Text-based Internet

[Robert Sullivan]

Madeleine Showalter said:

<comments about text connections to the net snipped>

>I have been searching for several weeks, with no luck.  This experience
>(as well as frequent customer demands for a web interface to our
>catalog) has enlightened me.  I'm beginning to think that such
>text-based Internet services have disappeared; in other words, all home
>computer (or webtv) users are now accessing the Internet through a
>graphical user interface.  If so, this has major implications for
>library catalog access through telnet.  It will soon go the way of the
>buggy whip.

...
>In these customers' eyes, if our catalog is not on the web, the
>Library doesn't exist, or at least is not serving their needs.

This arrived in my mailbox right after I had posted a related question to a
list for NY libraries.  I'm trying to help a friend at a large library whose
computer staff thinks that Lynx is dying off and libraries should take money
from their acquisitions budgets to fund a Netscape or IE connection.

<that bubbling sound was my mouth foaming>

Certainly, many new users coming online are doing so with a PPP connection
through a commercial provider, and some libraries are heading that way, either
because they are starting fresh or just migrating (as we will this year).

However, I would argue that much of the Lynx user base does so either out of
necessity (can't see the screen, can only afford a text connection) or because
they don't care to wait for graphics to download.  I'm lucky enough to be
within a local phone call of numerous ISPs, but much of the population in the
eight counties served by our two-system consortium is not.

The responses I have received so far to my other post indicate that, at least
in New York, text connections are alive and well in the library world.  The
tiny rural libraries, some of which did not even have phones a few years ago,
will not be abandoning them anytime soon.  I hope the larger libraries will not
forget their less able or less well-endowed users by focusing on dancing
bunnies instead of providing information.

Until Sun releases Java for VT220 terminals, those who interested in designing
accessible pages might wish to check

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Disabilities

and

http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html, the home of the "Best
Viewed with Any Browser" crusade.

Bob Sullivan                               scp_sulli at sals.edu
Schenectady County Public Library (NY)     http://www.scpl.org