Web and information literacy

• Evaluating Web Resources (very useful resources from Jan Alexander and Marsha Ann Tate at Widener University) We're all used to reading books, watching films, etc. Evaluating whether you've found a gem or a dud on the Internet can be more vexing, especially if there is information there you plan to include in an assignment you're doing.
• Thinking critically about the Web (by Esther Grassian, a librarian at UCLA)
• Penn State University library primer on using Web resources (hate to sound like a broken record, but another one well worth the time to go through)
• Penn State University library tutorial on information literacy (I promise you'll pick up nuggets of wisdom if you take the time to do some of this)
• PSU library tutorial on citing your sources (recommended reading . . .
• Information literacy links (compiled by Drew Smith, librarian at the University of South Florida)

Two courses are offered by Pierce Library personnel that may be of interest. The 100 level course deals with using the library's many resources (becoming an expert at this will save you hundreds of hours over your time here). The 300 level course deals more with information literacy, and there are few skills that will serve you better when you leave here than being very information literate.

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More general:

• Search engines and related links

  • google (by far the best--they have specific searches, news searches, searches of directories, searches of government documents--start here)
  • northern light
  • Altavista (average search engine, but they do have a language translator that sometimes works)
  • hot bot
  • Yahoo (Yahoo is technically a directory--catalogued by humans rather than Web-surfing robots--as a result, the quality is good, but if you want recent stuff it may be a couple months behind.
  • Teoma (a new generation search engine--worth checking out)
  • Dogpile (this is a meta search engine--it searches multiple search engines--can be hard to read but it will show you how different the results from different search engines can be)
  • Vivismo (a new generation meta search engine)
  • advanced book exchange (network of used bookstores)
  • search engine watch (a web site with information about searching, search engines)
  • Search Adobe PDF -- this search engine returns ONLY pdf documents on the Web--potentially a source of full-text documents (but it may take some practice to figure out how to use it efficiently--library resources are a better first bet)
  • ditto.com (if you're looking for images on the Web--takes a while to figure out how to use efficiently, though)
  • web searching tutorial (from University of South Carolina)
    
    

• A glossary of sociology terms (from Frank Elwell, Murray State University))
• English language links 
• Writing resources (Elements of Style . . . a timeless classic in English usage)
• Webster's Dictionary On-line
• Say, What's another name for thesaurus? (Wester's Thesaurus On-line)
• On-line dictionary heaven (or hell, depending on your perspective)--you may want to start spring planting while you're waiting for this page to load . . . there is a lot here, though
• Biographical dictionary