INTERNET CONCEPTS

MODULE 1

An introduction to Internet concepts and using Internet

resources.

1. Introduction to the Internet

This workbook accompanies the PowerPoint presentation intended to introduce you
to Internet concepts. The workbook will guide you through exercises whilst connected
to the Internet.

2. A Network of Information Networks

The Internet is a worldwide system of interconnected computer networks. The
computers and computer networks exchange information using TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) to communicate with each other.
The computers are connected via the telecommunications networks, and the Internet
can be used for e-mailing, transferring files and accessing information on the World
Wide Web.

Examples of information networks connected by the Internet include those of

libraries, hospitals, research centres, government departments and universities. It is
possible to connect to local organisations as well as those on national and
international networks. For example the WHO Library is an international organisation
with an internet address http://www.who.int/library/.

2.1. Development
The Internet was initially developed to allow computers to share scientific and
military information and was known as ARPANET in the late 1960s. Further
development was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the 1980s
to develop internet communications to link several university computing
departments. In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee and others working at CERN proposed a
new communications protocol for information transfer. This technology was
based on a hypertext system and lead to the development of the World Wide
Web in the 1990s.

2.2. The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of internet servers that use HTTP (Hypertext
Transfer Protocol) to transfer documents formatted in HTML (Hypertext Mark-up
Language). These are viewed by using software for web browsers such as
Netscape and Internet Explorer. Hypertext enables a document to be connected
to other documents on the web through hyperlinks. It is possible to move from
one document to another by using hyperlinked text found within web pages.

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the global address of documents and
other resources on the web e.g. http://www.who.int. The first part of the address
indicates which protocol to use e.g. http. The second part of the address
identifies the domain name or the internet address where the information is
located.

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 The address bar is the toolbar displayed at the top of the screen when you open
the internet browser.

Exercise 1

 Connect to the Internet and open your internet browser.

 Type http://www.who.int/library/ into the address box in the toolbar at the
top of the screen.
 Click on “GO” or hit the Return key.
 The home page of the WHO Library should open.
 Now type http://www.who.int into the address box.
 Click on “GO” or hit the Return key
 WHO website will open.

3. Navigating web pages

Most web pages contain links to further information or other web pages. Often these
links are highlighted in a different colour and may be underlined. Links can also be
displayed as pictures or graphics. You will notice that as you move the mouse cursor
over a link the cursor changes to a hand shape. If you select the link by clicking on it
you will be taken to a new web page.

You can navigate backwards and forwards to web pages that you have visited by
using the Back and Forward arrows on the toolbar.

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There may also be navigation buttons or links running across the top and down the
left-hand side of the web page you have visited.
The house icon on the shortcut toolbar will take you back to the default home page
of the browser.

Exercise 2

 Connect to the Internet and open your internet browser.

 Now type http://www.who.int into the address box.
 Click on “GO” or hit the Return key
 WHO website will open.
 Click on the link to Research tools in the left- hand navigation bar.
 Click on one of the hyperlinks on the research tools page.
 A new page opens. Use the Back button on the browser toolbar to get
back to WHO home page.

4. Searching the Internet

The Internet contains a vast amount of information covering a wide variety of topics.
It hosts library catalogues, articles, news items, reports, multimedia, reference
information, company information and personal opinions.

The information is created from many different sources including academic

institutions, government agencies, professional organisations, commercial
information and individuals.

Some of the information found on the Internet may be organised in directories where
the information has been designated to a particular category or file in a structured
way. For example this may be in a general directory such as those on
http://www.yahoo.com or it may be in a directory which covers a specific subject
such as health.

4.1. Search engines

A search engine is a useful tool for locating information on the web. The search
engine program identifies and visits web pages on the World Wide Web. It
gathers information and automatically indexes the site. Any words found on the
web pages visited by the search engine are stored in the search engine
database. When you search the web for a topic the key words are matched to the
information found on the web pages visited by the search engine.
Examples of individual search engines can be found at http://www.google.com or
http://sp.ask.com .

