This page grew out of my experience in teaching introductory web classes for the New York Public Library. It is intended to assist the novice in getting around the internet and understanding it, but it also links to information which may be of value to more advanced web surfers. As I stress in my classes, the internet is vast and no one knows all (or even nearly all) about it; thus, there is no exclusively right way to approach it. So the sites I have included here are selected not for authority, but for potential helpfulness to the beginning net user. In fact, simply navigating though some of them will provide a positive learning experience for the true tenderfoot

Web Tutorial developed by Lincoln University in New Zealand to help its students to learn to use the world wide web effectively with Netscape Navigator as the web browser. Bare Bones 101: a Very Basic Web Search Tutorial from the Beaufort Library, University of South Carolina Finding Information on the Internet from U.C. Berkeley. The Mystery Solved a web-based "slide show" which explains the uses of search engines and directories and the differences between them; it is presented by educator and author Kathy Schrock. Effective Search Strategies another "slide show" created by Kathy Schrock. Learning More about Search Engines and Subject Directories presented by the Community Learning Center. Understanding a URL another explanation of URL's, this one from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey Research on the Web: How Reliable Is It? a brief discussion, presented by Bruce Leland, a professor of English at Western Illinois University, of then matter of evaluating material on the internet, with links to helpful resources

For more help getting started online see Searching for a Heart of Gold.

jhw@whittsend.com

this page last updated August 12, 2002