I can telnet to my account from my PC at work and log in just as if I was on the St. Mikes' network. Another example is that one of our students got an account on the Cincinnati Free Net, an organization that offers community access to the Internet. This student would telnet into his account from our school, and get access to the alt.sex news groups and play games, both of which are not allowed or offered on our network. A disadvantage of telneting is that you need to be familiar with the system or software on the host system you are logging into. There are many different library card catalog programs.
Many university libraries allow anonymous users to search their collection.
Another example of this complexity used to be the ERIC database , which is available for people to search over the Internet. The catch was that this system was running on an IBM main frame. Unless you knew how your computer emulated the IBM 3270 dumb terminal's special keys, and were at least slightly familiar with operating an IBM 3270 session, you were going to be spending a lot of time learning before you completed your first successful ERIC search. Eric is now in standard WWW format. Go to the K12 Technology Home Page Copyright 1995, Craig Lyndes.