Other Folks' Resources

Instructional and Professional Development Materials
Internet Tutorials/Web Design Guides
Library Matters
Media Literacy/Web Literacy

Instructional and Professional Development Materials

Civic Participation and Community Action Sourcebook
Developed by New England literacy practitioners, this extensive guidebook provides rationales, methods and activities for actively engaging adult learners in the development and political processes of their local communities.

GED Math Practice Program
In his copious free time, Alan Tubman, a Massachusetts adult literacy practitioner, writes shareware software programs. Connect and ye shall find....

Health and Literacy Compendium
Completed in early 1999, this online "reference book" consists of 100 well-annotated bibliographic entries covering print and electronic health education resources. Along with embedded Web links, the compendium is cross-indexed by subject, format, language and reading level.

Journals on the Web: A Mini-Guide
Created by the now defunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education, this page provides a very handy, hypertext-linked list of education-related journals. Some of the publications offer only a table of contents, but several provide full-text electronic versions of their articles. The online library begins to take shape!

Teachers Web Page
Another potentially-useful set of documents (assuming extended periods of distraction-free reading time) buried within USDOE's site, with the primary subject of professional development. The material basically consists of sundry reports, studies, proclamations and so forth.

Web-Based Lesson Plan Gallery
In the dawning days of Spring 1998, two dozen practitioners at near-concurrent workshops in Boston and New York City produced this quite wonderful collection of lesson plans, suitable for use both online and offline.

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Internet Tutorials/Web Design Guides

Internet 101
Numerous Internet guides and tutorials may be found online these days, but this particular one is pleasantly-designed, from the standpoint of both graphical esthetics and general organization. It's highly informative, too, although the banner and pop-up ads are a bit annoying.

The Top 15 Mistakes of First-Time Web Design
A blessedly-short, pleasantly-humorous gloss on the temptations to avoid upon plunging into Web resource creation.

W3C: Getting Started with HTML
From the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the governing body for Web technical protocols, comes this very clear, accessible intro to the wonderful world of Hypertext Markup Language.

Web Design Group
A fairly comprehensive yet down-to-earth aid, with the stated hope "that with this site as a reference, you will be able to create Web sites that can be used by every person on the Internet, regardless of browser, platform or settings."

Web Style Guide
One of the best-written, best-organized Web design guides originally was hatched at Yale's Center for Advanced Instructional Media and has now been updated in this second edition (2002). Whether you want to produce a single Web document or an entire site, this extensive resource is invaluable.

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Library Matters

ALA Copyright Issues
From the fine folks at the American Library Association comes a basic intro to the sometimes confusing, always changing world of copyright and its sundry subparts: Registration, Fair Use, Electronic Publications and so forth.

ALA/RUSA Best Free Reference Web Sites 1999–2004
From the Reference and User Services Association (part of the American Library Association) comes an annotated guide to over 100 highly useful and just plain cool reference sites, covering dictionaries, directories, quotations, statistics, and beyond.

Alternative Press Index
Looking for the guide to all those small, funky, quirky, definitely-not-mainstream publications? Here it is, complete with annotations, ordering information and online links.

Current Cites
If you have a passion for keeping abreast of the library and information science literature, this site will provide considerable measure of satisfaction. On a monthly basis, extensive annotations, with links to full-text articles in many cases, are posted to the world.

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial
The fine folks at Berkeley's Library drew up a succinct set of "finding aids" for souls launching themselves into online waters. Now you, too, can derive Web search results in the low four figures.

Library Support for Distance Learning
This quite lengthy page compiles tons of information on DL, including policy and planning documents, research papers, library links, and, as a bonus, several articles on virtual reference services and online resource evaluation.

NoodleTools
Debbie Abilock, California school librarian par excellence, is the person behind this site, a site which nicely combines a bit of bibliographic instruction and electronic "ready reference" tools. Get thee to the e-library!

Virtual Reference Shelf
The staff at the Library of Congress have put together a very clean, comprehensive index of basic reference tools. If you have time for only one reference visit, make it here.

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Media Literacy/Web Literacy

Critical Thinking in an Online World
A 1996 conference paper written by Debra Jones, Internet Librarian at Cabrillo College, which provides a good philosophical/theoretical starting point for making sense of the electronic domain.

The Internet: Window to the World or Hall of Mirrors?
A constructively-critical three-page article by Jack Solock, a special librarian, which appeared in the online newsletter, InterNIC News.

Internet Evaluation Crib Sheet
Drawn up by D. Scott Brandt, a Purdue University librarian, this handy two-page checklist helps clarify the overall merit of any given online resource.

Center for Media Literacy
From a California nonprofit comes a truly extensive set of links on media literacy issues, including articles, bibliographies and professional development resources.

Testing the Surf: Criteria for Evaluating Internet Information Resources
From Down Under, this 10-to-12 page guide provides a bit more depth and detail than the crib sheet above on the vagaries of Web materials and, as a bonus, contains an extensive, if dated (1992-97), bibliography.