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.