Specialized online search tools

Specialized online search tools

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You can find a variety of reliable resources using online tools such as directories, digital archives, government and news sites, blogs, and wikis.

Directories

If you want to find good resources on topics too broad for a search engine, try a directory. Unlike search engines, directories are put together by information specialists who choose reputable sites and arrange them by topic: education, health, politics, and so on. Try the following directories for scholarly research.

Internet Scout Project: http://scout.wisc.edu/Archives

Librarian’s Internet Index: http://www.lii.org

Open Directory Project: http://dmoz.org

WWW Virtual Library: http://www.vlib.org

Digital archives

Archives are a good place to find primary sources: the texts of poems, books, speeches, and historically significant documents; photographs; and political cartoons. The materials in these sites are usually limited to official documents and older works because of copyright laws.

American Memory: http://memory.loc.gov

Avalon Project: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

Eurodocs: http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu

Google Books: http://books.google.com

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com

The Making of America: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moagrp

The New York Public Library Digital Collections: http://www.nypl.org/digital

Online Books Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books

Government sites

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Many government agencies at every level provide online information. Government-maintained sites include resources such as legal texts, facts and statistics, government reports, and searchable reference databases. Here are just a few government sites.

Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

Fedstats: http://www.fedstats.gov

GPO Access: http://www.gpoaccess.gov

United Nations: http://www.un.org

News sites

Many news organizations offer up-to-date information on the web. Some require registration and may charge fees for some articles (your library may provide access at no charge). The following news sites offer many free resources.

BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk

Google News: http://news.google.com

New York Times: http://nytimes.com

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com

Blogs

The following websites can lead you to a wide range of blogs.

Academic Blog Portal: http://academicblogs.org

Google Blog Search: http://www.google.com/blogsearch

Science Blogs: http://scienceblogs.com

Technorati: http://technorati.com

Wikis

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A wiki is a collaborative website with many contributors and with content that may change frequently. Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia, is one of the most frequently consulted wikis. Though Wikipedia articles are not typically cited as sources in college-level papers, they can be a useful starting place. In addition to laying out basic background information, most Wikipedia articles cite references that may be worth pursuing for your research and give suggestions for further reading and external links.