Discussion of the NREN (National Research and Education Network) and issues of access focuses on the role of the public library. Highlights include current uses of the Internet; resource sharing; guidelines for public library service; availability of the Internet and NREN through public libraries; and a sidebar that lists sources of further…

A workshop introduced middle-school science teachers in rural Georgia to telecommunications as a means to relieve professional isolation. However, two years later, no participant was using an online system. To be attractive, a teacher network must be versatile, user friendly, inexpensive, and used by enough teachers to provide daily dialog. (SV)

Teacher decisions to begin using telecommunications in professional practice are influenced by technical literacy, time to learn, hardware-software compatibility, ease of use, cost, and perception of benefits. Issues for experienced users include funding, administrator attitudes, interpersonal relationships on the network, classroom impact,…

This article points out the critical importance of up-to-date information for small business entrepreneurs and describes two innovative initiatives of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA): the national electronic bulletin board system called "SBA On-Line" and Business Information Centers in field locations. (JDD)

Introduces five articles on digital libraries by reviewing related legislation, information networking improvements, efforts to plan a virtual national digital library, and key challenges. The articles are briefly described, and short biographies of the authors are provided. (Contains 10 references.) (KRN)

Between the infancy and the adulthood of online communications stand years of generational haggling between educators raised on the book and those hooked on the byte. The telecommunications infrastructure (phone lines, electronic bulletin boards, and international networks) can already help teachers bring within reach a world of people and…

This issue includes six articles that discuss access to information provided by computerized databases and communications networks for legislators. Highlights include state legislative systems; information systems in the Senate; online services in the House of Representatives; information technology in the Congressional Research Service; the…

Discussion of information needs in a business environment focuses on how to build a shared information network. Highlights include the evolution of corporate intelligence systems; results of a survey that examined the information networking needs of large corporations; and a case study of the development of an information network at Citibank N.A.…

Describes how, by participating in telecommunication networks such as the Learning Network, students benefit through defining themselves for other students who live in distant regions, and through new understandings of themselves in relationship to others. (SR)

The Justice Department's antitrust investigation of private-college collaboration on student financial aid (the Overlap Group) has closed, with charges against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropped and announcement of a new system by which institutions may share information. Institutions are skeptical about the practicality of the new…

Describes how the Commerce Department's Economic Bulletin Board has been linked to the Internet to further the dissemination of government information. Topics discussed include network services; operational constraints; technical issues; costs; identifying potential customers and their information needs; and future plans. (Contains six…

Presents a transcript of the electronic discourse in response to Lester Faigley's recent book, "Fragments of Rationality," produced by a networked graduate seminar in composition studies. Discusses the impact of postmodernism on the composition classroom and the potential usefulness of similar networked attempts to write collaboratively.…

Potential problems for college and university computing functions posed by arrival of the year 2000 (Y2K) are discussed, including arithmetic calculations and sorting functions based on two-digit year dates, embedding of two-digit dates in archival data, system coordination for data exchange, unique number generation, and leap year calculations. A…

Discusses how virtual events can be used to enhance education. Topics include balancing virtual and real encounters; finding the best mix of communication options; and finding patterns of interaction that support reflective cognition, knowledge amplification, community-building, learning, and global understanding. GLOBENET 1997, an international…

Describes the development and application of visualization techniques for users to access and explore information in digital libraries effectively and intuitively. Salient semantic structures and citation patterns are extracted from several collections of documents using Latent Semantic Indexing and Pathfinder Network Scaling. Author cocitation…