14th COMPUTERS AND WRITING CONFERENCE

The Internet as a Research Tool: Dispelling the Myths

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Research Links Site

Table of Contents:

Search Engines and Indexes

There are a variety of search services available on the Web; here are just a few links to some popular sites and resources. To improve the possibilities of your search, you should look at the "help" or "search tips" pages that each search service makes available. Also, check out the indexes of information listed by subject, which often exerpts some of the best information.

• Search Engine Watch, interesting instructions and assistance to the various search engines
• Choosing a Web search engine or subject guide
• Netscape's Search Page (what you get when you click the "search" button in the Netscape browser)
• Yahoo
• Lycos
• Infoseek Guide
• Excite
• WebCrawler
• HotBot

Other Useful Search Tools and Indexes

While these sources don't have the same amount of information available as the big search devices noted above, they offer some particularly useful starting points.

• The WWW Virtual Library Sort of like an encyclopedia of the World Wide Web, this is a good place to turn for general Web research on almost any category.
• The Voice of the Shuttle An excellent site for research in the humanities.
• Deja News This is a search service for newsgroups-- you can look up subjects, newsgroups, the names of folks who posted the messages, etc.
• Liszt, the mailing list directo ry A list of a lot of different mailing lists or "listservs."
• American Universities on the Web
• The Argus Clearinghouse (critical list of best Web sources, covers many subject areas)

General Reference Materials

Dictionaries, encyclopedias, other sorts of handy references you might have in paper form on your desk, etc.

• On-Line Reference at Carnegie-Mellon University. Nice collection that contains a lot of the same sources mentioned below.
• The New York Times Cybertimes Links You have to be an online subscriber to the New York Times to use this, but that's free and this site just might make that woth it to the researcher.
• Hypertext Webster Interface is a dictionary and thesaurus on-line.
• One-Look Dictionaries Especially useful for technical terms since it searches up to 76 different specialized dictionaries.
• ARTFL Project: ROGET'S Thesaurus Search Form Hypertext version of Roget's Thesaurus version 1.02 (supplemented: July 1991), which is in the "public domain."
• CIA Publications and Handbooks. Yes, it's that CIA. Besides being an agency for spying, the CIA also has a great database with information on every country in the world-- maps, diagrams, and other publicly available info.
• Internet Reference Resources from Humanities & Social Sciences, University of Florida

Links to Libraries and Related Sites

Of course, one of the points of the presentation at C&W 98 is to stike a balance between Internet sources and more traditional library sources. Many libraries are on line; here are a few examples of useful library oriented sites.

• The Library of Congress Home Page Besides the catalog of the Library of Congress, this page also has lots of great links to info about the Federal Government.
• Internet Public Library
• Libweb, Library Servers on the WWW This site has links to lots and lots of library homepages-- maybe yours is here too.
• Colorado State University's Online Writing Center's Library Resources Page An excellent resource for library research on the Web designed with students in mind.
• American Library Association Home Page
• University of Florida's Smathers Libraries Homepage The library home page for the institution hosting C&W 98.
• The St. Louis Public Library
• Project Guttenberg Home Page This is the homepage for the ambitious project to make all sorts of texts available online. It isn't a library page, but I wasn't really sure where else to put it.

Citing Internet Sources 

It's difficult to provide definitive guidelines for citing the materials that you find on the Internet because the "rules" for citation of on-line materials are still being developed and debated. But in general, you should try to include as much of the "traditional" material as possible (author, title, publiser, date of publication, etc.) and two addtional pieces of information: the URL (a Web page address) or other Internet location information and the date on which you accessed the information.

Here are a few of Web pages that explain these guidelines in more detail:

• MLA Style Guide (the official one)
• Columbia Online Style: MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources Developed by Janice Walker at the University of South Florida, this format has been endorsed by the Alliance for Computers and Writing.
• Columbia Online Style: APA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources. Same folks as above; a format for APA.
• The Purdue Online Writing Lab's "Documenting Electronic Sources" Page is very complete in its inclusion of various style sheets for citing electronic sources.
• intained by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, this lengthy list provides links to a wide variety of resources for citing on-line research.
• Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet. This Web page by Andrew Harnack and Gene Kleppinger explores some of the challenges of developing rules for citing sources.

