Customer Reviews

Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research: For Windows & Macintosh

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This book is an indispensable source of knowledge about the Internet in all of its facets. For the newcomer, it provides guidance; for the more experienced user if provides valuable source material. The book covers Netscape's capabilities, mailing lists, newsgroups, and the World Wide Web, with facts about search engines and many other research resources. It supplies useful tips, sage advice, and valuable cautions about using the Internet for both formal and informal investigations. The writing style of Tara Calishain and Jill Alane Nystrom is direct, clear, and entertaining. The book could very well be used for a course on the Internet, as a rare example of a textbook that is fun to read. Dr. Raymond L. Murray Nuclear Engineering N.C. State University Raleigh, NC 27695

This book is a librarian's dream (I should know I'm a librarian). In 25 well-written and illustrated chapters, Tara Calishain and Jill Alane Nystrom, Cyber-goddesses who have written other well-received Netscape-related books, have given us an easy-to-understand roadmap for navigating the Information Superhighway. They tell us the best routes to go, and even how to read the roadsigns. They, also, tell us how to navigate our own Netscape Browsers for both the Windows or MacIntoshs.

Have you ever wondered what to do with "Helper Applications", "Plug-ins", or "Caches?" This book will, in simple language, explain it all to you.

The book gets into the different aspects of the Internet, such as using mailing lists, newsgroups, gophers, telnet, Push Technology, and the many wonders of the World Wide Web.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in making the most use of your Netscape Browser.

To keep people up-to-date on the what's happening on the Internet, Tara has created a wonderful webpage.

Since I am teaching 5 classes totally via the Internet, I am always on the lookout for appropriate texts for my online classes. This book is extremely well written, highly organized, and obviously well thought out and researched. The author shows her talent not only for high-level professional writing, but for her obviously excellent research skills. She also knows how to portray that information in a way that is easily understandable and wonderful to use as a teaching tool. I am thrilled that writers of this calibre are "out there" and sharing very valuable information with a public who is crying out for more efficient ways to navigate the Net. My hat is off to this author and to Ventana for publishing this genre of book! Many, many "instructor-felt" thanks

If you wish to learn to search the easy way (not trial and error like I did), buy this book and Secrets of the Super Net Searchers, as well as the Alta Vista guide. You will not be disappointed - the time you will save is well worth the price.

     The Internet has become a vast depository of information providing an extremely broad variety for just about every imaginable need. The amount grows daily. There is information online for business professionals, tradesmen, technicians, engineers, educators, researchers, students, companies, as well as for the average person on the street. Finding the right information in a timely and proficient requires a disciplined approach.      Tara Calishain and Jill Alane Nystrom have written Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research to provide an extensive collection of essential online research tools and instructions on how best to use them. They also offer basic instruction in the use of the Netscape browser and a number of plug-ins and offer plenty of help putting them to effective use to intelligently find information online.      This research reference guide is thoughtfully written and easy to navigate. The Websites featured are among the best resources available. Readers can access them to seek employment, to obtain business information, to keep in touch with local, state, and federal governments, to get the latest consumer reports, to tap into the rich resources offered by leading magazines and newspapers, and much much more!      Especially helpful to readers are the many tips and advice that grace the book. They offer additional help to make researching easier. For instance, readers are encouraged to cultivate friends, to employ time-saving steps, and to consider their needs carefully before paying to use fee-based databases. They are encourage to become skilled at researching, reading, and putting information to use. Good advice considering today's economy!      The authors demonstrate genuine appreciation for the wealth of information online, the means to obtain it, and desire to instruct their readers to effectively harness them to meet their own needs. Regardless of the browser and kind of computer one has this book will make online information gathering an easier and more enjoyable task to accomplish. Highly recommended!

There are lots of books out there about Internet research, but this is hands down one of the very best.

The book is targeted at beginning and intermediate-level Internet users, but users of all abilities should find it extremely useful. I like to consider myself a fairly experienced Internet researcher, but by the time I finished the book a forest of Post-It notes had sprouted from pages that listed sites or techniques that I wanted to try.

To top it off, the book is written in a lively style. When was the last time someone said that about a computer book? Bruce Maxwell - Author, "How to Find Health Information on the Internet"

Maybe it is just me, but I found the explanations confusing, and a bit unfocused. The book does provide useful information, but I think it could have been conveyed better.

When it comes to finding things on the Internet, no matter how savvy you might be, sooner or later you're bound to get lost. The sheer amount of information that is available is overwhelming to say the least.

You start out trying to find a site where you can look up a simple thing and a couple of hours later find yourself still without what you had gone after in the first place. As you're clicking away going from one site to another, you find yourself thinking there's got to be a better way. Now there is.

A new book from the fine folks at Netscape offers everything you ever wanted to know about doing research on the Internet and more. Whether it's information about business, education, travel, or the latest news you're searching for, this book puts it all right at your fingertips. With this trusty guidebook in hand, you'll be able to find exactly what you need in less time than it takes you to enter the URL!

Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research by Tara Calishain (Ventana, 450 pages, paperback, $29.99) is an invaluable resource that anyone who ever tries to look up anything on the internet should have in their library. Calishain owns her own writing and publishing relations firm in Raleigh, NC and has been an Internaut since 1991. This practical and easy-to-follow guide teaches online search skills that will enable you to find what it is that you need with ease. The guide includes important information on where to find indexes of mailing lists and newsgroups. Mailing lists are one of the best ways to keep current on just about any topic you can imagine and newsgroups, especially their archives, are another great resource. Search engines can be daunting because you know the one site that you're looking for is out there, you just don't know where in the thousands of those that your search turned up. According to the author, there are basically three different types of search engines and each one has its own methodology of searching. If you don't know which is which, you'll never be able to achieve the best results. Among the resources reviewed in the book are sites for government information, telephone books, professional organizations, libraries, dictionaries, encyclopedias, magazines and journals, newspapers, historical documents, employment, and genealogy. Also included are chapters on plug-ins, online legends and fraud, fee-based databases, archiving strategies, handling copyright, and Emily Post's Guide to Netiquette. The author shares her personal secrets and tips on how to maximize your time so that you control the medium instead of letting it control you. Using the Internet and its vast resources for research to obtain up-to-the-minute results has never been simpler thanks to this insightful book.

Book Review by Ann L. Huber from the September 1997 issue of "Columbia Business Times"

Ann L. Huber can be reached at huber@digmo.org for conversation, comments or suggestions.