Step by Step Guide to Doing Research

using the internet to find other sources

The Internet provides access to a wealth of free information resources. You may use a variety of popular search engines, directories, or selective web guides. Boston College Libraries' Help By Subject pages often include selected websites for specific subject areas.

For more information about search engines, current engines, and tips on using search engines, see Search Engine Watch. Also, Finding Information: Search Engines.

Popular Search Engines and Directories:

  • Google Scholar -- Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
  • Google U.S. Government Search -- Google U.S.Government Search searches a subset of the above engine, limiting its search to U.S. federal and state government sites.
  • AltaVista -- With AltaVista Advanced Search you can search for exact phrases, search within the title of an HTML document, search for documents that contain a link to a particular URL, and use wildcards. The advanced search allows the use of Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT, NEAR).
  • Image and Multimedia Search Engines--The Bapst Art Library Resource Guide includes a variety of search engines and tools to locate images.

Selective Web Guides

  • INFOMINE -- Librarian built, INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources. These resources are selected for their relevance to faculty, students, and research staff at a university level.
  • Internet Public Library -- Internet Public Library is a collections of over 40,000 Internet resources, hand picked, organized and described by librarians and library students.
  • Librarians' Index to the Internet -- Librarians' Index to the Internet is a directory of Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries.
  • Scout Report Archives -- "Scout Report Archives is from the editors of the Scout Report at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Librarians and educators have selected more than 10,000 Web sites for their value to the education community."

 

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