Online Resources to Make Your Research Easier

Research is, you have to admit, drudgery. However, having some excellent and reliable sources can turn what was previously an extremely difficult experience into something much easier and faster. These sources, below, are various website that you may not know about that all offer quality and accurate information to help your research.

http://lii.org/ The Librarian's Internet Index, as it is called, is one of those trade secrets that give librarians the monopoly on reliable information. This website offers various links, sorted by subject and with a search function, that give excellent information, carefully monitored for accuracy. It also offers a weekly with other sites that can be used for research that anybody can subscribe to via email. Everything at this site is free.

http://www.ipl.org/ Similar to the LII, the IPL (Internet Public Library) is a site that has thousands, maybe more, of links that are sorted by topic. This site guides you to sources about your topic that have been assured to be reliable, and ready to use. There also is a search function if you don't have a specific topic. There are plans to merge the two sites, as both are among the top used library resources, but it has not happened yet.

http://aad.archives.gov/aad/ If you're looking for primary sources, there is no better place to search than in the national archives. Much of this, including the presidential libraries, is not yet online, but you don't really need a ton. Most of the important stuff has already been scanned in, or otherwise digitized, so that will give you excellent firsthand accounts of wars, important historical events, etc. If you need more, you can always look in the presidential libraries online, though access to those archives normally costs quite a bit. You can also get a lot of government archives at the Library of Congress digital archives area.

http://www.bartleby.com/reference/ This is the closest that you'll get to encyclopedia.com, below, but remain free. The free site archives hundreds of reference documents, and offers free access to all of the information. The only problem is that compared to the 3,500 sources that encyclopedia.com offers, you have a very small choice here at bartleby.com.

http://www.refdesk.com/ Refdesk.com is a site that, rather than posting links to reliable articles and resources, indexes whole sites and domains that are considered reliable. Therefore, you normally don't have to check whether the information is reliable yourself. However, it is so low on this list because the process to be considered 'reliable' is not that hard. However, you can be sure that if you search from this site, all of the sites that come up will be factual, whether accurate or not. So it will weed a lot from your search results.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/ Forget Wikipedia! Encyclopedia.com is an online encyclopedia that offers free access to more than 200,000 encyclopedia and dictionary entries, compiled from several print sources. All of the information is extensively categorized, meaning that it is very easy to find what you need, including a search function that is a second way to find what you need. Once you find what you are looking for, the articles are categorized by source, meaning that you can see where this information is coming from. This site is run by HighBeam Research, and purchasing a membership also gives you access to the HighBeam archives, which offer even more content. However, it's at the bottom because you have to pay to access it. A membership is only $300 a year and gives access to more than 60,000,000 archives. It's expensive, but includes archives from thousands of publications (3,500): reference books, dictionaries, magazines, encyclopedias, everything you could need. And, if you're really in a bind, you can get a 7 day free trial to write that one critical paper.