Falmouth Public Library
Reference

Welcome to the Reference Department
How to Begin Your Search

For Real Beginners

Mouse 101. How to Use a Mouse.
www.washoe.lib.nv.us/pub_mouse.html
If you still think a mouse is an animal.

Mousercise
www.somd.lib.md.us/mouse/page1.htm
If you need some mouse exercises to improve your basics.

Learn to Use the World Wide Web!
ICYouSee, A guide to the World Wide Web from Ithaca College
www.ithaca.edu/library/Training/ICYouSee.html

How Do I Find Something on the Web?

Here is a list of some of our favorite search engines and directories of the web. This list changes from time to time as the web evolves. What we love one month is not necessarily what we love the next month. We are definitely fickle when it comes to searching the web!

Librarian's Index to the Internet
www.lii.org
Actual librarian's organizing the web! What could be better?

Google
www.google.com
A selective search engine, with a beautifully simple web page. Excellent at finding the web site you are looking for on the first try. They have also created a web directory at directory.google.com.

Altavista
www.altavista.com
To limit your search put phrases in quotations, and a + sign before words that must be included in your search or a - sign before words that must not be included in your search.

Hotbot
www.hotbot.com
A user friendly site which gives you good help screens for searching.

Yahoo
www.yahoo.com
This is a subject-oriented guide to the web, which makes it a directory rather than a search engine.

E-mail 101

To read your e-mail at a computer in the library you must first have an e-mail account. The most popular free e-mails are www.hotmail.com and mail.yahoo.com. America Online e-mail users can read their e-mail at aolmail.aol.com. If you need to use telnet to read your e-mail, you must type in before the address: telnet://