Research Resources

Research and Writing Resources

SEARCH ENGINES

• • Google. Obviously.  For most of us this is the default, and perhaps only search engine we use. However, it is worth trying the same search in several different search engines, especially given the nature of Google searches. Compare results.
  • Google Scholar - less obviously.
  • DogPile - is a different kind of search engine from Google altogether. Google uses an algorithm to sort through billions of individual entries, i.e. webpages, while DogPile is a metasearch engine that fetches results from multiple different search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
  • Corpus of Contemporary American English - potentially powerful tool to help you zero in on a particular search term in magazines, news outlets and academic sources. At a minimum, it's fun to play with.
  • Journal Table of Contents Alert   If you've found an academic journal you just can't wait to read new issues of, this is for you! Sign up to be alerted each time a new issues comes out.

RESEARCH TOOLS 

• • Zotero - a powerful organizational tool, this allows you to organize and annotate your sources in addition to generating citations and bibliographies in a wide range of formats. It grabs bibliographic information from webpages for you, and formats both in-text and end of text citations. Zotero is more flexible than some other tools like it. It's also free.
  • BibUp - If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, this is a fantastic app which allows you to either enter the ISBN number of a book or scan its barcode and then upload your citations to Zotero. At present, it only works with Firefox.
  • Mendeley. This has many of the same features as Zotero and perhaps more.
  • Refworks - like Zotero, Refworks allows you to organize and annotate sources. It also grabs bibliographic information from webpages and formats both in-text and end of text citations.It is available to GW Students through the Gelman Library homepage.
  • del.ici.ous - use this to organize your online research. It allows you to bookmark and arrange websites into folders for easy retrival.
  • Pocket - this tool allows you to save articles you've found online to read later. Handy!
  • Google Translator Toolkit - this can handle large texts.
  • Babelfish Translator - translate from and to English from a number of languages.
  • Prezi - not a bibliographic tool, but useful for presentations; more flexible and dynamic than Powerpoint.
  • Jing - a wonderful tool for annotating screenshots and creating screencasts. (Note
  • Omeka - "Omeka.net is web-publishing platform that allows anyone with an account to create or collaborate on a website to display collections and build digital exhibitions. No technical skills or special server requirements are necessary."
  • DiRT - The DiRT here stands for Digital Research Tools. In addition to offering a variety of useful tools, you will be using this site to complete one of your hybrid assignments.
  • TAPoR - Text Analysis Portal for Research, which like DiRT is a gateway to a variety of potentially helpful research, data collection and analysis tools.

NEWS 

• The New York Times
• New York Times Archive - Articles from 1851-1980 in PDF format. Before 1922 the articles are free.
• Washington Post.
• Washington Post Archives - Articles from 1977 to the present.
• The Los Angeles Times
• Chicago Tribune - This one has articles (thru 1987) and provides pdf's of how they originally appeared in the paper. Also, one-click access gives you the whole issue of that paper.
• Proquest Historical Newspapers - Includes New York Times, Post and others, and (for most titles) has pdfs of pages, and if you click "Page-view clickable" it gives you access to pdfs of the whole issue of the paper, where it is available.
• Link to most of the newspapers of Great Britain, including the Times of London and The Guardian.
• BBC News
• Newslink Index
• The Drudge Report - because sometimes you need to look at news that may or may not be the real thing.
• The Onion - satirical news.
• Fox News
• CNN News
• MSNBC

