In the fall of 1990, the Computer Services Section of the Department of Public Instruction in North Carolina began a project to study how the use of an online catalog in the media center would influence student academic achievement and provide a vehicle for students to gain the skills needed to access information. For a year, the media professionals in two high schools in Davidson County worked with an online catalog to collect student information and evaluate its impact on instruction. This four-part report begins with a brief overview of the Online Catalog Project, including the software and equipment used. Project activities and outcomes are presented in the second part, including copies of the student and teacher questionnaires together with analyses of the responses and analyses of the data obtained from online catalog user logs, nonfiction circulation records, and student writing samples. The third part, Project Conclusions, includes the major finding--i.e., an examination of the study as a whole indicates that the online catalog had a significant and positive effect on the ability of students to access information and become more independent in retrieving information--as well as helpful hints and a brief statement of the benefits of instruction in online searching to the research process. The fourth part contains instructional materials developed during the project, including guide sheets, vocabulary, student activity sheets, lesson plans, and research assignments intended to provide guided practice using the online catalog with special emphasis on keyword and Boolean strategies. (DB)