URLs

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Every page of information on the Internet has its own URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

To get anywhere on the Internet and the World Wide Web, it helps to have the URL of where you want to go. URLs are the Internet version of addresses, or of Library call numbers.

When you have a Web page displayed on your computer screen, its URL appears in the location box at the top of the screen.

If you want to return to that page again, you can add it to your bookmark file in your browser.
In future you just have to click on the bookmark instead of typing the URL over again.

Clickable links also save you the trouble of typing in a URL. When you click on a hypertext link, you automatically go to that URL even though you may not know what it is.
 

The URL consists of three main parts.

Although there are many types of URL, the following example covers the most commonly used.

The Library opening hours can be found at http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/About/hours.shtml

http: stands for "hypertext transfer protocol", the protocol used for the World Wide Web (note that it ends in a colon :)

//www.library.jcu.edu.au is the address of the host computer which holds the resource

/About/hours.shtml is the path showing the location of the resource within the directory structure of the host computer (in this example, information about opening hours is contained in the file "hours.shtml" located in the folder "About".
 

Other types of URLs which you may possibly see or use are:

Telnet sites eg. telnet://opac@jculib.jcu.edu.au:23/

Files available via ftp eg. file://ftp.jcu.edu.au/

The complete specification for URLs is available at
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/URL/uri-spec.html