This document explains how to use the Howard College Library System Homepage to find information and do research. It is particularly targeted at remote users.

The homepage consists of two parts. At the top of the page is an image map, that is a picture where the lettering is a link to another web page.  Below the image map are direct links to the most popular sites.  On the image map and directly below the image map are links with the following titles: Help, Site Index, Internet Search, Article Search, Ready Reference, Links by Subject, and Government Information.

Clicking on Site Index leads to a web page that has the letters of the alphabet.  Choosing the first letter of the subject you want to look up leads to a page with a listing of all web pages that have a title beginning with that letter.  For example, if you wanted to look up encyclopedias, you would click on E, then go down the list until you would click on Encyclopedias, then you would choose an encyclopedia to use.  The last button, All, shows all the web pages in the Howard County Library System arranged alphabetically.

Clicking on Internet Search leads to a web page that lists internet search engines and indexes used to find information posted on the internet in the form of web pages, ftp sites, and other forms.

The Internet Search page is in three parts:

• The first part is the line Information on Search Engines, followed by the links Help, About, and Reviews. Help leads to a page with links to web pages that suggest what internet search engine to use for each type of question you may have.  About leads to a page with links to web pages that provide information on how to search the internet, what search terms to use and how to combine them, and details such as update frequencies, coverage, special features, advanced searching features and other information on the more popular search engines. Reviews compares the more popular search engines and suggests which search engine may be the most useful.
• The second part consists of  direct links to search engines divided into three columns. In the first column are links to individual search engines such as AltaVista, Excite, FAST, Go Network, Northern Light, Yahoo, and several others.  In the second column are links to meta search engines.  Meta search engines such as Ask Jeeves and Mamma allow you to put in a search term and search several engines at once.  Results will tell you what each of the search engines found.  The third column consists of selective search engines and indexes.  These are collections of internet sites that have been selected and categorized by human beings rather than automatically by a search algorithm of a computer.
• The third part consists of annotated links, that is links with commentary about the site linked to, for internet sites concerning search engines.

Clicking on Article Search takes you to a variety of resources used to find full-text articles in magazines, journals, or periodicals. These articles are exactly the same as the article as it appears in a print magazine except, in some cases, they lack illustrations. These articles are *not* just web pages or internet sites. Therefore, if your instructor says you can not use web pages as a source, but you can use articles in magazines, that means you can use the articles discovered through searching these resources. Be careful to make sure you have the full-text article and not just the abstract of the article - which is usually only a paragraph long.

The Library subscribes to four article databases that are accessible through the internet. They are:

• ABI/Inform with both abstracts and full-text periodical articles about business.
• Ethnic News Watch includes full-text newspaper, journal, and magazine articles from the ethnic, minority, and native press. In English and Spanish.
• Periodical Abstracts with both abstracts and full-text general periodical articles.
• FirstSearch  includes WorldCat, an index of all 38 million cataloged books, Wilson Select for searching full-text periodical articles, NYT for the last 90 days of full-text articles in the New York Times, and full-text entries from the World Book Encyclopedia. Ask a librarian or see Help With Using FirstSearch for information about how to use this service.

After the links to the subscription-based databases are a listing of several small magazine and journal article databases that are available for free over the internet.  Two of the largest and most useful of these databases are Medscape for medical journal articles and TechSearch for computer magazine articles.

After the links to articles from magazines and journals are the links to newspaper articles.  One again these articles are exactly as they appeared in the given print newspaper, except in a few cases, they lack photographs or illustrations. As with magazine articles, these are *not* just web pages or internet sites. If your instructor says you can use newspaper articles, you can use the articles discovered by searching the newspaper archives. Be careful to make sure you have the full-text article and not just the abstract of the article - which is usually only a paragraph long.

Newspaper Article Sources are divided into three categories:

Newspapers with Searchable Archives, these newspaper web sites can be searched for articles in an archive going back in time from one week to several years.

Texas Newspapers, this is a listing of several newspapber web pages in Texas, some have searchable archives, some have an index of past articles, and some provide past articles for a fee.

Popular Newspapers, most provide the contents of the current paper for free but charge for past articles.

Clicking on Ready Reference takes you to the Ready Reference web page. It contains information usually found in the reference section of a library, such as almanacs, encyclopedias, indexes, telephone books, and other information.

Clicking on Links by Subject takes you to selected internet resources arranged by an arbitrary subject classification scheme.  This arrangement may be useful when you are looking for web pages that are only about one subject such as Biosciences or Nursing.

Clicking on Government Information takes you to a web page with links to government agencies and selected documents for the State of Texas, the United States Federal Government, and foreign governments and international organizations.

The majority of the main web page for the Howard College Library System consists of direct links to web sites that experience has shown are used most frequently by the faculty, staff, and students of Howard College, such as FAFSA and HotMail