HOW TO FIND HIGH-QUALITY MATERIALS Five tables from the textbook have been adapted to make it easy for you to find good information quickly. Where to Find Materials | Material Needed | Likely Sources | Background | - Encyclopedias are good sources for a broad view of a subject. In a library, consult encyclopedias such as The Harvard Guide to Women's Health and Encyclopedia of the American Military.
- The most popular encyclopedia on the Internet is the vast, volunteer-maintained Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org), but because it is frequently hit by malicious vandals, you should always doublecheck its information against other sources. For other encyclopedias, consult RefDesk.com (www.refdesk.com) and the Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/ref32.00.00).
| Images & Video | | Books | - Your library's electronic catalog lists the books it has on your topic. If it doesn't have a book that you want, it can probably borrow it from another library for you.
- To view copies of pages in books, go to A9 (www.a9.com), click on Books, and use keywords and phrases to search for relevant pages. Or visit Google Books (www.books.google.com).
- Visit Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org), click on Reading Room, and select the type of publication that you want (book, magazine, etc.)
- If you want to buy a book, you can visit a bookstore or order on the Internet via on-line stores like Amazon.com (www.amazon.com/).
| Articles | - For the full text of newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, the best selection is likely to be found on the electronic databases licensed by your college library and available only to its patrons. Check with a librarian for details.
- For scholarly articles, visit Google Scholar (scholar.google.com).
- Visit Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org), click on Reading Room, and select the type of publication that you want (book, magazine, or newspaper).
| Recent News | | Television Reports | | Definitions | - For word definitions, pronunciation, synonyms and history, go to your campus library and consult general dictionaries such as Oxford English Dictionary or specialized dictionaries such as Random House American Sign Language Dictionary.
- On the Internet, the quickest method is to use Google (www.google.com) and search for the word. At the top of the search results, the word will appear in a bar. Next to the word, click on the option "Definition."
- Other Web options: Consult RefDesk.com (www.refdesk.com) for access to several dictionaries. Bartleby.com (www.bartleby.com/) offers the American Heritage Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus (for synonyms). Some sites, such as Encarta World English Dictionary (www.dictionary.msn.com) offer audio clips of the correct pronunciation.
| Government Information | - The best starting point for information from local, state, and federal government is FirstGov.gov (www.firstgov.gov).
- For laws and statistics, go to LibrarySpot (www.libraryspot.com/). Under "Reference Desk," choose "Government."
- For activities and laws of the U. S. Congress, visit THOMAS (thomas.loc.gov).
| Organizations | - For listings of organizations dedicated to causes and issues, go to Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com). Select "Society & Culture," and then "Issues and Causes." Choose a category, and you will find lists of organizations.
- Go to Google Directory (directory.google.com). Click on "Society" and then choose "Organizations."
| Cultures | - For information about cultures and ethnic groups, your library has reference works such as Africana and The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America.
- On the Internet, visit Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com). Select in succession, "Society and Culture," "Cultures and Groups," "Cultures," and then a particular group.
| Experts | - On your campus and in your community, interview local experts.
- On the Internet, you can conduct e-mail interviews with experts. Some Web pages cite experts and give their e-mail address.
- Visit Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com). Click on "Reference," and then "Ask an Expert."
| Colleges | - To enhance a speech with the experiences and observations of students on other campuses, browse on-line campus newspapers. For listings, visit directory.google.com and follow this sequence: News > Colleges and Universities > Newspapers > United States.
| Almanacs & Maps | - Libraries have almanacs (containing statistical data) and atlases and gazetteers (containing maps and geographical information).
- On the Internet, visit LibrarySpot (www.libraryspot.com/) and choose an appropriate heading under "Reference Desk."
| Biographies | - For information on the lives of famous people, your library has biographical dictionaries such as Distinguished Asian Americans and Women in World History.
- On the Internet, visit LibrarySpot (www.libraryspot.com/) and select "Biographies" for several good links.
| Quotations | - Your library should have collections such as The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women.
- On the Internet, Bartleby.com (www.bartleby.com/) lets you search two excellent anthologies of quotations (Simpson's and Bartlett's), the King James Bible, and the entire works of Shakespeare.
- For Web sites that specialize in quotations, visit Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com) and select "Reference" and then "Quotations."
