USENET newsgroup topics are created, and they evolve, mutate, and become extinct in ways fundamentally different from spoken dialog. These differences can be explained partially by the asynchronous nature of electronic communication, as well as by other factors unique to such wide-scale multi-user media. (Author)

Looks briefly at the history of World Wide Web search engine development and considers the current state of affairs. Reflects on future directions in terms of personalization, summarization, query expansion, coverage, and metadata. (Author/AEF)

The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) was born in the mid-1960s and is today the world's largest and most popular educational database. The history of ERIC's early development has been told in Del Trester's 1981 narrative, "ERIC--The First Fifteen Years: 1964-1979, A History of the Educational Resources Information Center."…

Describes new developments, such as Internet 2 and the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, as well as other potential advances in high-performance applications that these new electronic resources will create. Relates these developments to the evolution of the Internet, and looks ahead to their likely impact beyond the higher education and…

Discusses the state of the Internet. Highlights include the magnitude of the infrastructure, costs, its increasing pace, constraints in international links, provision of network capacity to homes and small businesses, cable television modems, political and cultural problems, the digital library concept, search engines, the failure of personal…