How to Use this Guide

This guide is broken down into three sections in order to help make the contents of the guide more accessible. Those sections are:

The Main Table of Contents
The Menu Level
The Description Level

The Main Table of Contents is a list of all of the subjects that are included in the guide. We have grouped similar types of information resources together, as we believe that will be the easiest way for you to locate the information that you are interested in finding. Each highlighted Subject contains one or more links to resources that fall into that category. By selecting a highlighted Subject, you will be taken to the Menu Level of the guide.

The Menu Level contains a list of direct links to the resources themselves. From this point, you can select any of the highlighted resources and be taken directly to that resource, without any further wading through menus or text. At the top of this level, there are some general statements telling you what type of information can be found in the resources listed. These statements are intended to give you a quick indication as to whether or not the resources listed will be of any use. Use these statements only as a general guide, not as an inclusive description of the resources. The Menu Level also contains a link to the descriptions of the resources, so that you can be more informed about the resources before exploring them. At the bottom of each Menu Level, is a link back to the Main Table of Contents.

The Description Level contains brief descriptions and evaluations of the resources listed in the guide. We created these descriptions so that you would not have to spend your time determining what type of information was contained in each resource. We have attempted to include as much information about each resource as possible, and have provided this in the following basic format headings for each description:

TYPE: Nature of resource: Gopher, WWW site, mailing list, etc.
ADDRESS: For mailing lists, this field provides information on how to post messages. For other sites, this field gives the address of the resource and the menus you'll need to select to find it.
SUBSCRIBE: Subscription information (mailing lists only).
URL: The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is used for locating information on the World Wide Web, a hypertext- based navigation tool which is becoming widely used. It explains the type of access tool used, the address, and directory needed, using the following basic format:

tool://host.domain:port/path/file
As an example, one URL for the Clearinghouse where this guide is located is:

http://http2.sils.umich.edu/~lou/chhome.html
CONTACT: Who to contact with comments or questions about a resource.
COMMENTS: A description of the resource's contents and evaluative information to help you determine whether or not the resource will help you *before* you spend time exploring it.

Each description also contains:

a direct link to the resource, so that you can go right to the information that you are looking for without any other menus; AND

a link to take you to the top of the description menu so that you can easily go back and forth between descriptions without having to scroll up and down.

Each Description Menu also contain links to the Menu Level that matches the Description Level, and links to the Main Table of Contents. Just follow the icons...

NOTE: there are a few subject areas that do not contain more than one or two resources. For some of these subject areas, we only included a Menu level which provides both links and descriptions. We did this to eliminate useless documents and links, both for ourselves and for you.

ALSO NOTE: some resources do not have direct links, such as mailing lists and Usenet news groups. For these resources, we only included a link to the description, which contains all the information that you would need in order to gain access to the resource.

Hopefully you find this guide usable and useful, as that was our goal. If you need a copy of this document to download, or if you want to do full text searching of this guide, please see the Where to Find this Guide section of the guide. That document will explain where you can access an ASCII version of the guide through various Internet tools.

Go to Main Table of Contents