The Internet, or National Information Infrastructure, as it is referred to today, contains a wealth of knowledge in the areas of science, technology, and technology transfer—including information from the U.S. Department of Energy. Unfortunately, no single index or table of contents exists that enables users to efficiently access this information. Also, information found may not be useable due to the large number of different storage formats available. An ongoing attempt is being made to organize and standardize this resource. This attempt is commonly referred to as the World Wide WWW Project. The U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors have been participating in this project to make their information easily accessible to WWW users.
WWW information is presented in the form of a multimedia document. It may contain text, pictures, sound, and animation. These elements, while providing raw information, usually refer to other documents located elsewhere on the Internet. Selecting an element, usually referred to as a link, will download and display the chosen document. This style of associating information is commonly called hypertext. Mosaic, an application developed by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), is the most popular method of accessing these documents. Documents for Mosaic are written in a scripting language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and are referenced with a Uniform Resource Locator or URL which specifies the protocol, the internet address of the machine, and the filename to download containing the script for a document. Mosaic is available for most computers and can be found on NCSA's FTP (file transfer protocol) site: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Users unable to connect to this system can try an alternate site such as sunsite.unc.edu. Mosaic is located in the pub/packages/infosystems/WWW directory.
DOE's Office of Science Education and Technical Information maintains a WWW server that provides a good starting point for exploring DOE WWW information. The URL for this site is "http://www.doe.gov/html/home2.html". This document contains links to various laboratories such as ACL, ANL, BNL, ORNL, LANL, and PNL along with several DOE offices such as the DOE Office of Energy Research; Office of Environment, Safety, and Health; Office of Scientific and Technical Information; and the Office of Environmental Management. This starting point is called a home page.
If you are coming from the DOE home page, connecting to the Office of Environmental Management WWW server is as simple as clicking on the EM graphic. Otherwise, the URL for this server is "http://emhpmail.em.doe.gov/". Currently, the EM home page has links to EnviroTRADE (see story), TWINS, the Oak Ridge Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Contaminant Analysis Automation Project, EnviroWWW, EcoWWW, Sandia National Laboratories, and numerous gophers such as the EPA Gopher Server and the US DOE Environmental, Safety and Health Gopher Server. (Gopher servers are computers running software that helps users navigate the resources on the Internet. The name gopher is a multilayered pun: the software was developed at the University of Minnesota, whose mascot is the gopher; it enables users to "go for" the information they need; and it has Contaminant Analysis Automation Project link provides a good Contaminant Analysis WWW. Automation ProjectBriefs, a complete overview, and a vugraph presentation of the project are available. The vugraph contains audio clips of the CAA mission, CAA team, DOE's needs, details of the implementation, and a conceptual demonstration of the effort. The overview section provides a detailed introduction to the project, completion parameters, and the current project status. Information concerning commercial sector participation is also available. The technology briefs provide a lengthy and graphical description of what contaminant analysis is, the standard laboratory module, the standard analysis method, a conceptual design of the automated system software needed for this project, information on automated data interpretation, and the collaboration/technology transfer involved in this project.
Although the descriptions for the DOE home page and the EM home page are mostly complete, changes occur frequently as new resources become available on a daily basis and must be incorporated into the infrastructure.
