeology List
humevo@GWUVM.gwu.edu M Human Evolutionary Research Discussion
native-l@TAMVM1.tamu.edu Issues Pertaining to Aboriginal Peoples
pacarc-l@WSUVM1.csc.wsu.edu Pacific Rim Archaeology Interest List
pan@GWUVM.gwu.edu Physical Anthropology News List
Biology
bee-l@albany.edu Discussion of Bee Biology
bio-dost@ege.edu.tr Biologists in Turkey
bioesr-l@UMCVMB.bitnet Biological applications of Electron Spin Res.
biomch-l@nic.surfnet.nl Biomechanics and Movement Science
bnfnet-l@FINHUTC.hut.fi Biological Nitrogen Fixation Forum
cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Carnivorous Plants
entobr-l@vm1.lcc.ufmg.br Entomology in Brazil (in Portuguese)
entomo-l@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Entomology Discussion List
ethology@FINHUTC.hut.fi G Ethology
herm@ege.edu.tr Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Discussion
iapwild@vm1.nodak.edu International Arctic Project Wildlife
l-etho@UQAM.bitnet Ethologistes/Ethologists
iopi@life.anu.edu.au M Int. Organization for Plant Information
iubs@life.anu.edu.au M Int. Union of Biological Societies
lactacid@SEARN.sunet.se Lactic Acid Bacteria Forum
micronet@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Fungus and Root Interaction Discussion
rmbl-l@umdd.umd.edu Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory
socinsct@albany.edu Social Insect Biology Research List
thphysio@FRMOP11.cnusc.fr Thermal Physiology
Biostatistics
biomet-l@ALBNYDH2.bitnet Bureau of Biometrics at Albany
bmdp-l@vm1.mcgill.ca BMDP Software Users
edstat-l@jse.stat.ncsu.edu G Journal of Statistics Education List
morphmet@CUNYVM.cuny.edu Biological Morphometrics Mailing List
pstat-l@IRLEARN.ucd.ie Discussion of Stats and Programming
qmlist@tbone.biol.scarolina.edu Quantitative Morphology List
sas-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu G SAS Discussion (Peered)
saspac-l@UMSLVMA.umsl.edu SAS Public Access Consortium
spssx-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu G SPSSX Discussion (Peered)
stat-l@vm1.mcgill.ca G Statistical Consulting
Computational biology
complex@life.anu.edu.au M Complex systems
cybsys-l@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu Cybernetics and Systems
ecosys-l@vm.gmd.de List for ecosystem theory and modeling
glosas-l@acadvm1.UOTTAWA.ca GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation List
inns-l@UMDD.umd.edu International Neural Network Society
ndrg-l@WVNVM.wvnet.edu Nonlinear Dynamics Research Group
neural-n@ANDESCOL.uniandes.edu.co Artificial Neural Networks Discussion
smbnet@fconvx.ncifcrf.gov Society for Mathematical Biology
Conservation and Environmental Studies
apaspan@GWUVM.gwu.edu APA Scientific Grassroots Network
aquifer@IBACSATA.bitnet Pollution and grondwater recharge
aseh-l@TTUVM1.bitnet American Soc. of Environmental Historians
comdev@vm.ecs.rpi.edu Communication & international development
consbio@UWAVM.u.washington.edu Conservation Biology List
conslink@SIVM.si.edu Discussion on Biological Conservation
cturtle@NERVM.nerdc.ufl.edu Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation List
devel-l@AUVM.american.edu G Technology Transfer in Int. Development
envst-l@BROWNVM.brown.edu Environmental Studies Discussion List
icam-l@IRMFAO01.bitnet Integrated Coastal Area Management
itrdbfor@asuvm.inre.asu.edu Dendrochronology Forum
laspau-l@HARVARDA.harvard.edu Latin America Scholarship Program
meh2o-l@TAUNIVM.tau.ac.il Middle East water
natura-l@UCHCECVM.bitnet Ecology and Envir. Protection in Chile
nciw-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Nutrient Cycling Issues - Worldwide
odp-l@TAMVM1.tamu.edu Ocean Drilling Program Open Discussion
sopren-l@secom.ufpa.br SOPREN discussion re Amazonia (Portuguese)
Ecology
biosph-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu G Biosphere, ecology, Discussion List
biodiv-l@bdt.ftpt.ansp.br Biodiversity networks
bird_rba@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu National Birding Hotline Cooperative
birdband@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu Bird Bander's Forum
birdchat@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 Project
ecolog-l@UMDD.umd.edu G Ecological Society of America
firenet@life.anu.edu.au Discussion of fire in landscape ecology
ots-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Organization for Tropical Studies
polpal-l@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Pollination and palynology list
