the internet 8th edition tutorial 5 information resources on the web

The Internet8th Edition

Tutorial 5Information Resources on the

Web

New Perspectives on the Internet, 8th Edition

Objectives

• Find current news and weather information on the Web

• Obtain maps and city guides

• Find businesses and people on the Web


Objectives

• Find library and text resources on the Web

• Learn how to cite Web resources

• Learn how copyrights affect the use of resources found on the Web

• Find graphics and multimedia resources on the Web

• Learn about the future of online publishing


Current Information on the Web

• Use a search engine that allows date-range restrictions

• Many search sites have sections devoted to current news

• A wire service is an organization that gathers and distributes news to newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, and other organizations that pay a fee to the wire service

• Sites that offer categorized links to news outlets or to specific stories on the Web pages of news outlets are called Web news directories



• Web sites that let you search the content of current news stories in multiple publications and wire services are often called news search engines

• Web logs or blogs are Web sites that contain commentary on current events written by individuals

• There are many sites devoted to weather forecasts, including local news sites



• A number of Web sites provide maps and driving directions


Finding Businesses and People on the Web

• Web sites that store information about businesses only are often called yellow pages directories

• Web sites that let you search for individuals’ names, addresses, and telephone numbers are often called white pages directories


Online Library, Text, and Multimedia Resources

• Multimedia is a general term for files that contain sound, music, or video recordings

• The Web has made existing libraries more accessible

• The LibrarySpot Web site is a collection of hyperlinks organized in the same general way that a physical library might arrange its collections

• The U.S. Library of Congress Web site includes links to a huge array of research resources



• The Web contains a number of text resources, including dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, glossaries, and other reference works

• The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine provides researchers a series of snapshots of Web pages as they were at various points in the history of the Web


Citing Web Resources

• As you search the Web for research resources, you should collect information about the sites you visit so you can include proper references

• Formats for electronic resources are still emerging

• The two most widely followed standards for print citations are those of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA)



• Publishers of scholarly academic journals have begun assigning a unique alphanumeric identifier to journal articles and similar documents to address the problem of moving and disappearing URLs

• The identifier is called a digital object identifier (DOI)


Copyright Issues

• Many Web page elements and other items online are forms of intellectual property, which includes all products of the human mind

• Intellectual property rights include the protections afforded to individuals and companies by governments through governments’ granting of copyrights and patents, and through registration of trademarks and service marks

• Once the term of a copyright has expired, the work is in the public domain, which means anyone is free to copy the files without requesting permission from the source


Copyright Issues

• The idea contained in a product is not copyrightable

• When you view elements using your Web browser, the browser downloads the element from the Web server and stores it in a temporary file on your computer’s hard drive

• The potential for users to infringe on copyrights when viewing Web pages is much greater than when using other types of media

• The fair use of a copyrighted work includes copying it for use in criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research


Copyright Issues

• Failure to cite the source of material that you use is called plagiarism

• Plagiarism can be a serious violation of a school’s academic honesty policy


Images and Graphics on the Web

• Most images on the Web are in GIF or JPEG format

• GIF, an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format, is an older format that does a good job compressing small- or medium-sized files

• JPEG, an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, is a newer file format that stores many more colors that the GIF format

• A lossy compression procedure erases some elements of the graphic so that when it is displayed, it will not be as clear as the original image


Images and Graphics on the Web

• Always track down the source of an image on the Web so that you can request permission to use it if you are not sure it’s in the public domain

• Many sites permit downloading of some image files


Multimedia on the Web

• Plug-ins are additional software extensions that are usually available as free downloads

• Audio File Formats:

– Wave (WAV) format stores digitized audio and can be played on any Windows computer that supports sound

– MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) format is a standard adopted by the music industry for controlling devices that create and read musical information



• Video file formats:

– In a streaming transmission, the Web server sends the first part of the file to the Web browser, which begins playing the file, then the Web server sends the next segment of the file as the previous segment is playing

– Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) has created a series of standards for compressed file formats



• Video file formats:

– AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) and QuickTime format files can be played by most Web browsers (with the proper software plug-in)



• MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) became wildly popular in the late 1990s as disk storage on personal computers dropped in price and CD writers became affordable for home use

• MP3 format files are somewhat lower in quality than WAV format files, but they are 90% smaller

• The smaller size of MP3 files makes it easy to send them from one person to another, but is is illegal and unethical



• There are several Web sites from which you can legally acquire MP3 files

• Restrictions are implemented on MP3 files, using systems of encoding called digital rights management (DRM)


Software on the Web

• Software that is available to users at no cost and with no restrictions is called freeware

• Shareware is similar to freeware in that it costs nothing to download and install, but it remains free to use only for a short evaluation period

• Evaluation version software is a restricted version of the software that provides less functionality than the full version of the software available for purchase


Future of Electronic Publishing

• The ease of publishing on the Web might reduce the concentration of media control by large media companies that own newspapers and publishing companies as well as TV and radio stations

• An increasing number of major daily newspapers are relying on their Web site versions to bring in advertising revenue as the sale of their paper publication continues to decline



• The Web has enabled an entirely new type of individual publication, the Weblog, or blog

• A wiki is a Web site that is designed to allow multiple users to contribute content and edit existing content


Summary

• Finding current news and weather information on the Web

• Obtaining maps and city guides on the Web

• Finding businesses and people on the Web


Summary

• Finding library and text resources on the Web

• How to cite Web resources

• How copyrights affect the use of resources found on the Web

• Finding graphics and multimedia resources on the Web

• The future of online publishing

the internet 8th edition tutorial 5 information resources on the web

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