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WEEKS 3-4
USING THE INTERNET 
AND MANAGING DATA 
 
 
 

 
 
 
  

[p009]

Introduction
In this and the next week you will have further practice with Netscape and be introduced to another internet software tools to extract information of value for your studies and also learn some more about WINDOWS, computer files and what is called good housekeeping.

The objectives for this and the next week are that you be able:

NB You are reminded that week 4 is the first week in which you are required to submit an assignment. Do ensure you have left adequate time for all of the required week work.

Your assignments are an integral part of Exercises 1-5 below. There is no separate homework section.

Resources

Exercise 1: formatting your floppy disks
Before being able to store data on the two floppy disks that came with the package of materials for IT-MA you need to format them, in effect a process which initializes the disks for MS-DOS and WINDOWS use. Both your floppy disks need to be formatted and hereafter we will refer to disk 1 as the master disk and disk 2 as the backup. Each of your disks has a sticky label on it, and you should now - with a marker pen not a biro which has a hard point which might physically damage the disk - write your name on each disk and mark the first as MASTER1 and the second as BACKUP1. You will then always know visually which are your disks and, were you to mislay them, there is a chance they could be returned to you.

With PROGRAM MANAGER the active Window on your PC, double-click on the FILE MANAGER icon to launch the software. Now follow Students' Word, p. 10 to format each disk, exercising the option you are given to - in effect - put an electronic label o n each disk. Use the following system: select the first two characters of your first name and the first two characters of your last name together with 01 for the MASTER and 02 for the BACKUP. Thus Gordon Brown's master disk would be:

gobr01

This might seem like a convoluted practice but experience shows it offers the best chance of your disk being returned to you if it got mislaid. You will also notice that every time you do a directory listing of what is on your floppy disk it will show you the label, another check that you have the right disk.

With both disks formatted and labeled, both physically and electronically, you are ready to put some files on these disks. Close down FILE MANAGER, and return to PROGRAM MANAGER.

Exercise 2: searching the University of Bristol library catalogue

Launch Telnet (which, like NETSCAPE, is in the Network group of programs), click on Connect in Telnet's menu, select Conn/Disc... and type

lib

into the Node name dialogue box and then press the enter key to connect. After a short delay you will be prompted to enter a username. Enter

library

and again press the enter key. You will, again after a short delay (dependent on the volume of network traffic), then arrive at the library's main menu:

_________________________________________________________________________________________

LIBERTAS 6.6 Library Management System University of Bristol

Code

? Help

1 Catalogue enquiries

2 Your own use of the Library (list loans, renew books, etc.)

3 Library news, services & opening hours

4 Request material not held by Bristol University Library

_________________________________________________________________________________________

You are about to do two searches of the catalogue, each time copying the results to a WORD file which will itself be saved to your floppy disk. The procedure you will follow is not very neat in computing terms, this being forced upon us by the primitiv e nature of the library's software (Libertas), but it works if you follow the instructions carefully.

From the library's main menu, select 1 to go to the catalogue, then select 3 for a titles search. Enter the following:

government versus the market

This search should yield just one item in what is known as Full Display. Highlight the text, starting at the beginning of the author's name and ending with the publication details, by taking your mouse to the first character, depressing the left button and then dragging the mouse across the text. When you have highlighted all you need, click on Edit in Telnet's menu and then on Copy.

Now Alt+Tab back to PROGRAM MANAGER and launch WORD. When this has completed loading and is displaying a blank document, select Edit/Paste from its menu (or alternatively Ctrl+V, the shortcut for pasting ) which will paste in the text you copied from the library catalogue.

Now save this WORD document. Put your master disk in drive A: and select File/Save from WORD's menu. Set the drive to A: and then give the file a name which follows the same rules as for the label of your floppy disk but with 02 as the ending. Thus Gordon Brown's first assignment would have the filename:

gobr02.doc

WORD automatically puts the .doc extension on the file. This procedure, which again might appear very complex, allows us when examining tens of disks to clearly identify whose file belongs to whom.

Now Alt+Tab back to the library catalogue. If you have taken a long time to do the WORD part of this task you may have been timed-out of this Telnet session and have to relaunch the application and re-enter the library catalogue.

Your second search is for an author (Ronald Hutton), one of the professor's in this department. Your task is to find his most recent book in the catalogue (we suggest you use item 6 from the catalogue menu) and to copy its full details to the WO RD file you have just opened.

Once you have copied the relevant text to WORD don't forget to save your file once more, either through File/Save or its shortcut, Ctrl+S. Then Alt+Tab back to the library catalogue and use the EXIT part of Tel net's toolbar to finish the Telnet session. You should then be taken back to PROGRAM MANAGER.

Exercise 3: using Netscape to locate information

We will now search the Institute of Historical Research's (IHR) server for some further information which is to be stored in your WORD document.

In Netscape type in the URL

http://www.ihr.sas.ac.uk/ihr/ihr0101.html

First, select Online Resources for Historians; then select UK Resources; then Archives; then Public Record Office. Your task is to find the page relating to PROfiles and to then copy to your WORD file the details it provides on the 1964 PROfiles. To achieve this use the Search facility offered by the PRO homepage. Once you have reached the 1964 PROfiles use the mouse to highlight the text and copy it to your WORD file.

Next Return to the IHR's homepage; select Teaching; cursor down to Research & Books and select Teachers of History; then select Teachers of History at English universities .... Bristol will then be in the list and it will be a simple matter to copy and paste its entry to your WORD file. Don't forget to save your file as you complete this assignment.

