New Windows (WWW¹ Style)

All four library locations are in the process of opening up new windows on the World Wide Web, the latest hodge-podge of information great and small. Thanks to a start-up grant from the Provost's Office, followed up by a major injection of equipment by the University, The City College Library is now offering point-and-click access to this ever-burgeoning information free-for-all.

The Web is proving easy and overwhelming at the same time. At last count there were upward of a million "home pages,"² all created rather randomly by those who want to grab media attention and/or offer real services. The gargantuan feat of sorting out all this creativity has only just begun. The library intends to provide as much support as possible to integrate this resource into individual learning, course offerings, and campus-based research.

We plan to develop subject expertise in certain disciplines and will start with partnering arrangements with selected departments at various levels of technological sophistication. We hope to arrange for tutorials, jointly developed home pages, "hot-links"³ to appropriate discipline-specific sites, plus ultimately full interactive, multimedia "course-ware."⁴

Our installed hardware platforms⁵ will include more than 50 public-access Web stations. In Cohen (NAC) six are already in place, with 24 soon to roll out. In the Science Library five are now up and running, and by the end of this semester, the Music Library should have four, and the Architecture Library, three. And this is just the beginning. Time, usage, and future funding will determine further expansion capabilities.

Now the City College Library has become a "player"⁶ in this somewhat larger-than-life communications process. Please stop by and ask our librarians, "What's new?"

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¹World Wide Web (WWW)
²home page: The starting point of an electronic "site" — what in a book is a title page, sometimes with a bit of the table of contents.
³hot-links: The Web uses the hypertext feature of quickly jumping from one electronic document/site to another with only a click.
⁴course-ware: The educational use of the Web (and related computer technology) along curricular lines.
⁵platform: The basic hardware needed to support Web access.
⁶player: A participant (reader, writer, learner) on the "net" (the Internet, of which the Web is the most beautiful face).

Charles Stewart
chscc@cunyvm.cuny.edu