Information

From the Resource Guide to Aquaculture Information

There are numerous international as well as North American electronic resources of value to the person interested in aquaculture or aquatic information. The listing here is not comprehensive but provides selected basic sources with a focus on the United States and Canada. The first section covers databases. These are usually bibliographic and are available online as well as by CD-ROM subscription. Many charge a fee to access directly or charge a subscription for the CD-ROM. Many libraries subscribe to these CD-ROMs and make them available to their patrons. Check your regional library for availability or contact the address provided in the description. The second section lists Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). These usually provide electronic messaging services (e'mail), archives of files, announcements, public and private conferencing sections, and any other services or activities of interest to the Bulletin Board System's operator. A BBS may be small and regional in scope, but an increasing number are currently operated by government, educational, and research institutions.

FTP/Gopher Sites and gopher servers can be reached via telnet address or gopher address and lead the user to a list offiles/documents that can be obtained electronically and/or read online. Listservs are mailing list programs for electronic communication that allow users to exchange data and ideas through the Internet by subscribing. You must have an e'mail address to belong. Services listed below are sometimes a combination BBS/Database/Listserv, so their selection for a particular section has been made somewhat arbitrarily. The final section lists the various commercial and noncommercial vendors which provide communication access for your computer to some of the services in the preceding sections. Acknowledgment is given to John Bostock at the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, for information he provided on several of the following resources in this section. A comprehensive listing of international aquatic sources with a broader scope has been compiled by John Bostock and an electronic version of that list is available via anonymous FTP from ftp.stir.ac.uk directory /aqua; file online.txt.