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Specialty Search Tools

Search and metasearch engines are terrific for finding great numbers of documents, but they don't always retrieve documents that are related to your area of study. They can't think for you. Some areas of study have specialty search engines that only look for sites related to a particular field of study. For example, for brief online biographies, try Biography.Com, or search NASA Spacelink for information from NASA.

For academic research in the humanities, try the Voice of the Shuttle by Alan Liu. Liu's site is aesthetically pleasing, easy to navigate, and it has a comprehensive directory as well as a search tool. A good specialty engine for literature is Literary Resources on the Net by Jack Lynch.

Another Web search tool you might find handy is the digital library. You can search for the card catalogue information on any book in print by searching through a digital library. Most online libraries also have links to helpful resources and reference materials. There are multitudes of public and university or college libraries on the Internet, but many of them only allow their own patrons or students to access search information. As you search for a digital library, be sure that you are accessing one that offers its services free of cost as well.

The Library of Congress Web site, however, allows public searches. You can search this site by title, author, or subject. In addition, you can browse for the information you need. When you find a listing you need, just print a copy and see if your local library has the text. If not, ask your librarian if your school offers interlibrary loan as a service and order the book through interlibrary loan.

An online library that offers online library services is the Internet Public Library. For a comprehensive guide to online libraries, follow the link to Libraries under the category Reference in Yahoo! Once you find that classic you need, avoid a trip to the library by accessing the source online. Project Gutenberg has an extensive archive of literature in the public domain on the Internet. You can download or print the entire text of works by Shakespeare, Poe, and others whose works are in the public domain. Another site to check for primary source material is the Project Bartleby Archive.

To search for journal articles, try Carl UnCover, an electronic library resource. You will be charged to have an article faxed to you, but you can search the database free of charge. Carl Uncover accesses over 20,000 journal articles, so perhaps the article you need can be faxed right to your door (for a fee, of course).

For information on current events, many newspapers and magazines have online components. To find a comprehensive directory of media sources on the Net, including television, radio, newspaper, and magazine sites, start at Newslink. It might take a while to sift through all of the sources, but this is definitely one-stop shopping for news sites.

Although no document can possibly provide you with all of the resources available on the Internet, you have enough to get a terrific start, and below you will find links to more tips and tricks, including a categorized list of discipline-specific links, the last section of this tutorial. Happy surfing!

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