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Yahoo <http://www.yahoo.com> has one of the largest indexes to the Web, but, like other engines, its searching
powers are limited by how you ask it to search. HotBot <http://www.hotbot.com> is a powerful facility maintained by
Wired Magazine. A number of other search facilities, each with its own quirks and preferences, are also available.
These facilities include Lycos, Magellan, Alta Vista, and Infoseek. As you learn to refine your searches, you will find
that some search facilities have more information indexed in your particular discipline. These are the ones to use first.
Talk to the online librarian at your library for other useful sources and find out from your peers which URLs
(Uniform Resource Locators) they find most useful.

Other electronic information sources for scientists include online services provided by businesses, professional
societies and associations, university libraries, the Library of Congress, industrial research laboratories, MEDLINE
(maintained by the National Library of Medicine), and other institutions and organizations. Government engines, such
as MEDLINE, are increasingly available gratis to the public; MEDLINE can be obtained through Grateful Med or Pub
Med, for example. Some

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online sources are available only for a membership fee or at an hourly rate. Another information source is the
newsgroup (see Chapter 23, "E-mail and Newsgroups").

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

When you download files from a remote computer site, FTP is the program that facilitates the process. FTP also
stands for a site that functions as an FTP archive. Some FTP sites require user identification, including a username
and a password to maintain privacy for their material. Other FTP sites allow people who do not have passwords to
sign on as anonymous.

Companies and institutions with their own download facility frequently archive popular files at several FTP sites to
provide more access to users. Users can download complete applications, computer utilities and upgrades, and fact
sheets in text format. Some publishers mount popular journal articles and even copies of complete journals for user
access.

Publishing on the World Wide Web

Most material published as hardcopy can also be published on the Web. The advantages and disadvantages of
scholarly publishing on the Web are still under debate, although many publishers of print journals have Web sites.
Those Web sites usually contain information on past and current issues and include tables of contents with linkages to
abstracts of individual articles.

Links and Hypertext
A link (or hyperlink) refers to the Web's ability to use hypertext—a method of creating and displaying text and other
objects that can be linked to each other, thus forming nonlinear documents. On the Web, a link is referred to as a URL
(Uniform Resource Locator). The URL can appear as text or within a graphic; each type of URL has a standard
format. When the URL is clicked, the browser transfers you to the site where the information is located.

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HTML: the Language of the Web

The language used to write all the information that appears on the Web is called HTML (HyperText Markup

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