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
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 Web sites 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
A wiki is a collaborative Web site 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.