Of course, not everything is online yet, but the amount and diversity of information available online is increasing so rapidly that today you can find quite a bit of what you are looking for. The Internet landscape is constantly changing, and enumerating its resources is next to impossible. The first edition of this book reported an impressive number of free public offerings, most of which were found in the academic and research domains. Since then, an increasing number of commercial organizations have begun offering free online catalogs, manuals, brochures, services, and software. Additionally, more and more commercial providers of info-goods are popping up all over the Net.
Libraries are the last democratic educational institution . . .
Steinem, speech at the American Library Association in July 1992. There are too many useful information resources to list. This chapter will help you take advantage of the Internet by engaging it as an external brain, a vast storehouse of information resources. Businesses and governments have been built and destroyed based on the information they had available to them. The world is on its way to becoming everyone's information oyster and, therefore, the ways we learn and do business will probably change.