sinoecol@MIAMIU.bitnet Sino-Ecologists Club Overseas Forum
Geology and Geography (including GIS)
acdgis-l@AWIIMC12.imc.univie.ac.at Geographic Information Systems
astra-ug@icnucevm.bitnet ASTRA joint database project users group
climlist@OHSTVMA.acs.ohio-state.edu Climatology Distribution List
coastgis@IRLEARN.ucd.ie Coastal GIS Distribution List
cpgis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Chinese Professionals GIS Use List
geograph@FINHUTC.hut.fi Geography
geology@PTEARN.fc.ul.pt Geology Discussion List
geonet-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu M Geoscience Librarians & Information
georef@UNALCOL.bitnet Sistemas de Info. Geo-Ref. (GIS in Spanish)
gis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu G Geographic Information Systems
idrisi-l@toe.towson.edu Idrisi Discussion List
imagrs-l@csearn.bitnet Image Processing of Remotely Sensed data
maps-l@UGA.cc.uga.edu Maps and Air Photo Systems Forum
quake-l@vm.nodak.edu QUAKE-L Discussion List
seism-l@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu Seismological Data Distribution
seismd-l@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu Seismological Discussion
stat-geo@UFRJ.bitnet Forum of Quantitative Methods in Geosciences
tgis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Temporal Topics on GIS List
ucgis-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Univ Consort for Geo Info & Analysis List
uigis-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 List
deepsea@uvvm.uvic.ca Deep Sea and Vent News
diatom-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu Research on the diatom algae
hypbar-l@TECHNION.technion.ac.il HyperBaric & Diving Medicine List
marine-l@vm.UOGUELPH.ca Marine Studies/Shipboard Education
medsea-l@AEARN.bitnet Marine Biology of the Adriatic Sea List
Medicine and medical research
admra-l@ALBNYDH2.bitnet Adirondack Medical Records Association List
amia-37@UMAB.bitnet American Medical Informatics Association
amied-l@vm1.mcgill.ca American Medical Informatics Association Edu.
babson@HARVARDA.harvard.edu Discussions on Organizational Design of Acad.
biomed-l@vm1.mcgill.ca Assoc. of Biomedical Communications Directors
biomed-l@NDSUVM1.bitnet Biomedical Ethics
cancer-l@WVNVM.wvnet.edu CANCER discussion list
clan@FRMOP11.cnusc.fr Cancer Liaison and Action Network
cfs-med@NIHLIST.bitnet Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/CFIDS medical list
cocamed@UTORONTO.bitnet Computers in Canadian Medical Education
compmed@WUVMD.bitnet M Comparative Medicine List
conflist@UCSFVM.bitnet School of Medicine Conference List
cromed-l@AEARN.bitnet CROatian MEDical List
family-l@MIZZOU1.bitnet Academic Family Medicine Discussion
healthco@RPITSVM.bitnet Communication in health/medical context
hypermed@UMAB.bitnet Biomedical Hypermedia Instructional Design
imia-l@UMAB.bitnet Int. Medical Informatics Assn. Board
iscami@GREARN.csi.forth.gr Computer Assist. Management & Manip. Info.
jmedclub@BROWNVM.brown.edu Medical Journal Discussion Club
lasmed-l@TAUNIVM.tau.ac.il Laser Medicine
medcons@FINHUTC.hut.fi Medical consulting and case descriptions
medforum@ARIZVM1.ccit.arizona.edu M Medical Students Discussion
medimage@POLYVM.bitnet Medical Imaging Discussion List
medlib-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Medical Libraries Discussion List
mednets@NDSUVM1.bitnet Medical Telecommunications Networks
mednews@ASUACAD.bitnet M Health Info-Com Network (HICN) Newsletter
medphy-l@AWIIMC12.bitnet EFOMP Medical Physics Information Services
medstu-l@UNMVMA.bitnet M Medical student discussion list
medsup-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Medical Support List
nnlm-sea@UMAB.bitnet National Network Library of Medicine SEA
nutepi@DB0TUIM.bitnet Nutritional Epidemiology Discussion List
oxygen-l@MIZZOU1.bitnet Oxygen Free Radical Biology and Medicine
panet-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Medical Education and Health Information
smcdcme@WAYNEST1.bitnet Continuing Medical Education Discussion List
smdm-l@DARTCMS1.bitnet Medical Decision Making List
Molecular biology
biotech@UMDD.umd.edu G Biotechnology Discussion List
confocal@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Confocal Microscopy List
cyan-tox@GREARN.csi.forth.gr The Cyanobacterial Toxins Discussion List
dis-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu Drosophila workers to receive DIS Newsletter
ebcbbul@HDETUD1.tudelft.nl Computers in Biotechnology, Rsch. and Edu.
