With the growth of wide-area networking services such as electronic mail, file transfers, information services (bibliographic information, software libraries, etc.), as well as on-line catalogs and databases, astronomers have access to a wealth of information via the terminal or workstation on their desks. This report provides an overview of many of these services, most of them available for free via network connection.
The present report arose from documentation written separately by Hanisch (1992), Andernach (1993) and Feigelson and Murtagh (1992). Some general references on the subject include Jaschek and Heintz (1981); Jaschek (1989); Murtagh and Heck (1988); Albrecht and Egret (1991); Heck and Murtagh (1992); Davenhall (1993b, 1993c); Heck and Murtagh (1993); and Crabtree, Hanisch and Barnes (1994). While further information on many of the services presented here may be found in these texts, we have made extensive use of information presented in ``gray'' literature like newsletters, observatory reports, and electronic circulars. An excellent overview of network resources and services, not limited to astronomy, is the book by Krol (1992).
Our report is certainly not complete, and likely biased somewhat by our own interests. Moreover, the information presented in this report is subject to rapid change. For this reason, an on-line version will incorporate changes and corrections. (It will be available by anonymous FTP and other ways at sites stsci.edu and ecf.hq.eso.org.)