A Guide to Internet Wilds: The Internic Scout Toolkit

The Internet has grown at such a tremendous rate that it is almost impossible to think of keeping up with all of its resources-in fact, it has become difficult to even keep up with the number of search engines available on the Net!

Luckily, there is the Internic Scout Toolkit, a "select collection of tools organized by function," provided by Net Scout Services. Net Scout Services, located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a project based on the concept of an Info Scout who looks into the rich array of Internet resources and network tools and reports the findings back to the community. The primary goal of Internic's Info Scout is to focus on those resources and tools which are most useful to educators and researchers in the United States.

Once you arrive at the Scout Toolkit, you are offered the choice of "Notable Browsers," "Search Tools," "Staying Current," and "Specialized Tools." "Notable Browsers" offers an informative overview of current browsers on the market. "Staying Current" provides several categories of Internet updates, including "Net-happenings," "The Scout Report," "Online Newsletters," and "Internet News Radio." For those with very specialized interest (or who want to read about some of the more elusive Internet topics), "Specialized Tools" offers descriptions of Internet tools such as Adobe Acrobat, Virtual Reality Modeling Language, and "CU-SeeMe," Internet low-cost video teleconferencing.

The heart of the Toolkit can be found, however, in "Search Tools." This very thoughtful and useful approach to searching the Internet breaks search tools into four categories: "Searchable Indexes," "Subject Catalogs," "Annotated Directories," and "Specialized Directories." Within these categories, Internet search tools are categorized, described, and clearly documented. Tools discussed include Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo, Point: The Best of the Web, The Virtual Tourist, and DejaNews Research Service. If you don't know what some of these services are, or want to pursue many more along these lines, the Toolkit offers the best explanations to be found on the Web!

The Internic Scout Toolkit is available at http://rs.internic.net/scout /toolkit/ or you can access the Toolkit's Search Tools from the Libraries Web electronic resources page at http://wings.buffal o.edu/libraries/e-resources. For information on using the Web, contact the CIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Loss Pequeno Glazier and Nancy Schiller, University Libraries