CollegeSource provides cover‐to‐cover online catalogs for over 12,500 colleges and universities. It includes the original page format for catalogs of two‐year, four‐year, graduate and professional schools across the USA. To ease the retrieval of information, CollegeSource catalogs provide a hyperlinked table of contents and index, and permit full printing and exporting of documents to disk. However, there is no e‐mail capability. The quick‐start tutorial is comprehensive and user‐friendly.
With the global search engine, available via a box in the center of the main page, users can find colleges by major, tuition level, state, enrollment, degrees and affiliation. Other available information includes course descriptions, academic policies, faculty information, general information about the institution, admission requirements, and campus maps. Boolean operators are permitted, but the search engine does not permit expansion of search terms, truncation or complex searches.
In addition to the quick search method outlined above, the following specific types of searches are available by clicking on the CollegeSearch link from the main page:
Alpha search ‐ a browsable, alphabetical listing of all colleges in the database.
Criteria search ‐ colleges by tuition, enrollment, affiliation, major, and other criteria.
Geographic search ‐ colleges based on geographic location.
Name keyword search ‐ all colleges with the given keyword in their name.
PDF keyword search ‐ an index of all the text in the PDF catalogs (not yet available).
After a search is completed, users can view the catalogs that are available for a particular institution by clicking on the PDF icon. While the majority of colleges in the USA have profiles available, not all have catalogs online at the present time. The profile icon will retrieve an institution’s profile, which includes data such as admission requirements, tuition and fees, room and board costs, financial aid programs, and other special programs (such as ROTC). Users can also click on the WWW icon (the globe icon) to go to the school’s home page. The navigation bar provides easy access back to CollegeSource.
The Acrobat reader is automatically launched when a catalog is opened. One disadvantage of the online version is the load time for the catalogs, which can be quite lengthy when many users are logged on at once. The quick user guide to using the Acrobat reader is comprehensive enough for the average end user. When viewing a PDF catalog, users can view current and previous catalogs of institutions by simply clicking on the appropriate icon. The fully linked bookmarks, the index, and the table of contents allow users to jump to specific sections of a catalog as needed.
CollegeSource provides a brief description on how schools can submit catalogs, files and school links to the database. Librarians should take note of the fact that after next year, Career Guidance Foundation’s well‐known series of college catalogs on microfiche will be discontinued. The CD and online versions of this product will continue to be available.
Other resources within CollegeSource include links to assessment testing sites (ACT, SAT, TOEFL, TWE information tips, etc.), associations of Career Guidance Foundation customers, career information, college application services, college guides, college planning sites, counseling, educational‐related search engines, and financial aid information.
CollegeSource allows users to ask for online help via the support icon on the browser by filling out the online help‐form. It also provides a directory of who to contact at Career Guidance Foundation, via e‐mail, US mail, or phone.
CollegeSource Online is a user‐friendly database. The updated hyperlinks allow quick access to college Web pages, which will facilitate online database and Internet instruction, both inside and outside academia. However, some improvements are needed. These include the addition of an e‐mail interface so that users can e‐mail information from the database to themselves. The search feature needs to allow expansion of search terms, truncation, and complex searches. Also, the online load time depends on Internet traffic at the time and the size of the PDF file.
Despite these drawbacks, the quality and quantity of information available in this database will be invaluable to college and university libraries, career centers, advice centers, admission centers and general campus‐wide users. Recommended for colleges and universities of all sizes.
