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In-Service Training for Library ProfessionalsJointly organized by
ADINET & INFLIBNET
 
June 20, 2009
 Module 1
IT Skills Enhancement
 
Course Material
 ContentsPages1. The Internet History 1-62. Internet Functions 7-103. Strategic Searching on the Web 11-164. Database Creation for Libraries based 17-24on Standards5. Blogs 25-306. Free E-resources on the Internet 31-34
 
1
The Internet History
Compiled & abridged by
Nishtha Anilkumar
1
 The growth of the Internet has been phenomenal. Once the preserve of thescientific and military communities, the Internet has now blossomed into a vehicleof expression and research for the common person. No area has remaineduntouched by the internet - be it health, travel, banking or business.Following commercialization and introduction of privately run internet serviceproviders (ISP) in the 1980s, and its expansion into popular use in the 1990s, theInternet has had a drastic impact on culture and commerce. This includes therise of near instant communication by email, text based discussion forums, andthe World Wide Web. Investor speculation in new markets provided by theseinnovations has lead to the inflation and collapse of the dot.com bubble - a majormarket collapse. But despite this, the Internet continues to grow. Let us take alook at the genesis of the Internet.
1. In the Beginning
Some 45 years ago the search for knowledge was no less insatiable but thestorage, collation, selection and retrieval technologies were rudimentary and theexpense enormous by today’s standards. 65 years past, with World War II at anend and the might, energy and focused intellect of nations waning the war, thefirst computers were being built along with man-machine interfaces. It is at thistime that visionaries first hinted at the possibilities of extending human intellect byautomating mundane, repetitive processes, devolving them to machines. Onesuch man, Vannevar Bush, in his 1945 essay, - “As we May think” envisaged atime when a machine called a ‘memex’ might enhance human memory by thestorage and retrieval of documents linked by association, in much the same wayas the cognitive processes of the brain link and enforce memories by association.
2. Post-War Development
Bush’s contribution to computing science, although remarkable, was far lesscritical than his efforts to unite the military and scientific communities togetherwith business leaders, resulting in the birth of the National Defence ResearchCommittee (NDRC) which was later to become the Office of Scientific Researchand Development (OSRD). In short, Bush galvanised research into technology asthe key determinant in winning the Second World War and established respectfor science within the military.
1
Nishtha Anilkumar, Physical Research Laboratory, AhmedabadEmail: nishtha@prl.res.in
 
2
A few years after the war the National Science Foundation (NSF) was setup,paving the way for subsequent government backed scientific institutions andensuring the American nation’s commitment to scientific research. Then in 1958,perhaps in direct response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the AdvancedResearch Projects Agency (ARPA) was created, and, in 1962, employed apsychologist by the name of Joseph Licklider. He built upon Bush’s contributionsby presaging the development of the modern PC and computer networking,Having acquired a computer from the US Air Force and heading up a couple ofresearch teams, he initiated research contracts with leading computer institutionsand companies who would later go on to form the ARPANET and lay down thefoundations of the first networked computing group. Together they overcameproblems associated with connecting computers delivered from differentmanufacturers whose disparate communications protocols meant directcommunications was unsustainable, if not impossible.It is interesting to note that Lick was not primarily a computer man; he was apsychologist interested in the functionality of human thought but hisconsiderations on the working of the human mind brought him into the fold ofcomputing as a natural extension of his interest.
3. Other Key Players
 Another key player, Douglas Engelbart, entered web history at this point. Aftergaining his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and an Assistant Professorship atBerkeley, he setup a research laboratory – the Augmentation Research Center – to examine the human interface and storage and retrieval systems, producingNLS (oNLine System) with ARPA funding, the first system to use hypertext(coined by Ted Nelson in 1965) for collation of documents – and is credited asthe developer of the first mouse or pointing device.Credit must be given to another thinker too, Paul Baran, for conceiving the use ofpackets, small chunks of a message which could be reconstituted at destination,upon which current internet transmission and reception is based. Working at theRAND Corporation and with funding from government grants into Cold Wartechnology, Baran examined the workings of data transmission systems,specifically, their survivability in the advent of nuclear attack. He turned to theidea of distributed networks comprising numerous interconnected nodes. Shouldone node fail the remainder of the network would still function. Across thisnetwork this packets of information would be routed and switched to take theoptimum route and reconstructed at their destination into the original wholemessage. Modern day packet switching is controlled automatically by suchrouters.
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