You don't have to be a policy analyst or a political pundit to follow public-policy debates. Civic duty aside, current awareness of policy issues can stimulate class discussion and enhance writing assignments by injecting relevance and controversy into the topic.

The World Wide Web offers many options for keeping up with today's hot topics. Policy.com (http://policy.com) is particularly impressive, as it offers policy-related news and events of the day, as well as a searchable archive. Nuclear security, for example, is a featured topic as this is being written, but typing "gambling" or "social security" in the search box quickly displays numerous references from past discussions. Coverage is bipartisan, and interaction is encouraged via chat rooms, bulletin boards, or the opportunity to vote on a variety of bills in the Virtual Congress. A Student Union section connects to many resources with potential academic applications, including topics for debate and links to numerous campus political publications and organizations.

All Politics (http://www.allpolitics.com/1997/index.html) is a CNN/Time-produced Web site focusing on current political news and views. There are reports and analysis of many current policy issues, and a built-in InfoSeek search engine facilitates looking for other political information across all of All Politics or the entire Internet. Health-care reform, for example, gets over 80 hits by itself in All Politics, and these can then be sorted, limited and displayed according to several options.

Yahoo can be used for general searching on almost any topic, of course, but the section at http://www.yahoo.com/Government/Politics/Political_Issues/ offers a convenient cluster of policy issues to click on for links to related Web sites. From here, for example, you can investigate animal rights issues via other Web pages dealing with animal testing, hunting views, vegetarianism, etc. These seldom offer the balanced, governmental perspective of Policy.com, but their impassioned presentations can add interesting points of view that might not be heard elsewhere.

For help with connecting to the World Wide Web, contact the CIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

Will Hepfer and Nancy Schiller, University Libraries