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[Back to Top] Electronic Search Options | Sample Research Question: "Why do some women stay in relationships in which they are physically abused?" | Option | Example | Discussion | Keywords | women abuse physical | If your research returns too many pages, add keywords. If you get too few pages, reduce the number of keywords. | Plus sign | +women +abuse +physical | A plus sign in front of a word means that all documents retrieved must contain that word—a good way to trim the number of hits. In this example, a document must contain all three words. | Minus sign | +women +abuse +physical
- war -prison -work | Minus signs exclude pages that contain these words. In this case, the researcher doesn’t want information about violence against women in war, prison, and the workplace. | Phrase | "domestic violence against women" | Using double-quotation marks creates a searchable phrase. Although often highly fruitful, this option will omit relevant pages that don’t use the exact phrase. | Wild card | +abus* +women +physical | A wild card (represented by a symbol such as an asterisk) finds words that start the same but end differently. In this example, abus* will yield documents that contain "abuse," "abusive," "abused," and "abuser." | AND, OR | violence AND (women OR wives) | These options permit fine-tuning. Note that parentheses allow the use of synonyms. | NOT | women AND violence NOT workplace NOT office | Excluding the words "workplace" and "office" would be useful if one did not want documents about violence at work. | Note: A few of the options may not be available in some programs. |
[Back to Top] Internet Search Tools | Search Engines | Google
www.google.com | A fast and comprehensive search engine, Google is the first option that many searchers try. Its "Advanced Search" feature is worth learning and using. | Yahoo
www.yahoo.com | The Yahoo search engine can search for text, images, video, and audio. | A9
www.a9.com | A9 permits you to limit a search to pages of books, or to entries in Wikipedia (a large online encyclopedia). | AltaVista
www.altavista.com | Select AltaVista’s "Advanced Search" for highly sophisticated features such as "NEAR" (for example, "Florida NEAR hurricane" helps to narrow a search). | Clusty
www.clusty.com | Not as well known as Google, Clusty can sometimes find material that Google misses. | Subject Directories | Yahoo Directory
dir.yahoo.com | Select a broad category and "drill down" to narrower and narrower subcategories. For example, to find documents on CPR, select these headings in succession: Health > First Aid > CPR. You can also use the search box to look for directory categories. | About
www.about.com | Each "channel" on this Web site is hosted by a man or woman who is identified as a guide, or expert. | Librarians' Index to the Internet
www.lii.org | The librarians in California and Washington state who maintain this index don’t select many sites, but the ones they choose are high-quality. | Google Directory
directory.google.com | Many users of the Google search engine are unaware of this powerful directory. | Infomine
infomine.ucr.edu | Good sites and reliable annotations areprovided by librarians at several colleges. | Collections of Full-Text Articles | Yahoo Full Coverage
http://news.yahoo.com/fc | For current events, Yahoo News provides well-chosen packets of newspaper and magazine articles. | FindArticles.com
www.findarticles.com | This free online service searches for the complete text of articles in more than 300 magazines and journals. | Magazine Portal
www.magportal.com/ | This portal leads to thousands of magazine articles on a wide variety of subjects. | LibrarySpot
www.libraryspot.com | Under Shortcuts, click on "Search full-text articles." Follow the links to the websites of many different publications. | Books and Book Pages | A9.com
www.A9.com | Before searching with keywords, put a check in the box for "Books." For some books, you are offered a chance to see the actual page or pages where your keywords appear. For other books, you can click on the book title and sometimes have an option to click on "Search Inside the Book." | The Online Books Page
digital.library.upenn.edu/books/index.html | The University of Pennsylvania provides links to over 20,000 books that are available on the Internet. | Google Book Search
www.books.google.com | For some books, you are allowed to see a page or pages where your keywords appear. | Expert Sites | Yahoo Directory
dir.yahoo.com | For links to sites that feature advice and opinions of experts, select "Reference" and then "Ask an Expert." | Ask the Experts
www.refdesk.com/expert.html | RefDesk.com gives links to experts in many different fields. | Google Answers
answers.google.com | You can pay a fee for expert advice, although sometimes you can find the answer at no charge by searching through the site’s database of archived comments. | Discussion Forums | Google Groups
groups.google.com | On hundreds of different topics, people throughout the world everyday post messages on discussion forums. To find out what has been written on a given topic, use keywords to search the archives. | Yahoo! Groups
groups.yahoo.com | These discussion forums are similar to the groups accessed by Google. You can search the archives of any group. | Blogs and Vlogs | Google Blog Search
blogsearch.google.com | Blog Search finds keywords in blogs in the same way that the Google search engine finds keywords in Web sites. | Technorati
technorati.com | This site not only permits searches of blogs – it also lists the most popular blogs and the most-discussed news, books, and movies of the day. |
[Back to Top] Free Multimedia Materials on the Internet | For classroom speeches, students may download and use multimedia files from Web sites without getting permission because they are engaged in a school project -- a one-time, educational, noncommercial use that is permitted under copyright law. For many career and community presentations, however, speakers must seek and receive permission before using Web materials. (See Chapter 7 for details about copyright.) | Web site | Options | Google
images.google.com | Click on Advanced Image Search, which permits you to specify file size (small, medium, large). | Yahoo
www.yahoo.com | Choose Images, Video, or Audio. | Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.org | An adjunct of Wikipedia, the Commons has thousands of photographs, diagrams, and video clips. | Ixquick
www.ixquick.com | Choose the Pictures button before searching. | Librarians' Index to the Internet
www.lii.org | In the search box, type "photos" or "graphics." | Digital Librarian
www.digital-librarian.com | Click on "Images" for a comprehensive list of photos, most of them historical. Also try "Audio, Video, Multimedia." |
[Back to Top] Evaluations of Websites | Directories with Rated Sites | These directories provide links to Websites that are ranked according to quality. | - Librarians' Index to the Internet (www.lii.org) selects only reliable sites and often appends an evaluation, which you can reach by clicking on the "More info" icon.
- Infomine (infomine.ucr.edu/) features Websites that have been evaluated by librarians at several top U.S. colleges. Look for "Browse Options."
| Selective Directories | These directories don't assign a rank, but all their links are to sites that are considered worth visiting. | | Misinformation Alerts | These services try to expose scams, quackery, and phony news-not only in Websites, but in society at large. | - Quackwatch (www.quackwatch.com) is edited by Stephen Barrett, M.D., former professor of health education at Pennsylvania State University.
- The Skeptic's Dictionary (www.skepdic.com) is edited by Robert T. Carroll, professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College.
- About (www.about.com) has many articles that can be retrieved by searching for "Net hoaxes" and/or "Scams."
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