However, you can successfully locate a number of resources of interest which may be needed in the future by adding them to either a bookmark file or list of favorite sites. World Wide Web Virtual Library 2. Various peer groups distribute information, news, and announcements to members via a free subscription service over the Internet. Membership in many of these discussion groups is open to anyone and subscribing is largely an automated process. Others are restrictive in who may participate.
Lists are also either moderated or un-moderated.
Moderated Lists provide some level of message monitoring. Discussions from Listservs come to your mailbox via standard email and offer an excellent way to keep in touch with any global peer group or to get help with a question or problem considered relevant to that group. For example, I once received a request for a list of people actively involved in research on aquatic invertebrates in the Andes Mountains of South America. While there are a number of ways to get at this answer including tedious and time consuming literature searches, I chose to pose this question to a Listserv and received a number of answers from around the world in a matter of a few hours. These answers were quite timely and opened up a number of contacts for the one who had originally posed the question.