Wired in

For many of us, the word home carries with it some
intangible yet universal associations, including comfort,
security and familiarity. Home is also, quite simply, the
place where we live.

On the Internet's World Wide Web, the home page is a place
where information resides. Although a home page can contain
limited amounts of basic information up front, it usually
functions, in effect, as a table of contents that points Web
users to more detailed, layered levels of information
provided and maintained by individuals, organizations,
businesses, schools and other groups.

These days, most major universities have a home page, and
the UI is certainly no exception. Created and maintained by
Ducky Sherwood, a graduate student who works for the
Computing and Communications Services Office, the UI's
relatively sophisticated home page is packed with hypermedia
links to everything from facts and figures about the
university to information about academic programs and
administrative units to maps and photographs - and much
more.

For instance, from the home page, one can move quickly -
with the click of a mouse - from a floor-by-floor tour of
the Grainger Engineering Library and Information Center to
guides to local restaurants and recreational facilities in
Champaign and Urbana. Click here, and you can find course
listings in the current Timetable; click there, and you're
linked to the College of Agriculture's home page, which
includes additional links to information about faculty,
services and facilities. Click on the photograph of the
campus scene at the top of the UI home page, and you're
instantly plugged into current weather conditions. (Note:
The photograph changes, depending on the season, and in
keeping with the ever-changing nature of March in Central
Illinois, the photo has been flipping back and forth between
winter and spring scenes a lot lately.)

In addition to allowing users to explore the seemingly
limitless avenues of information available about the campus,
the UI's home page points users to countless other Web
resources, such as directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias
and on-line newspapers and magazines. Home pages of the UI
at Chicago, Sangamon State and several Big Ten universities
also are a short hop from the UI page, as is the home page
of the local freenet, Prairienet.

From Prairienet's home page, one can learn - among other
things - the history of Champaign County, and pick up useful
statistics, such as how many people and farms coexist in the
county. Those who prefer a visual glimpse of life on the
Silicon Prairie can click on one of several on-line
photographs of the area.

In addition to the weather photo at the top, the UI's home
page also includes photographs of other campus scenes,
buildings and people, as well as graphic images. Likewise,
many college and departmental home pages contain graphic
elements. A word of warning: Depending on the capabilities
of the machine you're using and the speed of your network
connection, downloading full-screen images is a relatively
pokey process. If your computer doesn't have enough memory
or disk space, or if you're using a slow modem and a dial-up
connection to get to the network, you'd be wise to turn off
the automatic image-loading capability on your browser.

If you haven't yet checked out the UI home page, it's
certainly worth the trip. To get there, using a Mosaic or
Netscape browser, the URL is: http://www.uiuc.edu. If you
already know how to get to the home page, but haven't looked
at it in a while, you may want to go back periodically. Many
information areas continue to be under construction, and new
features often appear overnight.

If you're a campus information-provider interested in
learning more about how to link your material to the UI home
page, send e-mail to ducky@illinois.edu.