CONDUCTING ELECTRONIC RESEARCH

Once you have a topic for your research you're ready to find out what's "out there." Strictly speaking, academic research is the search for information based on reliable sources. [Be sure you have read the lectures titled "How Can You Tell?" and "Trustworthy Sources."]

To get started you can go to any of the on-line sources which are available to help you with your research. This semester, as you develop your research paper you'll be expected to avail yourself of the following tools. (The following list is set up to provide you with direct links so you can just click on them to go there right now. If any of them fail, please let me know).

• The Citation Guidelines The guidelines of the Modern Language Association explain how to properly cite sources in your paper.

• FIRST SEARCH, is an electronic information service comprised of ten databases provided by the University of Texas, which helps you locate books, citations to articles, and more on a variety of subjects.

• The Library of Congress...need I say more. This is a terrific source.

• The Internet Public Library--a new effort aimed at becoming THE on-line library.

• NASA's library of scientific, technical, and management information.

• Project Bartleby Columbia University's on-line reference source.

• The IBM Digital Library

• Standford University's -on-line digital library.

• U.C.Berkeley's Technical Report service.

• An on-line public access vendor (there may be a charge for this, so be careful when you log in.)

• On-line magazines from various sources.

• A searchable guide to over 500 magazines.

• A source for electronic journals.

• Yahoo's index to on-line magazines.

• The New York Times

• Science Daily, a newspaper that reports on the latest findings and developments in science.