Most libraries are part of the institutions local area network, and thereby have direct access to the Internet. The main advantage of direct access is speed and reliability. Dial-up access is through either a commercial Internet provider or through a community organization such as a Freenet. Dial-up access is not very common in academic libraries, but may be more of a consideration for a public library environment with a smaller clientele that needs only a few workstations, or if the library is not operating on a local area network. Most Internet training is completed in an instructional lab in the library.
Software includes world wide web browsers for accessing information on the Internet.
Mosaic and Netscape are useful. Text based browsers such as Lynx are very limited in applications, and therefore not a good choice for demonstrating the full potential of the Internet.