The internet has been considered the world's largest experiment in chaos. This paper presents a look at Internet applications and some considerations for preparing materials for utilizing these applications. The goal of the paper is to help bring order to the chaos and allow preparation of materials for Internet distribution by informing about the tools and resources used by the Internet community. Discussions include historical perspective, methods of accessing information on the Internet, publishing and distributing files on the Internet, and grades of Internet service. Software applications for retrieving Internet information include: Telnet, FTP, Electronic Mail (e-mail), Network News, Gopher, and World Wide Web. Also discussed are sending e-mail through a reflector; listserves; setting up a server; and finding resources using the search tools Archie, Jughead, and Veronica. A table of suffixes used for converter and compression programs is included. (MKR)