Considers issues involving intellectual property rights on information networks. The need for the Internet and the National Information Infrastructure to support both commercial and noncommercial providers of information is discussed; and intellectual property management as services available to information providers rather than as features of the…

Describes what electronic mail is, how it works, and suggests how it can be used by university administrators. National and international academic networks are described, institutional costs of network memberships are discussed, and procedures for connecting to a network and for using a network are explained. (13 references) (LRW)

Discusses intelligent software agents, or knowledge robots (knowbots), and the impact they have on the Internet. Topics addressed include ethical dilemmas; problems created by rapid growth on the Internet; new technologies that are amplifying growth; and a shift to a market economy and resulting costs. (LRW)

Describes the Mercury Electronic Library, a project at Carnegie Mellon University that involved development of software for an electronic library, implementation of the software by the university libraries, and stimulation of the market for electronic publishing. The library information system interface and databases and the computing system…

Discussion of distributed multimedia visualization focuses on projects being developed through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Educational Computing Initiatives and the AthenaMuse Software Consortium. Highlights include authoring environments; multimedia network services; distance education; multilingual materials;…