Pathfinders & "How To's"

Archive-It

The Internet Archive offers a subscription service for entities that want to archive special collections and make them searchable, either publicly or privately. Newly added, is a full-text search feature that not only queries the public special collections but also collections in the Internet Archive. While the index isn't as current as the index for the Wayback Machine, it's now possible to search archived Web pages as well as other archived file formats by keyword. Searching and displaying the results is free of charge.

British Biographies and Profiles

Britannia.com, LLC, a privately held company incorporated in Delaware, provides biographical information about select people in British history. Coverage includes many British monarchs, prime ministers and authors. Many articles consist of about a one-page summary, but some run only a paragraph or two. A feature entitled "Great Scotsmen" provides an overview of historic figures in Scottish history, but the individual biographies are not in-depth. Since none of the biographies reference source materials, it's a good idea to verify the information you find here. (Do not confuse source with Britannica.com.)

BookRags Study Guides

BookRags describes itself as "one of the premier online sites for classical study guides, book notes, eBooks, and essays." Covering topics in English, History, Math and Science, BookRags provides study guides, essays, literature summaries, biographies, electronic copies of classical texts, and more. You may search or browse its extensive collection of study materials.

British History Online

The Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust provide free access to a digital library of business directories, dictionaries, maps, tax documents and full-text monographs covering medieval and early modern times. Find the journals of the House of Commons and House of Lords covering approximately 1547 to 1832. You can also search for references to people. Keyword searching supports truncation, exact phrases or synonyms. You can also limit a query to a specific source.

CCH Business Owner's Toolkit

Publisher CCH Incorporated offers this free site for business owners, especially those with small businesses. Find the CCH Small Business Guide, a collection of practical articles on various aspects of planning and running a small business. Other sections of the site provide model forms and checklists (Small Business Tools), employee training (HR Tools), and advice about business issues (Ask Alice).

Nolo.com Business Resources

Learn about LLCs and corporations, small business financing, record keeping, accounting, and taxes -- everything you need to start and run a smart, successful small business. Below you'll find users' top picks on small business, LLCs and corporations.

CiteSeer x (Beta)

Penn State's School of Information Sciences and Technology hosts CiteSeer, a search engine for finding literature in computer and information science. Search by keyword to find documents or citations. Documents contain an abstract or summary as well as links to other documents that cite to the matching document and related documents. You may also download the full-text of matching documents.

British Country Profiles from the BBC

BBC News offers country profiles containing many useful facts for students, journalists, and researchers. Features include sound files for the country's national anthem and important events, a timeline of key events, biographical information about its leaders, and information about the media.

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

Available in print (5 volumes) and on the Web in English and Maori, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography contains biographical information about more than 3000 people, active before 1960, but who are no longer living. Many biographies include portraits and other images. Citations to select additional information appear at the end of each article. The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage makes this information available to the public free of charge.

Direct Search

Gary Price compiles this list of annotated links to specialty search tools. Direct Search provides links to the sites so that researchers may access and search them directly.

Dissertations Database

The Center for Research Libraries offers a database of uncataloged dissertations from countries other than Canada and the United States. Search by author, title, English language translation of the title, subject, country, institution, language or year to find a bibliographic description of the dissertation. Searching the British spelling produces the best results.

Intute: Formerly EEVL: The Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing

For scholarly researchers, this British site provides access to information in engineering, mathematics and computing. Find a database containing thousands of descriptions of specialty Web sites in these subjects, a search engine (EESE) that queries the content of more than 250 subject-related full-text e-journals, and several special databases, including Recent Advances in Manufacturing (RAM) bibliographic database, the SearchLT database (teaching and learning resources) and the Offshore Engineering Information Service. For similar invisible web resources, also try TechXtra.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Virginia Tech University Libraries makes available a database of graduate theses and dissertations from several institutions in the U.S. and around the world. A useful feature is the ability to "find similar documents" to those in the search results list. Full-text dissertations and theses appear in PDF.

Google Scholar

Use Google to search through scholarly literature, case law and patents. Sources include: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.

Gold Rush

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries provides a search tool - Gold Rush, for finding electronic journals. Search by keyword, subject, or title. Or, browse by title or Library of Congress subject heading. Searchers can also limit retrieval by free or peer-reviewed sources. Journal records provide the Web address, bibliographic information, publication frequency and start/end dates, and contact information.

