by Kalpana Shankar
The Internet is an international computer network consisting of thousands of smaller interconnected computer networks. This digest describes some of the Internet resources that are available to community college practitioners.
Practitioners should begin by contacting their campus or department systems operator for Internet access. Secondly, the campus library should be visited either in person or on the Internet, since often libraries have compiled lists of resources for students, faculty, and staff.
Argus Clearinghouse of Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides: A large collection of guides to Internet resources categorized by topic. WWW address: http://www.clearinghouse.net
There are numerous search engines and other guides that will help you look for particular topics or page. Some of the most popular are:
Yahoo! is a subject-oriented search engine that you can access hierarchically or by searching: WWW address: http://www.yahoo.com
AltaVista, a search engine with advanced searching capabilities: WWW address: http://www.altavista.digital.com
Hotbot, another search engine that ranks the most pertinent results first: WWW address: http://www.hotbot.com
American Association of Community Colleges is a non-profit advocacy organization for community colleges and other two-year degree granting associations. They provide information on programs and services, conferences, government relations, and job listings. WWW address: http://www.aacc.nche.edu/
The League of Innovation is a non-profit educational consortium of leading community colleges organized to stimulate innovation and experimentation in all areas of community college development WWW address: http://www.league.org:80/
The National Center for Technology Planning indexes college technology planning documents. WWW address: http://www.nctp.com/
National Center for Higher Education Management Systems provides information about funding and assessment strategies for the use of technology in higher education. WWW address: http://www.nchems.com/Home.html
Community College Press is a publisher specializing in books for community college administrators. You can order books on-line. WWW address: http://www.aacc.nche.edu/commun/publicat/publicat.htm
Community College Web contains a searchable collection of pointers to Web servers at community colleges as well as other related resources. WWW address: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/cc/
Education Virtual Library lists education related Web sites alphabetically and by education level, resources provided, country, and type of site. WWW address: http://www.csu.edu.au/education/library.html
ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges has collected bibliographies on community college topics. WWW address: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ERIC/eric.html
Florida Tech Education Gopher: Provides a collection of reference sources, including the American English Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, the U.S. Zip Code Directory, the CIA World Factbook, telephone area code directories for the United States and foreign countries, and 1990 U.S. Census data. Gopher address: gopher://sci-ed.fit.edu (select Reference Desk)
Libraries of Purdue University: An extensive collection of ready reference resources. WWW address: http://thorplus.lib.purdue.edu/reference/index.html
The Internet Public Library: The first public library on the Internet, the IPL has a reference desk, collections for browsing, links to electronic texts, and links to on-line newspapers. WWW address: http://www.ipl.org
The U.S. Department of Education provides information on legislation, programs (such as Goals 2000 and School-to-Work), publications, statistics, and educational software on their gopher. Links to other education WWW sites are included. WWW address: http://www.ed.gov
Library of Congress includes Congressional, White House, and State Department information as well as links to international, federal, state, and local government resources. It also contains over 27 million searchable records of materials cataloged and held by the Library of Congress. WWW address: http://lcweb.loc.gov/homepage/lchp.html
THOMAS is a U.S. Federal government WWW site that provides access to the full text of pending bills, the Congressional Record, committee information, and the text of historical documents. WWW address: http://thomas.loc.gov
The U.S. Census Bureau gives population/demographic statistics that can be used in research. WWW address: http://census.gov
The best place to start is the home institution's library's web page. This will give information on books and journals at your institution as well as other local institutions. Also, the library may have purchased access to electronic journals and bibliographic databases on line. Some other library resources include:
The Book Wire Index provides a list of libraries, sorted alphabetically and by geographical region. They also have a list of special libraries. WWW address: http://www.bookwire.com/index/Libraries.html
Yahoo! has an extensive list of library catalogs, library resources, and archives. WWW address: http://www.yahoo.com/Reference/Libraries/Indices/
Library of Congress also provides access to their holdings, as well as U.S. government copyright files, federal legislation, and foreign law. Web address: http://lcweb.loc.gov/
Usenet Newsgroups are an electronic bulletin board system, accessible through the Internet, that consists of discussion forums on thousands of topics. Contact your system operator for instructions for access. Community college practitioners might be interested in the following groups:
Listservs are automated programs that serve as distribution centers for mail messages. They are organized around a central theme or issue, and provide a forum for individuals to pose questions and share information with colleagues. To participate, you must subscribe by sending an e-mail message to the listserv program. For example, to subscribe to COMMCOLL you would address the message to listserv@ukcc.uky.edu. Your message would read "subscribe commcoll ."
Below are some listservs of interest to community college practitioners:
CATALYST listserv@vtvm1.bitnet Community Colleges refereed journal
COMMCOLL listserv@ukc.uky.edu Community college administrators, faculty and staff.
CJC-L listserv@dekalb.dc.peachnet.edu Community college librarians.
DEOS-L listserv@psuvm.psu.edu Distance education.
STWNet majordomo@mail.edc.org School-to-work
TCC-L listserv@uhccvm.uhcc.hawaii.edu Community college faculty.
WWWDEV listserv@unb.ca Course development for Internet-taught courses
AskERIC is a human mediated question answering service for teachers, parents, administrators, and others involved in education. A project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology at Syracuse University, AskERIC uses the resources of the ERIC system and the Internet to answer questions sent by electronic mail. Send your questions to askeric@ericir.syr.edu. They also maintain a WWW site at http://ericir.syr.edu/.
Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University provides help on correct English usage and writing. Tutors will answer questions by e-mail. Send the question to owl@cc.purdue.edu. They also maintain a WWW page at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
The following books are on the Internet and related topics:
Ellsworth, Jill. Education on the Internet: A Hands-On Book of Ideas, Resources, Projects, and Advice. Indianapolis, IN: Sams Publishing, 1994.
Hahn, Harley. The Internet and Web Yellow Pages 1998 (5th Edition). Berkeley, CA: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1997.
Jackson, Earl Jr. College Connections Web Directory 1997. Que Education and Training, 1996.
Porter, Lynette R. Creating the Virtual Classroom : Distance Learning With the Internet. John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Note: This digest was prepared in December 1997. The Internet is volatile, and the addresses are subject to change. Check more recent resources if you are unable to connect to any of these services.
The ERIC Clearinghouse operates under the OERI Contract No. RR-93002003. The opinions expressed in this Digest do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of OERI and no official endorsement by OERI should be inferred.
Citations preceded by an asterisk (*) refer to journal articles or other material unavailable from EDRS. Journal articles may be acquired through regular library channels, or purchased from article clearinghouses such as CARL Uncover at (800) 787-7979. Other material may be available either directly through the publishing agency, or from out-of-print vendors. ERIC documents (references with "ED" numbers) may be read on microfiche at approximately 900 libraries worldwide. To identify your local ERIC Resource Collection, connect to: http://www.ed.gov/BASISDB/EROD/eric/SF. Most documents may be ordered on microfiche or in paper copy from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS) at (800) 443-ERIC. For more information about our products and services, please contact the ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges by telephone at (800) 832-8256, or via the Internet at ericcc@ucla.edu.
Please help us keep the ERIC database current and comprehensive by submitting your written works to the Clearinghouse for review for inclusion in the ERIC system. Send two copies of each manuscript to the attention of our Acquisitions Coordinator.
ERIC Clearinghouse
for Community Colleges
University of California, Los Angeles
3051 Moore Hall
P.O. Box 951521
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Updated 10/10/01
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