Libraries and the World Wide Web
| Pages | 79-83 |
| Published date | 01 February 1997 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045538 |
| Date | 01 February 1997 |
| Author | Paul Nieuwenhuysen,Patrick Vanouplines |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
GUEST
EDITORIAL
Libraries and the
World Wide Web
Paul Nieuwenhuysen and Patrick Vanouplines
University Library, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2,
B-1050
Brussels, Belgium
E-mail: pnieuwen@vub.ac.be, pvouplin@vub.ac.be
Abstract:
This
guest editorial forms a brief
introduction
to an issue of The Electronic Library
which
focuses
on
libraries
and the
World Wide
Web.
To
start
with,
the
basics
and
state
of
the
art of
the World Wide Web
are
outlined
in
general.
Then,
the high and
increasingly important
impact of
the Web
on
libraries
is
discussed.
Introduction
• WWW!?
•
Will
the
World Wide Winds blow away the classical libraries?
•
Will
the
World Wide Worms
eat their
way through
the books on the
shelves
in the
classical libraries?
•
Will
the
World Wide Windows offer
a better and wider
view on information
and
documents
than
classical
libraries?
•
Will
all
World Wide Wishes come
true?
This guest editorial forms a brief and unpretentious view on the focus subject of this
journal:
libraries and the
World Wide Web.
The World Wide Web and related
systems
The World Wide Web needs the Internet as a basic
infrastructure. More poetically, one can say the
Internet has given birth to the World Wide
Web.
The
Web is an application of the Internet and has
con-
tributed much to its acceptance and growth. But in
spite of their success, neither the Internet nor the
Web are clear
concepts
with a visible boundary in
the minds of most users.
Most people agree that the Internet is a (the) world-
wide collection of computer networks that
exchanges information using a suite of protocols
called
TCP/IP.
TCP/IP stands for Transmission
Con-
trol Protocol and Internet Protocol (a protocol is a
specification that determines the way computers
communicate through a network).
Depending on whom you ask for a definition of the
Web,
you can get various answers such as the
fol-
lowing:
• The Web is a set of computer network applica-
tions,
services, to access Internet-based
sources, offering a user interface based on
hypertext and hypermedia techniques; thus it
relies on the existence of the Internet and on a
set of agreements about how the computers
communicate through the network (that
is,
a net-
work protocol) named
HTTP,
the hypertext trans-
fer protocol.'
• The Web is everything you do when you use a
browser client program on a workstation
con-
nected to the Internet.'
• The Web is another name for the Internet,
somewhat more modern.'
The first answer corresponds to what we can call the
core World Wide Web, while the other more naive
answers show that separating this core from related
technologies and possibilities is difficult, perhaps not
necessary, and should perhaps even be avoided in
order to obtain the universal (Internet or Web?)
workstation leading to all computer-network based
information and communication facilities. In the
fol-
lowing we list and describe very briefly some old and
newer techniques, tools and systems that flourish,
more or less integrated with the Web in the Internet.
More details and examples of new, highly interactive,
advanced applications can be found elsewhere
(Vanouplines & Nieuwenhuysen 1996).
Telnet
The telnet protocol allows one to connect from a
client computer as a terminal to a server computer.
This is a well-known Internet tool for librarians who
have been using it, for instance, to allow the end-
The Electronic Library, Vol. 15, No. 2, April 1997 79
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