Testing Credibility of Web Resources

Finding information on the Web and figuring out how to cite it is one thing; figuring out whether or not the information is credible is something else entirely. In fact, this not easy to explain issue is essentially the topic of this C&W 98 workshop. Here are some links to web pages that might help test the credibility of your Web resources:

• Some tips on credibility from The St. Martin's Guide to Writing Online
• Bruce Leland's "Evaluating Web Resources" page
• Jana Edwards, Tips for Evaluating a World Wide Web Search
• Michael O'Conner's Evaluating Internet Sources Page This site is a collection of links to other pages about credibility on the web.
• Striking It Rich, or Finding Fool's Gold? Thinking Critically about Web Information [An open discussion forum focusing on how librarians in various types of libraries--academic, public, school, special--guide users to think critically about information retrieved using the World Wide Web.]

Rhetoric and Writing Links Especially for Students

These are links to resources that are a little bit different from the sort of thing available at on-line writing labs and writing centers. Some of these pages are directed more at professional writers; some of these pages represent other sorts of research resources.

• Craig Branham's "A Student's Guide to WWW Research" This is a very handy site that is essentially a web-based course for conducting web research.
• Nick Carbone's Tips for Web Research Page
• Inkspot While geared to "professional" writers in some ways, there are lots of great links and tips for just about anybody.
• Writer's Resources for just about any type of writer.
• The Writing Centre: Top Ten Errors, Markers' Marks, Handy Tricks, and a Quick Fix A quick list of common errors and how to fix them.
• The St. Martin's Guide to Writing On-Line. Besides a lot of handy links, these pages has some excellent guidelines for developing and evaluating Web pages.

Rhetoric and Writing Links Especially for Teachers

Of course, students are welcome at these sites too...

• The Chronicle of Higher Education On-Line
• ERIC Hompage
• The World Lecture Hall links to on-line syllabi from across the curriculum.
• Critical Resources in Teaching with Technology Page A handy collection of both theoretical and pratical texts about teaching with technology.
• "Plagiarism and the Web." Bruce Leland of Western Illinois University put together this site and he provides some excellent advice for preventing Internet plagiarism.
• Steve Krause's Rhetoric Page. Links to many things rhetorical...
• Rhetoric and Composition Page at the CMU English Server
• The Alliance for Computers and Writing is a national organization concerned with the teaching of writing and rhetoric in computer-mediated environments.

Links Especially about C&W 98 at the U. of Florida

• The Networked Writing Environment at the University of Florida Homeapage
• The C&W 98 Homepage

On-line Writing Labs and Centers

An increasing number of college and university writing labs and centers are developing on-line components to help a wide variety of writers. The following are some of the best of these resources. They're great sites to find answers to all sorts of grammatical and style questions and to also get feedback on your writing from tutors and staff members at schools all over the country.

• The Purdue University On-Line Writing Lab (OWL) This is one of the first writing labs to have an on-line component and it is still one of the best. There are a lot of handouts on all sorts of writing questions available, plus lots of links to other on-line writing labs, to other writer resources. You can also contact the folks at Purdue for answers to specific writing questions.
• The Online Writing Center Home Page at Colorado State University More than information on their writing center, this site has lots of stuff about the writing program at CSU.
• LEO: Literacy Education Online at St. Cloud State University This unique on-line writing center service offers answers to a variety of common writing questions in a very user-friendly format.
• The Undergraduate Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin A nice site with lots of resources and links.
• "The Online Writery" at the University of Missouri Besides offering a variety of links to resources, the "writery" is also a great place to go to find links to on-line discussion forums about writing and to get some on-line feedback from the U of Missouri's writing lab.

Making Web Pages at SOU and HTML Tips

• "A Beginner's Guide to HTML." Document about HTML published by NCSA.
• "HTML Quick Reference." A handy "cheat-sheet" on HTML.
• Joe Burn's HTML tutorials.
• GeoCities Homepage Directory
• Library Instruction Tutorials (Library Instruction Round Table, ALA)

Miscellaneous Sources on the 'Net and Fun

Miscellanous News Sources On-Line

• NeWo News Resourse, a WWW news clearinghouse.
• CNN Online
• New York Times Online
• Washington Post Online
• Harper's Magazine
• Boston Globe Online
• National Public Radio
• PBS
• CBN
• Time's Pathfinder

Probably Not Really News, but Still Interesting On-Line Sources

• HotWired and Wired Magazine
• John Labovitz's e-zine-list, an excellent source for finding "alternative" on-line pubs.
• Pathfinder, the Time-Warner server
• E! Online
• ESPN SportsZone
• MapQuest, a nifty device for getting maps to almost anywhere.

The C&W 98 Research and Internet Link Site is collection of links and other Internet resources developed for the workshop "The Internet as a Research Tool: Dispelling the Myths" at the 14th Annual Computers and Writing Conference. This page is also designed to help writers in all disciplines.