LibGuides: Library Is A Verb: Useful Internet Resources

Other Useful Internet Sites

Harris County Public Library Databases
There is some similarity to the database listing at Houston Public Library but they are not all the same.
Houston Public Library Databases
Use the power of your library card to the fullest. Many of the databases in this list can are used by universities. Many of them come by way of a consortia agreement that also includes databases for middle and elementary school age children. Houston Public makes cards available to anyone in Texas. Click the blue "i" icon for more information.
TexShare (Local Map)
TexShare is a consortia of public and academic libraries across Texas. This link shows you the participating TexShare libraries in a 20-mile radius from HCU. Many libraries offer a TexShare card. Go your local library and ask if your library participates. If so, you can get a card that will allow you to check out resources from any participating library in Texas. This is an excellent resource if you travel, as well.
WorldCat
WorldCat comes from OCLC, Inc. which our library (and many others) uses with cataloging records. The beauty of WorldCat is that you can input your zip code, do traditional title, author, or subject searches and see what library or libraries in your area carries the book. You only have to search one catalog!

Internet Search Engines, Web Site Organizers

Academic Index
Academic Index is a scholarly academic search engine access only websites previously selected by librarians, teachers, and library and educational consortia. Academic Index was created by and ins maintained by Dr. Michael Bell, former chair of the Texas Association of School Librarians.

The links below only scratch the surface of the information in the world today. Google would have us believe they have indexed the world. They have not. For more information, go to Google or Bing and search "invisible web" and explore the possibilities.

Blekko
Blekko is a different type of search engine and uses a forward slash to sort your results. You can even do add a /rank after any result to see how Blekko ranked your search results. You can see a demo at http://vimeo.com/14593120.
Complete Planet
Search engine. There are hundreds of thousands of databases that contain Deep Web content. CompletePlanet is the front door to these Deep Web databases on the Web and to the thousands of regular search engines — it is the first step in trying to find highly topical information. While useful, these no longer appears to be updated. Best recommended for humanities research.
Dogpile
Dogpile searches multiple databases simultaneously. Research is showing that overlap between the major search engines is minimal; therefore, in the interest of thoroughness, you need to search them all. Dogpile can help.
Hakia.com
The Internet is big on Web 2.0 resources emphasizing social networking (Facebook, Twitter). Many speculate that Web 3.0 is beginning. This will look at semantic options and make available. For instance, databases today do not understand that a poodle is a dog. Searches in the future will have more results available because of new rules. Hakia is one of the early attempts at improving search language.
Interent Search Engines
Need more search engines to locate what you need? This categorizes search engines by type/topic/discipline including a link and brief synopsis of the engine.
Internet Scout Report
This is more of a web organizer. The Scout Report's "About Us" page says, "Since 1994, the Scout Project has focused on developing better tools and services for finding, filtering, and presenting online information and metadata. Scout has access to highly educated content specialists and a world-class array of computer science and library resources. Our eclectic staff blends academics and professionals from Library Science and Computer Science, and students studying the sciences, social sciences and humanities."
iZito
This meta-search engine is similar to Yippy. Search results are clustered. Meta-engines search multiple search engines simultaneously.
Microsoft Academic Research
Microsoft Academic Search is a free academic search engine developed by Microsoft Research and provides many innovative ways to explore scientific publications, authors, conferences, journals, organizations and keywords, connecting millions of scholars, students, librarians, and other users. Current subjects: chemistry, computer science, engineering, physics, and mathematics.
OAIster
The OAIster® database is a union catalog of 25 million+ records representing open access digital resources. Today, OAIster includes resources from more than 1,100 contributors. Materials and include:

* Digitized (scanned) books, journal articles, newspapers, manuscripts,
* Digital text,
* Audio files (wav, mp3),
* Video files (mp4, QuickTime),
* Photographic images (jpeg, tiff, gif),
* Data sets (downloadable).
more...less...
You can read more about OAIster at the OCLC web site.
Virtual Learning Resource Center (VLRC)
The mission of the VLRC is to index thousands of the best academic information websites, selected by teachers and library professionals worldwide, in order to provide to students and teachers current, valid information for school and university academic projects! It is both a dedicated index of over 10,000 web pages maintained by humans, as well as a meta-search engine that includes information gleaned from the best research portals and academic and public library Internet subject guides.
Wolfram-Alpha
Wolfram-Alpha answers questions, does math, instantly gets facts, calculates, does unit conversions, and real-time quantitative data and statistics, creates plots and visualizations, and accesses vast scientific, technical, chemical, medical, health, business, financial, weather, geographic, dictionary, calendar, reference, and general knowledge—and much more.
Yovisto
Yovisto is a video search engine specialized on educational video content. It is helpful for students or others to looking for online lectures and educational video. Yovisto allows searching within videos. Furthermore, there are many other features as, e.g., tagging, adding comments, discussing uploading videos and organizing your videos, etc.

Google Scholar Search

Google Scholar Search Tips:

Google Scholar is an excellent resource for high schoolers with a serious bent for research. This is collegiate level.

Use double quotes to keeps words in phrases or names together (e.g., "Martin Luther" or "hermeneutical principles").
Use the + symbol to force a term to be included on a web page.
Use the hyphen (dash) symbol to exclude extraneous or redundant words.
Be aware that in some cases, articles available via Google Scholar may cost for access.
On your result list, if you look to the extreme left of the title, you will see tips as to the format of item:
* Book (may lead to a preview via Google books),
* Citation (These are articles which other scholarly articles have referred to, but which Google hasn't found online.)
* PDF (full text PDF article available)
Click Google Scholar Help for more information.

Primary Sources and Secondary Sources

As you do your research, keep in mind the following types of sources that you will need to consult. You will hear these terms used in univiersities quite frequently.

a. Primary resources. These include materials written by the person you are researching or "provide first-hand accounts and is sometimes unpublished".¹ They could possibly include newspapers or other documents written in the timeframe you are searching.

1) Humanities: letters, manuscripts, musical scores, images, etc.

2) Sciences: data.

b. Secondary sources. These interpret for the work of other people or events. They tend to synthesize or interpret primary materials.²

1) Books, textbooks

2) Journals.

c. Tertiary sources. This includes materials found in the reference area in the library. This is helpful to get an overview of your topic.

As you locate your resources, learn to develop a system for keeping track of your sources, quotes, and ideas. Put them in the citation style as directed by your professor.

¹ from UCLA Institute on Primary Sources, http://ipr.ues.gseis.ucla.edu/info/definition.html.

² ditto.