People spend countless hours researching topics at their local libraries, trying to locate information that could be retrieved on the Internet in a few minutes. While people scurry around the library, trying to find information that may not even be there, a "Net surfer" is sprawled out in a comfy chair, relaxing, punching keys and scrolling up and down the screen with the mouse, retrieving information in one-tenth of the time. Using the Internet has its obvious advantages, and seems more appealing than running around in a library. That's why millions of people have hooked up to the Net.
Okay, now let's get to the instructions. Say you want to look up the topic "Abraham Lincoln" (of course we are now operating on the Internet). You have entered Netcom, punched in your password, hit Enter, minimized Netcom, and switched to Netscape. The Netscape screen appears. Scroll down (using the arrow keys on the right and bottom sides of the screen) until you reach a heading entitled, "Welcome to Netscape." The first left-hand paragraph reads, at the top, "Exploring the Net." Four spaces below that reads, "Net search." This is the main pathway from which you will access information (unless the URL is available). Another way of entering an Internet search is to locate the words "Net Search" near the top of the screen. You don't have to scroll up to get there; it is permanently on the Netscape screen.
Since you are doing a report on Abraham Lincoln, the first thing you would do is to go into the Internet Search. After you click on the hypertext "Net Search," the words "Internet Search" will appear. Scroll down until you reach a long, white, horizontal bar. Using the mouse, click on the beginning of the bar and type in your query (in this case, Abraham Lincoln). Press Enter, and Netscape will browse the Internet and access as much information on the topic as can be found. In the top, right corner you will see a colorful box with an "N" in it. When comets are soaring past the N, thi means that Netscape is operating to search your query. If there is no movement in the box, then the browser is still and without a command. Once the information has finished loading on the screen, you can browse down through the hypertext titles; when you come to one that sounds interesting, or is related to your topic (of course, all are somehow related to your word search), just click on the title, and the document will load. From these documents you can then enter many more subdivisions of the document, each one narrowing the information further and further. Thus, you have obtained plentiful information on your topic, and can begin your report.
Copying pages and pages of material off the Internet and into your report by writing can be a very slow and painful process. There is a much easier way to bring this information into your report without rewriting the entire document. After you have opened up Netcom and Netscape, press the Alt and Tab keys simultaneously. You will be switched to other programs that are currently running in the computer.
From here go into Word (or another writing program), and open a document for your report if you haven't previously done so. Using the Alt and Tab keys once again, switch back into Netscape. Using the mouse, highlight the desired information on the screen. (You will have to make several trips back and forth from Netscape to Word if you decide to copy more than a screenful into your document.) While you are on the Internet, the mouse can highlight only what information is present on the computer screen at the time. Go up to the command bar at the top of the screen (make sure the information is highlighted) and click on Edit - Copy. Use the two keys (Alt and Tab) to switch back to your document. Decide where the information should be pasted, and click there with the mouse. Finally, choose Edit - Paste from the command bar, click and voila! The information has been transferred to your document! (If you wish to capture the whole document, use File - Save As from the Netscape menu bar to save the file; this will save the file to your file manager where you can then import portions or all of it into your word processor.)
When you use this easy method of obtaining information several times in review, you will always consider the Internet the "mainstream" of accessible information, and the easiest way to access it, at that. Apart from using the Internet search method, here are some available sites that contain basic information on a variety of subjects:
For those of you who are in the MUN (Model United Nations) program (or just interested in the United Nations), this is a great site at which to conduct your research for your position paper. It has a variety of documents, organizations, and recent publications regarding the United Nations. If you are in MUN then you should take a look at this site.
This is a good location to access tons of information. This site deals with the popular Time magazine, and has articles from many of the past issues right up to the recent ones. For those of you who do not subscribe to Time this is a great way to easily access valuable and plentiful information on many different topics.
The Free Internet Encyclopedia
This site is absolutely one of the best sites from which to attain information. Unlike other encyclopedia sites that require a fee to access the information, this site is absolutely free, since the company is promoting easy information access by setting up this site. If you don't have an expensive encyclopedia set at your house (most of us probably don't), this site is a definite alternative. Upon entering the site I clicked on MacroReference. This reference area gave me the impression that this site lacked a lot of important information. That was until I went into MicroReference. This had information on all sorts of topics, organized completely like a home encyclopedia. This is a great site in which to conduct some major research.
Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations: Passages, Phrases and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources
This is the place to retrieve needed quotations for school reports quickly and easily. In Bartlett's book of quotations there are literally thousands (it seems more like millions) of quotations from the past and famous people who once spoke them. This site is a great way to access a whole bunch of quotations.