 

Exercise 4: using internet search engines
There will be many occasions in which you would like to explore the world wide web for data but do not know where to begin looking for a particular class of information. In these circumstances help is at hand through various internet search engines, of wh ich the two leading ones are:

Your exercise is to use one of these engines to search for information which might be relevant to a historian. For example, at 1957 hours on 29 June 1998 we used ALTAVISTA to search the web for all English-language items matching the search history and computing. About 9,804,339 documents matched our query (a year earlier it had been just 1,824,250, thereby showing the enormous expansion of web sites). Reproduced below are the results of the first ten hits: 

1. N.B. History Computing Services

[URL: history.rutgers.edu/computing/office_hours.html]

NEW BRUNSWICK HISTORY DEPARTMENT HISTORY COMPUTING SERVICES. Van Dyck Hall - Room 303A Tel. (732)932-6511. **The Following Hours Are Effective For The...

Last modified 17-Feb-98 - page size 3K - in English [ Translate ]

 

2. Events in the History of Computing - Events in the History of Computing - 1960

[URL: arts.ucsb.edu/HAC/his.comp/1960s/1960s.html]

Click for a closer look. PGEC services in the early sixties were much the same as in the late fifties, although the number of conferences and transactions.

Last modified 31-Mar-98 - page size 3K - in English [ Translate ]

 

3. WebQeust:The History of Computing

[URL: www-education.nmsu.edu:8001/webquest/com.../computing.html]

The Early-History of Computing. You are a member of a group of historians from a large university. The head of the History Department has assigned all...

Last modified 14-May-97 - page size 6K - in English [ Translate ]

 

4. Events in the History of Computing - 1967

[URL: www.computer.org/50/history/1967.htm]

Seven years after Fairchild Corp. had delivered the first commercial integrated circuit, the third generation of computers began in 1967 with the delivery.

Last modified 16-Dec-97 - page size 1K - in English [ Translate ]

 

5. Events in the History of Computing - 1957

[URL: www.computer.org/50/history/1957.htm]

The early computers had small internal memories and slow external memories primarily relying on magnetic tape. While internal memories had been upgraded...

Last modified 16-Dec-97 - page size 2K - in English [ Translate ]

 

6. History & Computing Austria

[URL: bhgw09.kfunigraz.ac.at/fhg/h+c/h+cindex.html]

Index. Was ist H&C? Vorstand. Ordentliche Mitglieder. Kooptierte Mitglieder. Rechnungsprüfer. Statuten. News of H&C. Computergestützte...

Last modified 23-Nov-95 - page size 819 bytes - in German [ Translate ]

 

7. Events in the History of Computing - 1980

[URL: www.computer.org/50/history/1980.htm]

Alan Shugart, having left IBM and founded his own company, Shugart Associates, continued his leadership in the development of storage devices by...

Last modified 16-Dec-97 - page size 1K - in English [ Translate ]

 

8. History and Computing III : Historians, Computers and Data : Applications in R

[URL: rf.rexl.boise.id.us/v/research.pl/rfrexl...key1d/qpremiumt]

History and Computing III : Historians, Computers and Data : Applications in Research and Teaching by Evan Mawdsley

Last modified 31-Mar-98 - page size 1K - in English [ Translate ]

 

9. Events in the History of Computing - 1947

[URL: www.computer.org/50/history/1947.htm]

Click for a closer look. William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invent the "transfer resistance" device, later to be known as the...

Last modified 16-Dec-97 - page size 909 bytes - in English [ Translate ]

 

10. History of Computing - a collection of links

[URL: www.expert.demon.co.uk/drj/comphist.html]

David] [History of Computing] History of Computing - a collection of links. This is a humble collection of links on the history of computing. I don't...

Last modified 13-May-97 - page size 2K - in English [ Translate ]

Your assignment is to conduct a search with either engine, copy the results of the first ten hits to a WORD file. Feel free to explore the URLs of any of the sites thrown up by the query. You are not assessed on this exercise, but this sort of procedur e will be important later and thus it is worthwhile investing time at this stage. You will also begin to appreciate the magnitude of the web and how most of the information on it is of little academic merit. There are gems out there, but finding th em is another matter!

NB You may find when visiting a web site that you can only obtain the information it contains by downloading a file through what is known as File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Instructions on how to do this can be found in the Computing Service's doc ument Transferring files between a remote system and a PC.

 

Exercise 5: good housekeeping, disks, files and all that

There are a number of reasons for developing good housekeeping habits when it comes to disks and files, not least that it is a departmental regulation that the loss of data, through loss of disk or corrupted disk, is not an acceptable reason for the la te delivery of an essay or other assignment. With a proper routine of backing up your files and looking after your disks you should be able to avoid such traumas.

There are a number of ways in which you can ensure your backup disk is an exact, mirror image of your master disk. Here, again from experience, is our preferred method. But first you need to know a bit more about File Manager. Read our Introduction to File Manager and then come back to this task.

Launch FILE MANAGER, click on the icon for the d: drive and then on the temp directory. This directory should be empty. If not, you are entitled to delete any files you find there. Now insert your master floppy disk in drive A: and then copy your one f ile to D:\temp. When completed, take out your master disk and put in your backup disk. Copy your one file from D:\temp to this floppy disk. Check that the file has been copied by doing a directory listing of the A: drive.

The results of all four of your tasks will now be stored in one file on both floppy disks.

FINALLY, your assignment is to deposit your backup floppy disk (just the disk, not in its box) so that your progress can be assessed. Please make sure that you get your disk to Roger Middleton's pigeonhole on time and that it is properly labeled, both electronically and with the sticky label on the disk. Assuming that your assignment passes you will be able to collect it the following Monday from the same place.

To IT-MA home page
To Department of Historical Studies home page. 

These pages are maintained and owned by Dr Roger Middleton

(c)R. Middleton 1997     4 September 2000.