Research Tools

First Things First

All good research at the College begins at Swem Library, even if you are on line.  The Swem Home Page leads you to LION, of course, but it also has a rich compendium of research databases that will lead you to all kinds of resources, including other libraries all over the world.  Get to know what it has.

You might also want to look at Cornell University's Evaluating Web Sites to give you criteria and tools for understanding what you have found.

But if you can't find what you are looking for there, or you want to find what more is available on your topic, then the Web is your next stop.

Finding Your Way on the Web

The key to negotiating the web is finding what you want, and knowing what you find.  Every day there are more resources available for research.  Inevitably many of these resources are at best inadequate, and at worst downright wrong.

There are two ways of tracking down a topic on the web.  The first, is to visit any of a number of subject directories, search aids that are assembled by people, often in carefully organized hierarchical subject categories.  The broadest, and best known, are Yahoo and Lycos.  Others are more specific, and thus more useful beginning points if you know what area you may be looking in.  Voice of the Shuttle is the best place to begin in the humanities; you can easily search the site.  The American Studies Web at the Crossroads Site is another good beginning site, though there you have to cull the material yourself.  And don't forget the good old encyclopedia: "Britannica.com combines its Web reviews and reference materials in a clear, effective way."  This quotation comes from one of my favorite resources, the New York Cyber Times Navigator: the guide to the web the New York Times uses in the newsroom.  It is well worth getting to know, and is constantly updated.

The second avenue into the web is with a search engine.  As the term implies, these resources search the web digitally by using keywords you supply.  The result can be a higher ratio of "noise," or sites that have no bearing on your query.  On the other hand, mastering each site's search format can yield very good information.

These are the ones that I find are the most valuable places to begin.

If you want to find out more about search engines, you can begin by looking at Swem's Guide to the Web.