Electronic Information Sources
JOMC 50

Note: All projects are due at the beginning of class on the assigned day.

• Monday, Jan. 8 -- Intro. to the course and to one another; door prizes for getting to Manning Hall in the snow!
• Wednesday, Jan. 10 -- Sorting out lab assignments; Possible videotape of class; more information about the syllabus
  
• Assignments:
  • Computer experience survey.
  • If you don't have an Email account, create one at any computer lab!
• Lab sessions: postponed for this week Investigate computer labs, Davis Library and OIT documents on your own if weather permits.
• Readings: If you have not used a Macintosh before, please read Macintosh Basics and Macintosh Getting Started. These WWW documents are designed to accompany free short courses offered by the Office for Information Technology. (highly recommended if you have time).
  These publications can be printed from the Web, and are also available as handouts from OIT at 402 Hanes Hall or 300 Wilson Library. If you are new to using computers at UNC, also get a copy of OIT's Computing in the Humanities handout, or see the Web version. If you have computer and modem, you also should read the OIT Web documents Connecting to UNC-CH.

• Monday, Jan. 15 -- Martin Luther King Holiday; no class
• Wednesday, Jan. 17 -- Intro. Information Sources & Global Internet
  • Intro to UNC computers and information sources, Email, mailing lists, and the World Wide Web ("WWW" or "the Web" for short).
  • Metainformation (information about information): library catalogs, online help systems.
  • Preview of lab sessions

  • Buy disks before next lab!
    

    You'll need at least two disks in this course, one for your work in the Macintosh Lab and one for PCs at Davis Library. See the detailed explanation

• Lab sessions: Intro to Lab Sessions.
  • How to Remember Names (even if you don't have a videotape of everyone).
  • Preview or review of Macintosh
  • Email: Preview of Telnet, PINE and MailDrop for Email.
  • Using Netscape and Telnet to reach the library.
  • Discussion of differences between Macs and PCs.
  • Discussion of software versions (Word 5 vs. 6, Netscape 1 vs. 2).
  • Important: Howell Hall rules (and common sense around electronics in cramped spaces) say no food or drink in the computer labs, not even if you bring enough for everyone. Sorry, but that includes morning coffee in the 8 a.m. groups and lunch in the 12 noon groups.

• Readings: Same as last week, plus Web pages about Electronic Services at Davis Library.
  Also scan the Macintosh and Netscape online help systems and decide whether you'd rather buy $25 reference books that will be out of date next year or read this kind of information off the screen.

• Monday, Jan. 22 -- Discovering the Library
  Books, card catalogs, Library of Congress Subject Headings, introduction to keywords, online catalogs, databases.
  Introduce Topic Proposal Assignment (handout)

• Wednesday, Jan. 24 -- Using Computers for Your Information Search
  • Q & A on topic assignment
    
  • Using Netscape and Telnet to reach the library.
  • What's S.E.A.R.C.H.?
    
  • The Boolean Search
    
  • OIT Web page about online research.

• Lab session:
  • Using Netscape and Telnet to reach the library --hands on.
  • Doing online research and taking notes on the Macintosh with SimpleText, TeachText or Microsoft Word.
  • Saving your own bookmark list, notes and bibliography on your Mac or PC disks.
  • And then, An Exciting Intro to Computers:
    Bring a Macintosh disk for the "It was Bob's idea" Computer Quiz.
  • Finally, if we have time:
    
    • Distant sources: The Library of Congress
      
    • Frequently Asked Questions about the Web.

• Monday, Jan. 29 -- The Internet and World Wide Web
  History of the Web, hypertext and online publishing.
  Search Engines and Indexes
  Gopher and earlier Internet tools

  For the class, please read: Internet: Introduction and Internet Browsing. These WWW documents are also available as handouts from OIT, 402 Hanes Hall or 300 Wilson Library.

  In class, we'll look at some of these sites (or browse on your own):
  

  • Frequently Asked Questions about the Web
  • The Library of Congress
  • OIT Web page about online research.
  • As We May Think by Vannevar Bush.
  • The Atlantic Monthly online
  • Internal Revenue Service
  • The New York Times
  • CNN Interactive
  • CNN Interactive covers the State of the Union
  • Nando Net
  • Geek Girl magazine on the web.
  
  Topic Project #1 due

• Wednesday, Jan. 31 -- Searching the Web, Yahoo to Alta Vista
  Video: Chief Yahoos: David Filo/Jerry Fang
  What's Yahoo?
  What are some search alternatives?
  The biggest index? Alta Vista.

