Research on the Internet
by Ursula Hoffmann, Languages & Literatures -- November 9, 1998

When using computers on campus, you have to save your work on a floppy disk. (Disks for PCs and Macs look alike, but are formatted differently. New Macs can read PC disks but none of the PCs on campus can read Mac disks.)



Start a bookmark file on your diskette:

Open Netscape, click on Bookmarks (upper left of the screen). Click on Edit Bookmarks: this opens a new window. Click on File, Save as: this opens a new window. In the File name box, type mybkmks.htm or any other filename (except "bookmark.htm"). In the Save in box, click on the downarrow, then on the uparrow and select Drive A. Click Save.

Use the bookmark file on your diskette:

Whenever you start a session on the Web, you want to load your own bookmark file into the memory of the computer. Open Netscape, click on Bookmarks, click on Edit bookmarks, click on File, click on Open Bookmarks File, select your file on your diskette. Note that the title bar of the little window shows the name of your own file. (If it says Bookmark.htm, you made a mistake and you will not save bookmarks to your disk.) You can close or minimize the bookmark window.

Now, when you find a site which you may wish to return to later, click on Bookmark, then on Add Bookmark. The bookmark is added at the end of your file. Click it to revisit the site.



Instead of printing or taking notes while reading pages on the Web, I suggest copying and pasting.
If any application is open, close or minimize it. Click the X or the Underline in the upper right corner of the screen.
Open Word, start a new document, title it My Notes, save it as mynotes.doc to your diskette. Minimize Word (click on the underline in the upper right corner).
Open Netscape, go to the page that interests you. Select the Location, copy it to memory (Ctrl-c). Minimize Netscape.
Maximize Word (click on it on the task bar at the bottom of your screen). Put the cursor on a new line, paste the Location (also called URL) by pressing Ctrl-v. Press Ctrl-s to save.
Minimize Word.
Maximize Netscape. Select material you want to use, copy, switch to Word and paste. Save.


References: style sheets for documenting sources; copyright and "fair use"rules:
go to http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/depts/langlit/pages/netref.htm


Make your notes file portable:
Not every computer on campus runs the latest software version. Therefore, if you save a file in Word Version 8, you cannot open it with Word Version 6. (But a version 6 file can be opened by the later version 8 software.)
Good versions: Word v.2 and WordPerfect v.5.1. Use Save as to find the correct version. You may lose a bit of formatting but that is no problem.
To transfer formatted text between Mac and PC, save as .rtf.  RTF files are very large but they do work on every system.


Search: go to http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/depts/langlit/pages/searches.htm and Search Help.
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