Based on the text by David Atherton from week 1 of this edition of the Bioscience Resources on the Internet course, we will concentrate on news groups and other information resources on the Internet during week 3.
News groups are virtual bulletin boards on the Internet.
While a mailing list usually distributes its messages to a certain subset of people on the Internet, the subscribers, news groups usually do not have a defined group of people as addressees. Like mailing lists, bulletin boards are identified by names and grouped into different categories. Main categories are for example alt bionet bit comp These main categories are further subdivided depending on the number of topics they can cover. Many news groups have originated from mailing lists due to their previous volume. It is easier to handle a large volume of messages through a news group since the subscribers to a news group do not need to read every message.