Do Background Reading
Sweet Search is an excellent source of librarian-approved articles selected from reliable newspapers, encyclopedias, magazines, and journals. Start here if you are searching a topic with recent media coverage.
Encyclopedia.com pulls sources from a variety of reliable reference books and periodicals. However, not all articles are free. Free articles are usually several years older, which should not make a difference if you have a historical or biographical topic. Start here if you need general information about your topic.
EasyBib.com recently created a search engine that allows students to sift through millions of user-created bibliographies. This time-saving feature allows students to see sources that others consulted about the same topics. Better yet, the search engine returns lists with a credibility rating for each article (Credible, Maybe Credible, Not Credible) and provides links to the online sources. One drawback is that the tool is still in Beta version, and students must use specific key terms to search. In other words, the engine functions more like a database query rather than a Google search, and it will NOT guess or predict what a user is searching for. Our advise: Use multiple configurations of search terms. Don't surrender if you type "fascism in Europe" and get few hits; play around with different wording: "fascist Europe," "Hungarian fascism," "fascism in Italy," etc. As always, students should log in before using EasyBib.
Wikipedia: We all know that Wikipedia provides information about practically anything. The downside is that the articles, although mostly credible, are written by multiple lay persons (non-experts), which makes the reliability and accuracy of most Wiki articles "questionable." Therefore, students are advised to use Wikipedia ONLY for preliminary research to learn more about their topics. Wikipedia articles should NEVER end up on the final bibliography or works cited page.
Looking for something else? Try Mr. Vega's Scholarly Websites, where you will find a limited but reliable list of websites for art, history, literature, medicine, music, humanities, philosophy, psychology, and rhetoric.
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