  Sidebar:Can we keep from exploring basketball on the web with a big game tonight? UNC vs. Duke

  
  A few words about mailing lists (handout)

• Lab session: Hands-on Internet
  
  • Web addresses (URLs) and Email addresses
  • Telnet, Pine and MailDrop for Email.
  • Joining mailing lists; browsing Usenet newsgroups, Netiquette.
  • Please read MailDrop and Pine and Pico Introduction. These WWW documents are also available as handouts from OIT, 402 Hanes Hall or 300 Wilson Library.
  • Difference: Lynx and Netscape. For documentation on Lynx please read Using Lynx at UNC-CH. This WWW document is also available as a handout from OIT.
    
  • Try out search engines and Yahoo
    

Week 5

• Monday, Feb. 5 -- Email, Web and Government Sources
  
  Topic Projects Returned
  Discussion: Topic feedback
  
  • Review of Email addressing and Web address (URL) systems
  • Getting government Email addresses and more!
    
  • Sample government Web site starting points:
    Thomas, the Library of Congress source for government information, and The White House home page.
    

• Wednesday, Feb. 7 -- More Government Information
  
  • Guest speakers: Barbara Levergood and Ridley Kessler Jr., reference librarians at Davis Library.
    
  • Federal, state and local agencies. For example, North Carolina State Government, Orange County, and Chapel Hill.

• Lab session: Davis Library Tour including Govt. Docs and Basement, with library staff and some combination of Deb, Bob and Eric.
  Please assemble near front door of Davis Library.
  

• Monday, Feb. 12 -- The Culture of Commerce & Business
  
  • Guest speaker: Rita Moss, reference librarian, Davis Library
  • Business information on paper and online
  • Where government and business meet: EDGAR SEC documents
    
  • Identifying flagship companies
    
  • Business publications online: InfoTrac

• Wednesday, Feb. 14 -- Academic Resources
  
  • First Search, U-Search
    
  • Academic abstracting
    
  • A personal database: bibliography

  • Happy Valentine's Day!

• Lab session: Email review & Netiquette
  Commerce Online
  Using EDGAR
  

Week 7

• Monday, Feb. 19 -- Review for Almost Mid-semester test
  
  • What have we learned?

• Wednesday, Feb. 21 -- Almost Mid-semester test

  A multiple-choice test on all aspects of the course including discussions in class, lab sessions, and handouts.

  50 Questions (Time limit: 45 minutes)

• Lab session:
  • Return and review tests (if the computer has graded them)
  • Treasure Hunt Assignment (handout) to be completed after break: on government sources, business sources, LEXIS/NEXIS
  • See Citation style guide
  • Questions about course so far
  • UNC Online Catalog resources (First Search, CARL Uncover)

  Email mailing list update: The correct name for the Journalism Undergraduate mailing list is JOMC-UGRAD (with a hyphen); if you attempted to join using the name without the hyphen, it didn't work. More importantly, it also may have blocked your subscribe request to join JOMC50. If you attempted to subscribe to both in one message and have not received any mail from the JOMC50 list, that's the problem. Please try subscribing again.

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

• Monday, Mar. 11 -- Print (& other) publications online
  
  • Familiar and unfamiliar faces: Newspapers, magazines, and publications born on the Web:
    Samples of Web publications to read outside class or in labs.
    
  • User interface issues
    
  
  
• Wednesday, Mar. 13 -- U-Search CD ROM databases
  • Library database review
  • U-Search CD ROM databases
  • Midterm evaluations of course so far!

• Lab sessions: Web Evaluation Olympics
  Team projects on Web Page content and design issues
  

• Monday, Mar. 18 -- Web Evaluation Olympic Scores I
  Treasure Hunt Due
  

• Wednesday, Mar. 20 --Web Evaluation Olympic Scores I
  

• For next two Lab sessions, Please read Internet Authoring handout from OIT and Policies, Creating WWW Pages at UNC-CH . These WWW documents are also available as handouts from OIT, 402 Hanes Hall or 300 Wilson Library.
• Lab session:
  Intro to writing HTML
  Text-only/ASCII, RTF
  Making a Web page on your disk the easy way, using templates. Exact ones to be announced, but here are two older samples:
  Bob's "Steal this" page and Treasure Hunt Template.

Week 12

• Monday, Mar. 25 -- Designing a new medium
  We have invited Rich Beckman, photographer and visual communication expert, to talk about
  • Pictures on the Page
    
  • Internet Authoring: How and Why?
    We'll also be asking ourselves why anyone should create personal Web pages in the first place. One possible answer mentioned in the lab notes is "to use a page as an Annotated Bibliography."
  • Links to Information sources
    
  
  

  Please read Macintosh: Telnet and FTP File Transfer to www.unc.edu and File Transfer Using Fetch. These WWW documents are also available as handouts from OIT, 402 Hanes Hall or 300 Wilson Library.

