by
(Originally presented at Bioscience Resources on the Internet.)
(Posted July 25, 1997 ? Issue 13; archived August 15, 1997)Anyone dipping into the Internet will find a large mass of information, most of it usable in one way or another. The challenge is to put it all into some usable format, to impose order on the chaos, so that it becomes a finely tuned instrument, one that can be used to enhance research, networking, grant writing, paper writing and, oh yes, the pure joy of professional growth.
To make the most of it, I propose the following steps:
Search
Table 1. Search Engines
A. Topic-Tree and Keyword Searching "Molecular Biology" |
|
No. Web Sites Found |
|
272 |
|
| Infoseek | 60,261 |
| Lycos | 11,037 |
| Webcrawler | 23,833 |
| Magellan | 21,386 |
B. Keyword Searching only |
|
| Alta Vista | 100,000 |
| Excite | 513,219 |
| Inktomi | N/A |
| The Open Text Index | 17,481 |
| Accufind | N/A |
| WWWW World Wide Web Worm | 120 |
C. Topic-tree index only |
|
| The World Wide Web Virtual Library | |
This means ranging far and wide to amass everything relevant to your interests. The obvious place to start is with the many powerful Internet search engines. Record them in your notes or browser bookmarks, rather than hopping onscreen from one to another by chance. Some use a topic-tree format, some do keyword searching, and some do both (see table 1). Search results vary tremendously depending on which engine is used. The lesson is: use all search engines to increase your chances of finding what you need.
Furthermore, extend your searches to include all avenues of Internet information. Usenet newsgroups, for instance, will inform you about Web sites. Newsgroups and Web sites will be a source of e-mail addresses of people doing what you are interested in. Save them. Your Web searching will lead you to gopher sites and telnet sites and FTP sites. Save them, too.
Another powerful source for sites are people you meet in MOOs. A MOO is a multiuser domain, object oriented - similar to a chat room - where you can meet colleagues from all over the world, talk shop, and create and manipulate useful objects. (For further information, see the Educational Technology: Educational VR (MUD) Sub-Page, and the page called What's a MOO?). BioMOO is a particularly useful location for molecular biologists. Join BioMOO and explore other educational or scientific MOOs.
By the way, don't overlook books. For example, ASM Press has a new book out entitled The Internet and the New Biology: Tools for Genomic and Molecular Research by Leonard F. Peruski, Jr., and Anne Harwood Peruski (American Society for Microbiology, 1997), which is full of Web sites related to genome databases, sequence analysis, etc. Also, see Medicine and the Internet: Reference Guide, by Luis G. Pareras (Lippincott-Raven Publishers, 1996), Medicine and the Internet: Introducing Online Resources and Terminology, by Bruce C. McKenzie (Oxford University Press, 1997) and the Biotechnology Internet Address Book from Genetic Engineering News (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.).
Organize
You have two goals at this point. Your collection or Internet resources may be better than any that is currently available, by virtue of your wide-ranging search. Or it may more personal, selecting only those sites that are particularly relevant to your needs. In either case, you need to choose a structure that will accomplish your purpose.
Gateway Sites
Table 2. Gateway sites: Extensive links to other sites
Of primary importance is to pull out from your search those sites that I call gateway sites: Web sites that already contain vast assemblages of links, organized and annotated, to other relevant sites. Your listing should contain a full set of these. Examples include Cell and Molecular Biology Online, or BioMedNet or the ASM Press page that contains the links mentioned in the Peruskis' The Internet and the New Biology. Table 2 lists a number of gateway sites for Molecular Biology, a collection I did for my own interests here at the New York College of Podiatric Medicine.
Subsites
Table 3. Subsites Special Topics of Interest
The next step is to pull out from your search, and especially from the gateway sites, a set of "subsites" according to your predetermined (and modified as you discover what is available) hierarchy. For example, in table 3, I have culled out and grouped together pages on biotech laboratories, organizations, databases, analysis tools, and journals and grants.
You can readily see how this template might be adapted. Certain categories are universal, e.g., organizations and journals. You might add biotech companies or online protocols. You might link to retrieval software, or RasMol modeling software. Add to this your collection of FTP sites, newsgroups, e-mail addresses, and so on. Add to this links to online conferences (very often archived) and online papers.
Preserve
There are two challenges: to hold on to what you transiently came across; and to be able to rearrange and reorder what you have, to modify your groupings and update your collection. There are several ways to do this. At the risk of being archaic, one can use index cards. It is cheap and accomplishes all the above purposes. A word processing document is a high-tech version of the same thing.
Better than that of course, is to keep them as bookmarks on your Web browser. But this has two limitations: the low-level ability to reorganize sites, and the difficulty of annotating what you have.
Table 4. URL Descriptions for Accessing Internet Services Using a Web Browser
ftp://ftp.a.host/filename.txt Best of all, in my opinion, would be to create your
own Web site. Many Internet providers now make it easy and affordable. For a little
more money you can purchase Web site builders, which allow you to create (and edit and
annotate) a collection, save it as a file to your hard drive and, when you are ready,
upload it to your server to make it available to the world. This has a number of
advantages. It can be added to, rearranged, and annotated easily. More significantly,
it gives you the full range of your collection. You can put in links to Web sites, FTP
sites, gopher sites, newsgroups, e-mail addresses, text, and graphics. This combination
makes it a powerful tool. By going to one site, your site, you have can have every
variety of Internet resource at your fingertips (see table 4). As a footnote to the above, a group can collaborate in the construction
and maintenance of a site. One member might have the site construction capability, while
others may contribute ideas, references, sites, etc. The key, of course, is updating, so
that in this fast-moving field, it becomes an ever more powerful tool. Distribute Implicit in the above suggested collection-of-Web-sites proposal is the
ability to make it available to a wider network of interested parties. In a recent issue
of BioTechniques (June 1997, 22(6):1092) the article "Sharing Your Bookmarks"
by Robert Horton teaches you how to add a link to your bookmarks without going there first
(hold on link, right click, follow menu), and more importantly, how to transfer between
bookmark and HTML files, so resources you already have or have just found on the Web can
be readily incorporated into your-ever expanding Web page. Conclusion Follow this model. Personalize it. Expand it. Use it. Enjoy it.
(based on Peruski, Table 2.2)
URL
Description
Example
http://
For Web sites
http://www.somehost.somewhere
gopher://
For Gopher service
gopher://gopher.service
ftp://
For FTP service
ftp://ftp.a.host
news:
For Newsgroups
news:alt.binaries.windows
telnet:
For telnet
telnet:192.56.23.2
mailto:
For E-mail
mailto
: leifer1@ix.netcom.com
Zev Leifer, Ph.D., is Professor
of Microbiology at the New York College of Podiatric
Medicine.
Endlinks
Web sites mentioned in this column:
You can search HMS Beagle and BioMednet for biomedical news, commentaries, and journal articles. This issue's In Situ column explores the features of Deja News, the best search engine for Usenet newsgroups.
Medicine and the Internet: Introducing Online Resources and Terminology, by Bruce C. McKenzie (Oxford University Press, 1997) is available at a special discount for readers of HMS Beagle.