GLOBEC and the Web

# GLOBEC and the World-Wide Web

The World-Wide Web (WWW) is a distributed global information system that is based on the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). WWW documents can contain links to other documents on the same or other servers on the network. WWW sites and documents are identified by Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A hypertext link in a document is indicated by underlining or another form of highlighting. Activating the link opens the associated document. Documents on the WWW are not restricted to being text only--sound including speech, images, and video can also be accessed. URLs can also point to information in other (non-HTTP) formats on the internet--e.g., to files on an anonymous File Transport Protocol (FTP), Gopher or Wide Area Information (WAIS) server. Access of resources on the WWW requires a client program designed for the purpose.

Mosaic is a WWW client with multimediaÊcapabilities developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois. Versions of NCSA Mosaic are available for Macintoshes, PCs running Windows, and UNIX workstations running X-windows.

GLOBEC is only just beginning to take advantage of the capabilities of the WWW. Two (there may be others) sites have implemented Mosaic servers partially directed toward GLOBEC information. The first of these is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [URL site http://lake.mit.edu/globec.html] and is providing information about the U.S. GLOBEC projects underway on Georges Bank in the Northwest Atlantic. Browsers of that site can presently obtain addresses of the Georges Bank PI's, ship schedules, etc. Eventually cruise reports from the broad-scale and process cruises on Georges Bank will be on-line. The second GLOBEC Mosaic server is at Old Dominion University's Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography [URL site http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/globec_menu.html] and is principally directed towards GLOBEC's planning and activities in the Southern Ocean. It presently also has available the U.S. GLOBEC Data Policy document (U.S. GLOBEC Report No. 10) for on-line browsing.

The U.S. GLOBEC Scientific Steering Coordinating Office at the University of California, Berkeley, will implement a U.S. GLOBEC Mosaic server this fall. It will contain HyperText Markup Language (HTML) versions of all published U.S. GLOBEC Reports, newsletters (including the issue you are reading now), and other miscellaneous documents (e.g., minutes of the Scientific Steering Committee meetings). It may also contain Postscript formatted versions of some of these documents, which can be downloaded to a client and subsequently printed. This Mosaic site will also provide links to all other known GLOBEC Mosaic sites. We are interested in learning from the experiences of others who have already established Mosaic servers. We also welcome comments and suggestions about what kinds of information would be useful to have electronically available.

Please direct comments to halbatch@violet.berkeley.edu or by mail to the U.S. GLOBEC office in Berkeley.