When the world first became aware of the information navigation work being done at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, (CERN), who would have guessed that the public would soon be browsing this "distributed hypermedia system" in libraries around the world? Documents, images and even sound are stored and internally linked on computers worldwide and are available through a system called the World Wide Web (WWW). WWW has spread like virtual wildfire in academic institutions, in scientific communities and in the corporate world.
There are many ways of connecting to the WWW, and the UW Libraries has chosen to use a graphical browser called "Mosaic." Written at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this program is available without cost and runs on many different computing platforms, including Microsoft Windows (IBM PCs and compatibles), Macintosh and X-Windows (Unix-based machines). During the fall term access is being provided to the WWW through a limited number of large, color graphics Windows PCs located in the Libraries' public service areas. Users can simply click at a highlighted term or image to access online catalogs, images from museums and full-text from various sites on the Internet.
An example of the type of information found on the WWW through Mosaic is the WebLouvre, the (unofficial) electronic gateway to some of the works found in the world-famous art museum in Paris. Upon connecting to the WebLouvre you can click on highlighted topics and images to pull up relevant and explanatory text.