REFERENCE - BASIC AND OTHERWISE

• • • Direct link to Gelman .
    • Merriam-Webster - follow them in Twitter.  No, really.
    • OneLook Dictionaries - Searches over one hundred general and special subject dictionaries.
    • Your Dictionary.com . One stop shopping for dictionaries and on-line grammars for just about any language you can think of.
    • An On-line Thesaurus ,and another , and, for comparison's sake, another from 1911.
    • The Literary Encyclopedia. Still under construction, but this is a scholarly, vetted, and thorough undertaking. Well worth a look.
    • Library of Congress
    • Voice of the Shuttle. I cannot say enough good things about this site. It spans the length and breadth of Humanities. If you are doing research you cannot afford not to check out this site.
    • The Internet Archive. Moving images, texts, audio and webpages - this a an amazing storehouse of information.
    • Digital Archive of Letters, Manuscripts, and Ephemera. This collection spans five centuries and can be searched either by the usual author/keyword route or by category (among them: arts, daily life, science, travel, war and politics). Great place if you are looking for primary source material.
    • Encyclopedia Mythica
    • The Internet Classics Archive.
    • The Bible Gateway. In case you need citation information, a searchable version.
    • The Koran. Again, a searchable version.
    • The Works of the Bard. Complete works and a full text search engine.
    • Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. An on-line searchable version of the old standard.

SOURCES FOR IMAGES AND FILM CLIPS

• • Internet Archive/Moving Images - Thousands of free films and videos broken down by genre.
  • The Prelinger Archive - A subsection of the Internet Archive. Both are searchable by keyword and time period.
  • The Wayback Machine - Archive of webpages from 1996-present.
  • Vanderbilt Television News Archive - "[T]he world's most extensive and complete archive of television news. We have been recording, preserving and providing access to television news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968."
  • Life/Time - A full archive of their photos.
  • Life/Time - Another way to access the archive of photos from Life magazine.
  • AP Images - these are not always free to download, but they can be viewed at no cost. AP also maintains an audio archive as well.
  • The FILM Archives - Good site for film clips. Again, not free to download, but clips are viewable.
  • Another part of the Internet Archive - strictly publicly available film clips.

E-TEXTS GALORE!!!!!!
Please remember that most of these resources will point you toward older texts that are now in the public domain. Full texts of more recent publications in most cases need to be obtained through the library (as either hardcopy or e-books) or purchased. Google Books *does not* provide you with the full text in most cases is is *not* an acceptable method of accessing texts. It *is* a good tool for identifying texts however.

• • Project Gutenberg HomePage. An ever expanding storehouse of on-line texts. Need a copy of the Declaration of Independence or The Constitution? This is the place.
  • Columbia's Bartleby Project. Need a quick reference at 3:00 AM?? Gelman shut tight?? Never fear. Between Bartleby and Gutenberg you might well find it.
  • Internet Archive National Emergency Library    A collection of books, both scholarly and popular, old and recent, made available during COVID.
  • The University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center and much much more!!
  • An Online Library of Literature. Redundant title, but it fills in gaps in the previous collections.
  • And if it's French literature you want, c'est un bon lieu pour vous! The University of Chicago's ARTFLproject.

CITATION, USAGE, AND GRAMMAR SITES

• Writing Commons. A comprehensive, and ever-growing, resource for all things Writing and Research. We will be turning to this site often throughout the semester.
• Citation Style Guides from Gelman
• Style Guides and Writing Tips
• How to cite fan sources
• A detailed resource for citing social media using the most recent (8th edition) of MLA.
• A site to help you with APA format.
• Additional resource for citing social media in APA.
• Quick Guide to Chicago Style - please note, there are two different options here (Notes and Bibliography and Author/Date). Please make sure you consult the appropriate style.
• Harvard Citation Style is often used in publications originating in the UK.
• English Grammar - good source for basic grammar information.
• A list of Grammar Sites from Yahoo to get started.
• Common Errors in English. A straightforward, alphabetized list of do's and don'ts.
• Grammar Bytes. This one is interactive!
• Twenty-Five Common Writing Errors. The title is self explanatory.
• On-line, full-text version of Strunk and White's still handy little volume.
• Guide to Grammar & Writing
• The Writing Center at GW. In addition to information about the center itself, the Resources and Services section includes information on citations, grammar, and research, as well as information on Virtual Cafes.

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