Internet Resources for Community College Practitioners

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. GUIDES TO INTERNET RESOURCESArgus Clearinghouse of Subject-Oriented Internet Resource Guides: A large collection of guides to Internet resources categorized by topic. <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: <http://www.yahoo.com>

AltaVista, a search engine with advanced searching capabilities: <http://www.altavista.digital.com>

Hotbot, another search engine that ranks the most pertinent results first: <http://www.hotbot.com> COMMUNITY COLLEGE INTERNET SITESAmerican 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. <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 <http://www.league.org:80/>

The National Center for Technology Planning indexes college technology planning documents. <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. <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. <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. <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. <http://www.csu.edu.au/education/library.html>

ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges has collected bibliographies on community college topics. <http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ERIC/eric.html> REFERENCE RESOURCESFlorida 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://sci-ed.fit.edu> (select Reference Desk)

Libraries of Purdue University: An extensive collection of ready reference resources. <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. <http://www.ipl.org> GOVERNMENT INFORMATIONThe 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. <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. <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. <http://thomas.loc.gov>

The U.S. Census Bureau gives population/demographic statistics that can be used in research. <http://census.gov> LIBRARY CATALOGSThe 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. <http://www.bookwire.com/index/Libraries.html>

Yahoo! has an extensive list of library catalogs, library resources, and archives. <http://www.yahoo.com/Reference/Libraries/Indices/>

The Library of Congress also provides telnet access to their holdings, as well as U.S. government copyright files, federal legislation, and foreign law. <Telnet:locis.loc.gov> USENET NEWSGROUPSUsenet 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:

* alt.education.alternative

* alt.education.disabled

* alt.education.distance

* alt.education.higher.stu-affairs

* alt.education.research

* clari.news.education.higher

* misc.education

* misc.education.adult

* misc.education.language.english

* misc.education.multimedia

* misc.education.science

* sci.edu LISTSERVSListservs are automated programs that serve as distribution centers for e-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 [email protected]. Your message would read "subscribe commcoll."

Below are some listservs of interest to community college practitioners:

CATALYST <[email protected]>

Community Colleges referred journal

COMMCOLL <[email protected]>

Community college administrators, faculty and staff.

CJC-L <[email protected]>

Community college librarians

DEOS-L <[email protected]>

Distance education

STWNet <[email protected]>

School-to-work

TCC-L <[email protected]>

Community college faculty

WWWDEV <[email protected]>

Course development for Internet-taught courses

For a list of more listservs, e-mail the ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges at [email protected] and ask for "A Guide to Listservs for Community College Practitioners." Also check http://garnetl.acns.fsu.edu/~jschaeff/listservbs.html for more listservs related to education. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCEAskERIC 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 [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. They also maintain a WWW page at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/. REFERENCESThe 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.

The ERIC Clearinghouse operates under OERI Contract No. RR93002003. 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. Title: Internet Resources for Community College Practitioners. ERIC Digest. Document Type: Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); Descriptors: Access to Information, Community Colleges, Computer Mediated Communication, Computer Networks, Database Producers, Databases, Educational Resources, Electronic Publishing, Information Sources, Information Systems, Information Technology, Internet, Online Systems, Resource Materials, Two Year Colleges Identifiers: ERIC Digests

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