Meta search engines use their own program and interface to search numerous
search engine databases simultaneously. They can give you a broad idea of
which search engines hold information on your subject.
Examples of meta search engines can be found at http://www.metacrawler.com
or http://www.dogpile.com

There is also a part of the web which is not easily seen and indexed by search
engines - this is the invisible or deep web. It may consist of databases and
information from institutions such as universities and research organisations.

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5. Search techniques
It is possible to search World Wide Web using simple search interfaces or to use
more advanced features. Each search engine may have slightly different features so
it is always a good idea to check which are appropriate to the one you are using.
It is possible to use full Boolean searching using the AND, OR , NOT operators.

The AND operator can be used to combine two concepts, to find items containing all
your search terms, or to narrow the search down and make it more specific e.g.
malaria AND parasite.
The OR operator can be used to keep the search broad and find information
containing one or other of your terms e.g. malaria OR parasite.
If you only want to find items containing one term and not the other term use NOT to
exclude these items e.g. parasite NOT malaria.

5.1. Advanced searching

The following advanced techniques may be used:
 Truncation- a symbol such as * or $ is inserted to find all alternative
endings of a word e.g. child* finds child, children, childhood etc. This can
broaden the search.
 Proximity searching- it may be possible to use NEXT or NEAR or
parentheses e.g. (malaria parasite) to increase the specificity of your
search.
Case sensitivity- some search engines are case sensitive and will only find items
spelled exactly as you type them e.g. if you use uppercase any items in lower
case spelling may be ignored.

5.2. Field searching

It is possible to search in specific fields such as looking for a title, date or URL in
some search engines.

6. Evaluating information found on the Internet or World Wide Web

Whilst it is possible to retrieve useful information from searching the Internet it is also
important to remember that anyone can write information and publish web pages.
All information should be evaluated using criteria such as:
 Accuracy
 Authority
 Currency
 Coverage
 Objectivity

A useful link to evaluating health information can be found at

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/evaluatinghealthinformation.html

7. Health Information on the Internet

There are numerous health information resources available on the Internet. There
are health directories such as http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Medicine/ and searchable
databases such as OMNI available at http://omni.ac.uk/ .
Many governments make health information databases available as do international
organisations such as WHO.

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Exercise 3

 Connect to the Internet and open your internet browser.

 Now type http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hinfo.html into the address box.
 Click on “GO” or hit the Return key
 The National Library of Medicine database on the health information
website will open.
 There is a search box in the right hand corner. You can search the site
using this.

Exercise 4

 Connect to the Internet and open your internet browser.

 Now type http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl into the address box.
 Click on “GO” or hit the Return key
 The Highwire Press website with free journals will open.
 You can access journals from the list.

There are other journals freely available on the Internet.

 Try typing in http://www.freemedicaljournals.com .This site lists journals
sites that make content freely available. Journals are listed by A-Z,
speciality and language.
 If you go to http://www.biomedcentral.com you will access the BioMed
Central website. BioMed Central is an open access publisher; published
articles are freely available on the Internet as the author pays BioMed to
publish them. The articles may be scrutinised to evaluate the information
published.
 PubMed Central is a free archive of articles deposited in the PubMed
repository and can be found at http://www.pubmedcentral.com .

The Internet also hosts many publisher sites for which you have to subscribe or pay a
fee in order to access published information. These include electronic journals,
reference collections, databases and electronic text books.

8. Managing Internet resources

If you find internet sites which are interesting and useful you can use the bookmark
feature on the browser tool bar in Netscape or add them to your “favorites” in
Internet Explorer. You can click on the tool bar button and you will be given an option
to save the website hyperlink. You can give the website a name and this will be
retained in a list for when you next visit the site. To revisit the site you then click on
the “favorite” or “bookmark” and you will be taken directly to the site.

Exercise 5

 Connect to the Internet and open your internet browser.

 Now type http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hinfo.html into the address box.
 Click on “GO” or hit the Return key
 The National Library of Medicine database on the health information
website will open.
 Now click on Bookmark or Favorites and you will be prompted to name it
and add it to your list. Do this.

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  Close down the browser, then reopen it.
 Click on bookmark or favorites and select the link: The National Library
of Medicine should open.

9. Find out more!

You have now reached the end of this workbook and should be ready to progress to
the other modules.

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