ebcbcat@HDETUD1.tudelft.nl Catalogue of 'Biotechnological' software
embinfo@IBACSATA.bitnet EMBNet (European Molecular Biology Network)
emflds-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Electromagnetics in Med., Sci. & Com.
forumbio@scf.fundp.ac.be Forum on molecular biology
genetics@INDYCMS.iupui.edu Clinical human genetics
lpn-l@BROWNVM.brown.edu Laboratory Primate Newsletter List
nibnews@ccsun.unicamp.br NIBNews (Biology and Medical Informatics)
rbmi@FRORS13.bitnet Molecular Biology Research Group
Neurobiology
cogsci-l@vm1.yorku.ca Cognitive Science Discussion Group
dasp-l@earn.cvut.cs Digital Acoustic Signal Processing
ecovis-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Trends in the Ecology of Vision
neuchile@CUNYVM.cuny.edu Chilean Neurosciences Discussion List
neuro-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu Yale Neuroscience Program
neuro1-l@UICVM.uic.edu Neuroscience Information Forum
neus582@UICVM.uic.edu Methods in Modern Neuroscience
sbnc-l@BRUSPVM.bitnet Brazilian Society of Neurosciences & Comp.
Taxonomy and Systematics
class-l@ccvm.sunysb.edu Classification and phylogeny estimation
muse-l@HARVARDA.harvard.edu Muse Software Discussion List
museum-l@UNMVMA.unm.edu Museum discussion list
rapd-l@vm.byu.edu RAPD sequencing discussion list
roots-l@vm1.nodak.edu Genealogy list
taxacom@HARVARDA.harvard.edu Taxonomic and systematic collections list
Teaching and Research
biocis-l@SIVM.si.edu Biology Curriculum Innovation Study
biopi-l@KSUVM.ksu.edu Secondary Biology Teacher List
conslt-l@IUBVM.ucs.indiana.edu Research and Practice in Mentoring
grants-l@JHUVM.hcf.jhu.edu NSF Grants & Contracts
hpsst-l@QUCDN.queensu.ca History and Philosophy of Science
job-list@FRORS12.bitnet Job offers from EARN Institute members
methods@vm.ecs.rpi.edu Research methodology
navigate@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu M Navigating The Internet Workshop List
newedu-l@vm.usc.edu New Paradigms in Education List
nihggc-l@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu M NIH Grants and Contracts Distribution List
nsf-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu NSF Information List
pcorps-l@CMUVM.bitnet G International Volunteers Discussion Group
scifaq-l@YALEVM.cis.yale.edu G Science FAQ List
scifraud@uacsc2.albany.edu Discussion of Fraud in Science
vpiej-l@VTVM1.cc.vt.edu G Electronic journal discussions
wisenet@UICVM.uic.edu Women In Science and Engineering NETwork
-*- The End
--
Una Smith Department of Biology smith-una@yale.edu
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06511
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<21v316INNr7n@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>Path:
arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!yale.edu!not-for-mailShow Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 107c0a,56c95973caa59d21,start
X-Google-Attributes: gid107c0a,public
X-Google-Thread: 1068df,56c95973caa59d21,start
X-Google-Attributes: gid1068df,public
X-Google-Thread: f7ded,56c95973caa59d21,start
X-Google-Attributes: gidf7ded,public
X-Google-Thread: 1119a6,56c95973caa59d21,start
X-Google-Attributes: gid1119a6,public
X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-07-13 12:41:58 PST
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!yale.edu!not-for-mail
From: Una Smith <smith-una@yale.edu>
Newsgroups: sci.bio,bionet.general,sci.answers,news.answers
Subject: A Biologist's Guide to Internet Resources
Followup-To: poster
Date: 13 Jul 1993 15:39:18 -0400
Organization: Department of Biology, Yale University
Lines: 2197
Sender: una@yale.edu
Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu
Message-ID: <21v316INNr7n@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>
Reply-To: Una Smith <smith-una@yale.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: minerva.cis.yale.edu
Summary: Newsgroups, mailing lists, free data and software sources, and more.
Version 1.4 (last month) was a major re-write; few changes this month.
Keywords: Internet biology resources news mailing lists data software free