INFOMINE

INFOMINE catalogs information sources of superior substance and quality. All entries offer the site name and URL as well as a description and links to subject terms for related resources. Search all INFOMINE databases simultaneously, or query or browse individual databases.  The site adds resources daily and provides an RSS feed for those who wish to stay on top of new sites.

Internet Public Library

The Internet Public Library helps people find quality resources on the Internet. Browse or search its various collections. It categorizes the subject collections according to the Dewey classification system. Also find numerous subject research guides and research tips.

ISI Highly Cited Researchers

Thomson ISI offers this free database of bibliographic references to frequently cited authors. Search by author or institution name to find a profile, which might include contact and personal information, education, honors/awards, affiliations, memberships, research interests, research grants, and citations to published works. This is a good starting point when searching for experts, particularly in the sciences.

ITI InfoCentral

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) and ProQuest join to provide database access to ITI publications. ITI InfoCentral lets you search, browse or preview more than 44,000 full-text news reports, articles, interviews or critical reviews about the companies, products and people in the library, electronic information services, and digital content industries. Publications in the database currently include Computers in Libraries, Customer Relationship Management: CRM, EContent, EMedia/EventDV, Information Today, KMWorld, Link-Up, Multimedia & Internet @ Schools, Online and Searcher. You may display the abstract and bibliographic citation for free. Or purchase the full-text and display it in various formats, including PDF.

Librarians' Index to the Internet

This excellent site categorizes high quality Internet resources by subject. Browse or search the site to find thousands of resources on hundreds of topics.

Michigan eLibrary (MeL) Best of the Internet

Librarians with the State Library of Michigan select and categorize high quality Web sites. Each category listing begins with government sponsored resources, and then proceeds with non-profit and research sites, etc. This is a very useful tool for finding a few good research starting points.

The Online Speech Bank

An Assistant Professor of Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Tyler provides an alphabetical index of speeches available online. Arranged by author or title, the index indicates full-text and audio availability. It also ranks the top 100 speeches and provides a collection of 9/11 rhetoric. You must know what you are looking for to use this site. There is no search feature other than your browser's find command.

PolicyLibrary.com

This site offers a database of public policy research papers by U.K. and U.S. organizations. It also provides research guides on a variety of topics including the Internet (intellectual property, privacy, freedom of speech), the European Monetary Union, economics, and more.

Scout Report, The

A collection of what the editors of Scout Report consider the best Internet resources. The site arranges entries by subjects and also offers a search feature.

Student Writing and Research Resources

Students in the University Writing Program and the Columbia College of Arts & Science at The George Washington University blog about research and writing resources. It seems they are learning a lot. Topics covered include plagiarism and integrating sources, citation styles, research management tools, and using Web 2.0 sources. The site could use an RSS feed, but the content looks great.

TIME Archive

TIME Magazine offers this archive of more than 266,000 articles dating back to the inaugural issue published in March 1923. You may browse the archive by topic, or search it by keyword. Results usually include the title of the article, the publication date, and partial lead paragraph. Full-text articles are available free of charge to TIME subscribers. You may subscribe online, but access is not immediate.

The Webliography: Internet Subject Guides

Louisiana State University offers a collection of excellent subject guides covering a variety of topics including business, engineering, government, humanities, science, and social science.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a collection of free open-content textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides and manuals that anyone may edit, whether logged into the system or not. In other words, those who use this resource will have to take care regarding the accuracy of the information they find. Also, if a book isn't instructional (e.g., fiction), it isn't included in the collection.

The project, which has been in existence since 2003, covers many subjects. A sampling of instructional materials available includes Introduction to Paleoanthropology, Algorithms, Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, How To Assemble A Desktop PC, Managing Groups and Teams, Physics Study Guide and Kings and Queens of England.

The World War I Document Archive

11 August 2004. Brigham Young University hosts a massive index to documents pertaining to the first World War. Covering conventions, treaties and other official papers as well as diaries, personal accounts, photographs and more, the archive categorizes and provides the text of, or a link to, electronic copies of the documents. You can search the archive by keyword.

Zimmerman's Research Guide

EDITOR'S CHOICE. Lawyer-librarian Andrew Zimmerman authors this extensive guide to finding legal and factual information. Hosted by LexisNexis via its LexisONE portal, the guide provides brief explanations about specific aspects of legal, business and factual research. You can search the guide by selecting the option for querying the entire LexisONE site. You can also browse it using the comprehensive index provided on the front page of the guide. Entries include linked cross-references for finding related information.