Online Research Links
(compiled by Caroline Stevermer, David Haseman and Robyn Fleming)

This is not (and cannot be!) an exhaustive list of all of the good information available on the internet, but it should help you get started with general research, and includes some of our favorite specialty sites, as well.

General Reference

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Boolean.pdf will help you get more out of your internet searching through the use of Boolean operators.

http://community.livejournal.com/little_details/781434.html has some great search engine tips.

http://worldcat.org searches holdings of libraries across the world (emphasis on US). Enter your zip code to find out if a library nearby owns the book you're after.

http://www.wikipedia.org/ is a free, searchable encyclopedia. Content is user-generated.

http://www.oed.com/ is the website of the Oxford English Dictionary. A subscription is required for use. If you attend or work at a university, you may have access to one through your library.

http://community.livejournal.com/little_details/profile links to a LiveJournal community called “Little Details,” and is actually a very specific kind of reference resource. Members use it to ask each other questions about tricky writing issues. With over 3,000 users watching the community, someone usually knows the answers.

Maps and Statistics

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html is the web address for the CIA World Factbook, which contains statistical information about modern countries. Useful for both introductory research for modern settings and worldbuilding-by-analogy.

http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/int/tpl/hme/MaHomePage.htm has some excellent maps of Europe.

http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/
climatenormals/climatenormals.pl?directive=prod_select&subrnum= has data about US climate normals.

Some of Caroline’s Research Links – British VisualReference

http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ “maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London.”

http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/ “over 90,000 images and sounds from the UK and beyond.”

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/picturelibrary/ features quality images dating back to 1897.

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp is the site for the National Portrait Gallery (just what it sounds like!).

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ hosts “accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.”

Some of David’s Research Links – Assorted Topics

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5402 links to the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: “a dictionary of buckish slang, university wit, and pickpocket eloquence”

http://nineplanets.org/ “is an overview of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of the planets, moons and other objects in our solar system.”

http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article_nc.php?id=59 provides “short summaries on various fighting disciplines from around the world.”

http://www.soundrangers.com/category-results.cfm?storeid=1&cat_id=0108 could be really useful next time you need to describe the sound of a joint dislocating. Soundrangers.com can be searched for reference sounds not involving bodily injury, as well!

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ is “the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet.”

Some of Robyn’s Research Links – Assorted Topics

http://www.palus.demon.co.uk/Sword_Stats.html gives measurements and weights for a variety of historical swords.

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/ is a comprehensive resource about “rhetorical terms current from antiquity through the Renaissance.”

http://sharkysoft.com/misc/vigenere/ will help you encode anything you like with a Vigenere Cipher.

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