August 20, 1999: Favorite "When" Sites

November 5, 1999: Favorite Sites for Reading Recommendations

June 25, 1999: Favorite Sites of the
Highland Internet Interest Group, Part II

June 18, 1999: Favorite Sites of the
Highland Internet Interest Group, Part I

Part 4, April 23, 1999: Great Sites for Jobhunters

Princeton Review's Careers Database http://www.review.com/career/find/index.cfm
use this along with the Occupational Outlook Handbook when you're trying to determine what careers would interest you. It describes "a day in the life of" people in various occupations, as well as the job requirements, training, etc.

Monster Board http://www.monster.com/
another job listing service, more than 50,000 job listings from more than 4000 employers. Also has employer profiles, and a nice section on self-employment

.

Vault Reports http://www.jobvault.com/
"the Jobseeker's Secret Weapon." Profiles of major employers based on interviews with people who've worked there, tell about the kind of organization it is, the benefits and drawbacks of working there. Although the purpose of the site is to entice you into buying the full reports on each company, the snapshot profiles in themselves are quite useful.

Job Searching http://jobsearch.miningco.com/
this welcome guide from the Mining Co. is particularly useful in linking you by your specialization--business jobs, science jobs, arts jobs, etc., as well as links for international jobs, "cool" jobs, and for skills areas--employer research, interviewing, and such.

These are all taken from the much more extensive listing on the Jobhunting page on Best Information on the Net http://www.sau.edu/CWIS/Internet/Wild/Jobhunt/Work/wkindex.htm, which also includes help with choosing a career, relocation information, and job boards for specific professions and for government and nonprofit jobs.

Part 3, April 16, 1999: Making Government Work Better

As the daughter of a city planner, I grew up knowing that government can do good things. Even though the sour mood and nasty wrangling in Washington gives one little hope for any intelligent solutions coming from that direction, some very interesting things are being done at state and local levels. And because of the internet, state and city governments are sharing their good ideas.

In a magazine called Government Technology, http://www.govtech.net you can find out how governments are using technology for things like crime mapping, collecting from deadbeat dads, and letting citizens fill out forms online.

The National Conference of State Legislatures http://www.ncsl.org/ is where state legislatures share their solutions for problems like identity theft, education reform, how to use tobacco settlement money, welfare reform, school finance, etc.

Civic Practices network http://www.cpn.org/index.html is a place to learn about how other civic organizations, with or outside of government, have worked to renew their community. Read here about the rebuilding of the South bronx, about projects and networks, about Minnesota "e-democracy," about how Naugatuck Valley responded to industrial abandonment, about pro-life and pro-choice groups working together to seek common ground, about the community meetings that shaped Oregon's health plan. These and many other stories are enough to restore your faith in genuine democracy.

In case you ever wondered what's become of Al Gore's "reinventing government campaign" (because God knows, the press hasn't bothered to tell us about it), take a look at the online magazine that is reporting on it, Access America http://www.accessamerica.gov/ for case studies "showing how government workers are using information technology and telecommunications to serve our customers and improve our productivity.".

Stateline.Org: Your Source for news on State Policy Innovations http://www.stateline.org
Searchable by topic (health care, welfare reform, etc.) or by state, this service from the Pew Center supplies statistical information about the states and their greatest current problem, with links to the state government, but it also links in detailed news stories on successes and failures of policy initiatives in health care, welfare reform, etc.

Part 2, April 2, 1999: Hot Paper Topics

Since as we all know, students meet secretly at the beginning of each semester to decide which five paper topics they will all write on at the exact same time, thus stripping our shelves of every single book on gun control, abortion, capital punishment, and youth in asia, the internet is a godsend for librarians. Yes, it contains quantities of abject garbage on all of those topics, but it also offers court cases, statistics, laws, policy analysis, research, and moral reasoning as well.

I've found a fair amount of such sites and put them on the Hot Paper Topics pages of Best Information on the Net.

But there are a few other sites that are quite outstanding. One is Policy.Com, which every week takes a hot button issues and gives an overview of the topic, explains the issues surrounding it, and presents a variety of proposed policies. Policy.Com is neutral, and makes every effort to represent a full spectrum of possible solutions.

Atlantic Monthly, under the heading "Politics and Society," has put together topical groupings of some of its best articles from the past 35 years on abortion, crime, race, health care, and other issues. Not only is this high quality information, it is an object lesson for students in how thoughtful people reason and debate an issue.

And the University of Michigan Documents Center has put together a clickable collection called Documents in the News. There is no excuse for students to discuss affirmative action without reference to the Bakke and Piscataway cases or the text of California's Proposition 209; they are all here, as are key documents on issues like gun liability, the impeachment process, Kosovo, Jack Kevorkian, and much more.

Armed with these sites, you can send your students to the net with confidence. Who knows? They might even learn something.

Issue 1: Caffeine and Curmudgeons

The first installment of Favorite Sites deals with online columnists.

The Government Is Online

This includes some of my favorite finding tools for government information.

NOTE: When there's enough content here to warrant it, I will add a subject index.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Return to Marylaine.Com

Return to Ex Libris

Please send any comments or suggestions to mblock@netexpress.net