• Wednesday, Mar. 27 -- Second terrible test preview/review

• Lab session -- Fetch-fest with Ranjeev Singh:
  Bring your photo & favorite graphic!
  Understanding just enough UNIX
  Using Fetch to put your pages online
  What is "raw data"?
  JPEG, GIF and graphic formats
  Scanning pictures
  
• Bring your disks!
• In class we may use an updated version of HTML headings, lists,links. and the resources it points to.
  
• Other web page creation resources:
  • OIT Handout: Web Page Advanced Design
  • OIT Web Page Guidelines
  • Background colors, as indexed by infi.net
  • RGB Hex Triplet Color Chart
    This color chart can be used to simplify the selection of hexadecimal color specification when preparing Web pages for browsers that support colored text and backgrounds. It has been reformatted in a more logical manner.
  • Netscape's free collection of background texture files
  • Dave's free collection of bars, images, buttons, balls and bullets by Jen.

Week 13

• Monday, Apr.1 -- April Fool's Day
  No Joke: Second terrible test!
  50 questions, multiple choice, covering material since last test, including last week's labs and readings

• Wednesday, Apr. 3 -- Usenet Newsgroups & Virtual Communities Test Results brief discussion.
  Difference between Usenet and listserv
  News readers (TIN, PINE, Netscape)
  
• Please read NewsReaders: TIN. This WWW document is also available as a handout from OIT, 402 Hanes Hall or 300 Wilson Library.
• In-class examples and suggested background readings:
  
  • New Republic Article -- Internet discourse
  • New Republic Article -- Flaming (also available in The NewRepublic magazine, but these online editions have been enhanced with links to newsgroups and other URLs. Original publication dates are mentioned in the online editions.
  • USENET FAQ files for news.announce.newusers
  • Links to USENET groups (only work if Netscape is configured properly)
    • news.newusers.questions
    • rec.music.folk
    • alt.banjo.clawhammer
    • rec.boats
    • unc.jomc
    • unc.chat
    • triangle.jobs
    • triangle.general

  Passover and Easter No Labs This Week, but time to put together your resume information -- on paper, on index cards, or on disk -- so that you can paste it into a Web template next week. For early-starters, watch this space for the resume tempate.

• Monday, Apr. 8 -- Exploring the Web with Deb
  Latest news on the Unabomber story
  Special Session: Getting a Job
  Finding People Places On the Net
  Find friends, colleagues, and old roommates for free at Switchboard
  Finding people Gopher sites
  Finding people Four 11 directory services
  Finding people A More Comprehensive List

• Wednesday, Apr. 10 --Review of what makes a good home page
  And if there's time: Newsgroups, continued
  Atlanta begins 100-day Olympic countdown
  Journalism-related; topic-related; finding experts
  

• Lab session: More HTML and Hands-on Usenet
  URLs for Usenet etc.
  Hypertext resume and Linking Web Pages
• Making a home page to link your resume and bibliography pages
  Publishing yourself assignment **This is what we did last semester; this will be revised and due date to be announced**.

• Monday, Apr. 15 -- Communication Day in Cyberspace
  Deb's Communication Day Presentation
  
  Cyberpublishing & Cyberresearch
  • Internet & Cyberspace Concepts
    
  • Relationships between Usenet, Email and The Web.
  • Recommended reading: Howard Rheingold's Virtual Community book, full text available online. (Specific chapters TBA.)
    

• Wednesday, Apr. 17 -- EIS Oscars! Hyperspaceout Day
  
  The MCs: Courtney Scott and Mark Lineberger
  • Humor as an Information tool.
    
  • Who can best imitate Deb's accent? A Contest
    
  • Can Bob really play the banjo?
    
  • Eric offers help for Web assignment.
    

• Lab sessions: Tying up your web pages
  Debugging Isis-Ra HTML files

• Monday, Apr. 22 -- Wrap Up / Summary & Evaluation
  
• Web Page assignment due today.

• Wednesday, Apr. 24 -- Final Exam Review
  Meet The EIS Internauts of Spring 1996
  
• Bibliography Page assignment due today.
• Lab sessions: Semester ends Wednesday, computers available during lab hours if you want to work on your Web pages or study online materials for the final.

Prof. Deb Aikat daikat@email.unc.edu

Bob Stepno, teaching assistant

rbstepno@email.unc.edu

Eric Chernoff, student coordinator

echernof@email.unc.edu

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School of Journalism and Mass Communication

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill