Estudio financiero

As the community of users expanded so too did the services that people used on the network. Since the early 1970s, people had used telnet, FTP, and e-mail on the ARPANET. However, during the early 1990s a new range of Internet applications emerged. To help organise the information on the Internet and make searching easier and more efficient, people developed several tools. These included Gopher, Veronica, the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), and the World Wide Web.112 Developed at the University of Minnesota in 1991, Gopher enabled users to navigate through a hierarchy of menus to find information that interested them. The following year a new service, Veronica, enabled users to search Gopher menus, therefore increasing the speed with which people could potentially find information. Another tool developed during the early 1990s was WAIS. Proposed by the Thinking Machines Corporation, this enabled people to search for information within documents. One of the other services to emerge during this period was the World Wide Web. Developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN between 1989 and 1990, this hypertext system used browsers running on client machines to access information stored on servers.

111

There were limits to this liberalisation. For example, public libraries remained outside of this enlarged community. This situation occurred for two reasons. The funding bodies were not enthusiastic about many public libraries joining the network, perhaps because of the load that this would place on the network. In addition, the libraries preferred to use the Internet to access resources, instead of becoming part of the national network. See G. Hare, “Networking Public Libraries,” Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Computers in Libraries 95 conference, London, 7-9 March 1995 (London: Learned Information, 1995), pp. 61-67. Despite this restriction, liberalisation continued, and in 2001, the JISC commissioned a study in to the implications surrounding electronic marketing on JANET. Since the launch of JANET during 1984, the acceptable use of the national academic network had therefore changed dramatically in 17 years. See D. McDonald and C. Breslin, A Study into Advertising on JANET, University of Strathclyde, 2001, Available from:

http://www.strath.ac.uk/IT/projects/reports/jisc-advertising.pdf, Accessed on: 19 January 2004.

112

With the availability of tools such as these, people within the academic community, such as librarians, started to become interested in what these services could do for them. Existing JANET services such as BUBL, Mailbase, BIDS, and library online catalogues began to exploit the facilities provided by the new Internet applications. In 1993, the BUBL team planned to establish a Gopher service which would enable people to use Veronica to search for information within the bulletin boards.113 Having established a Gopher service, the BUBL team started to experiment with the Web. As the Web was a more sophisticated tool than Gopher, the team decided to develop a Web service. Another service to employ Gopher was Mailbase in 1993. Using a client program, about 12,000 subscribers could access over 370 mailing lists. By 1995, this service had also begun to migrate to the Web and provided access to new facilities such as the experimental hypertext e-mail service Hypermail.114 Mailbase later developed in to the current Web-based JISCmail service used by the academic community. The BIDS service provided by the University of Bath also exploited several Internet applications. In 1993, the university launched a telnet service and followed this with investigations into the use of FTP and Gopher.115 Bath University also later transferred its service to the Web. It joined an increasing number of online databases, such as the Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) service, which had launched Web-based access to their information during 1995. Libraries also began to explore the possibilities of providing access to over 100 online catalogues via the Web for both users of JANET and the wider Internet community. One of the first to do so was the British Library which established its online catalogue during 1994.116 People could access the online catalogue using JIPS, and the British Library later converted it to a Web-based service. This transition was part of a general migration to Web-based catalogues which occurred in other countries, such as the US, during the mid to late 1990s.117

113

“Report on BUBL,” JUGL Newsletter, Winter 1993/94, p. 4.

114

See “Mailbase Developments,” JUGL Newsletter, Winter 1993/94, p. 13 and “Mailbase News,”

JUGL Newsletter, Autumn 1995, p. 6.

115

See “Bath Information & Data Services,” JUGL Newsletter, Winter 1993/94, pp. 8-9 and T. Morrow, “BIDS Upgrade,” Axis, vol. 1, no. 3, 1994, p. 43.

116

J. Ashton, “The British Library Network OPAC Opens Worldwide Resources to Researchers,”

JUGL Newsletter, Spring 1994, p. 5.

117

M. Henry, “Library OPACs with Search Forms on the World Wide Web,” Campus-Wide Information Systems, vol. 13, no. 1, 1996, pp. 16-20.

Interest in the Web also extended to organisations, universities, and institutions both within the academic community and outside. The Bodleian Library at Oxford University converted its Bodleian Access to Remote Databases (BARD) service to a Web application in 1995.118 From a user perspective, this simplified the process of accessing information from remote databases. Museums also established Web services. The National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI) set up its Web site during 1995.119 This site provided information about the Science Museum, the National Railway Museum, and the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television. The site supplied information for visitors, as well as facilities for academics such as the Science Museum Library’s online catalogue. UKERNA and several universities also developed services for the World Wide Web during this period. UKERNA was similar to other organisations, as it had developed FTP and Gopher facilities during the early 1990s which people could use to access information. However, by the mid 1990s it too had started to transfer this data to the Web.120 By 1995, the association provided several types of information including guides to JANET and SuperJANET, newsletters, the acceptable use policy, and other documents. Universities also began to explore the possibilities presented by the Web. Campus-Wide Information Systems used the Web to present information to staff and students, and this became part of a much broader interest in what this Internet service could do for institutions. Universities installed Web servers to publicise their institutions, while departments started to provide information for both existing and new students. For instance, in 1994 the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield developed a Web site. This site provided a range of information, including details about courses, staff, students, and publications. Many other departments throughout the country followed this initiative. In addition, Heriot- Watt University conducted a study which looked at using the Web to provide courseware, such as Computer Based Learning (CBL) information to students.121 By

118

R. Gartner, “BARD: An End-user Internet Gateway at the Bodleian Library,” Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Computers in Libraries 95 conference, London, 7-9 March 1995 (London: Learned Information, 1995), pp. 79-81.

119

S. Gordon, “Museums and the Information Superhighway,” Online Information 95: 19th

International Online Information Meeting Proceedings, London, 5-7 December 1995 (Oxford: Learned Information, 1995), pp. 305-310.

120

The Networking Programme Report 1994-1995 (Chilton, Oxon: UKERNA, 1995).

121

See A. Mumford, “The World Wide Web: A Strategic Tool for UK Higher Education,” Axis, vol. 2, no. 2, 1995, pp. 36-39, B. Hynds, “A Campus Wide Code of Practice for Mounting Material on a WWW Server,” Axis, vol. 2, no. 2, 1995, pp. 32-35, J.W. Kirriemuir, et al., “Development of an

the mid 1990s, more institutions used the Web than other Internet applications such as Archie, Gopher, Veronica, or WAIS.122 People could use Web browsers to access information within Gopherspace, connect to Archie servers to search for files that were stored in FTP archives, and use e-mail through Web-based services. The Web had therefore become the most popular interface of the Internet; a unified user interface through which people accessed information and communicated with people throughout the world.