This digest offers general information about American community colleges and lists a variety of sources of additional information about these institutions. The digest provides the defining characteristics of community colleges and information on their curricula; statistics on enrollments and student characteristics; information on faculty characteristics; information on revenue sources; the names and addresses of nine organizations concerned with community college education; a list of periodicals focusing on community colleges; information on available Internet resources, including selected listservs, gophers, and usenet newsgroups; and a bibliography of 12 major publications on community colleges. The digest notes that: (1) there are 1,024 public community colleges and 445 private two-year institutions in the United States; (2) 42% of all first-time, full-time freshmen enroll in community colleges; (3) in fall 1991, credit course enrollment totaled 1.9 million full-time and 3.5 million part-time students nationally; (4) the average student age is 32 years, though the modal age is 19; (5) 57.5% of all community college students are women; (6) 72.2% of community college students are Caucasian, 9.2% are African-American, 8.3% are Hispanic, 4.5% are Asian, 1.1% are Native American, and approximately 1% are non-resident aliens; (7) approximately 46.7% of all minorities enrolled in higher education are attending two-year colleges; (8) community colleges employ 253,711 faculty, with 53.4% employed on a part-time basis and 64.9% holding a master's degree; (9) the average salary for faculty was $36,000 in 1992; (10) state appropriations accounted for 46% of the operating revenues in fall 1992, while tuition accounted for 20%; and (11) average charges for tuition in 1994 were $1,200 at public community colleges and $6,100 at private two-year colleges. (KP)