Library Research Guides

Education

The ALAN Review is a peer-reviewed (refereed) journal published by the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English (ALAN). It is devoted solely to the field of literature for young adults.
 
Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is an online digital library of education research and information. ERIC provides ready access to education literature to support the use of educational research and information to improve practice in learning, teaching, educational decision-making, and research.”
 
Edutopia contains a deep archive of continually updated best practices, from classroom tips to recommendations for districtwide change. Allied with a dedicated audience that actively contributes success stories from the field, our mission relies on input and participation from schools and communities.”
 
Scholastic is a “children's publishing, education and media company” with a mission to help children around the world to read and learn.

English & Literature

Literature Resources from MIT Libraries "A collection of Internet resources devoted primarily to English and American literature, divided by time period and genre.
 
PAL: Perspectives in American Literature An American literature research and reference guide that includes profiles of over 430 American authors and their works, as well as providing context for each writer’s work.
 
Poetry Foundation An excellent free resource for finding full-text poems and information about poetry
 
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is “the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks.” You can find over 33,000 full-text versions of books that can be easily downloaded and viewed.

Government

CIA World Fact Book The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book provides up-to-date information about countries and regions around the world, including history, people, geography, and economics, to help form a complete portrait of each country.
 
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measures labor market activity, working conditions, price changes, and productivity in the U.S. economy to support public and private decision making.
 
U.S. Department of Labor (Mission Statement) To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.
 
USA.gov “As the U.S. government's official web portal, USA.gov makes it easy for the public to get U.S. government information and services on the web.”

History

Jewish History

Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel Online version of the 19-volume work by David Tidhar about the origins of Israel and those who contributed to the State. The encyclopedia can be searched by volume or entry and in Hebrew or English.
 
Jewish Telegraphic Agency The JTA Jewish News Archive is a powerful reference tool that offers a perspective on current events and modern Jewish history that is not available anywhere else. It provides free access to nearly a century of reporting about global events affecting world Jewry.”
 
Jewish Virtual Library “The Jewish Virtual Library is the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the world, covering everything from anti-Semitism to Zionism. So far, more than 13,000 articles and 6,000 photographs and maps have been integrated into the site.”
 
Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia An online encyclopedia that is “an unmatched resource for anyone interested in Jewish women anywhere, at any time.” Along with a “core of approximately 2,000 carefully researched, written, and edited articles, the online environment enables researches to interact and comment on the content, and search by keyword, time period, or country.”
 
United States Holocaust Museum The United States Holocaust Museum provides educational materials, online collections and archives, online exhibits, and many more resources to do research.
 
Yad V'shem Yad V’shem has extensive digital resources for researching the Holocaust, including a photo archive, shoah names database, archives of collections, and educational materials.
 
The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe “The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe provides the most complete picture of the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginnings of their settlement in the region to the present. This Web site makes accurate, reliable, scholarly information about East European Jewish life accessible to everyone.”

American & World History

American Memory Generated from the collections of the Library of Congress, “American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.”
 
History Matters “History Matters serves as a gateway to web resources and offers other useful materials for teaching and studying U.S. history,” including audio, images, and texts.
 
HyperHistory Online "HyperHistory is an expanding scientific project presenting 3,000 years of world history with an parallel views of lifelines, timelines, and maps.”

Judaic Studies

Aish.com Engaging articles, videos, online seminars and audio classes about every aspect of Judaism, from holidays, spirituality, family, and current events, for “not just information, but inspiration.”

AishDas Society The AishDas Society “teaches the fundamentals of Torah, worship and acts of kindness using traditional observance to develop spiritual feeling.” AishDas provides mussar resources, divrei Torah, articles, and resources for connecting to the AishDas community.

Daat Created and maintained by Michlelet Herzog in Alon Shvut, Daat is a valuable resource for Hebrew texts, Judaic studies, and Jewish life. The site includes a virtual library of English and Hebrew books, academic journals, an encyclopedia, pictures, maps, drawings, multimedia, photographs, materials and lessons for teachers, a bibliography of resources and articles, full-text of Tenach including commentaries, analysis, mp3s of texts, guided readings, and more. To gain an idea of the breadth of knowledge on Daat, check out their Holocaust resources.
 
Gilyonot Nechama A complete collection the Torah worksheets that Professor Nechama Leibowitz published, with added resources for references, commentaries, and more.
 
Hebrew Books "Hebrewbooks.org was founded in order to preserve old American Hebrew books that are out of print and/or circulation. Currently our mission has expanded to include all Torah Seforim ever printed. At Hebrewbooks.org you will be able to view and print the entire Sefer online.”
 
Jewish Law (Jlaw) "In order to forge a better understanding of the interaction between Halacha and secular law, Jewish Law presents a wealth of information -- much of which is exclusive in cyberspace to this website -- on Halacha, Jewish issues and secular law.”
 
Mechon Mamre Online version of Tenach (in Hebrew and English), Mishneh Torah, four major authoritative sources of the Oral Law (Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli), as well as downloadable versions of each one.
 
Tanach Study Center The Tanach Study Center is “designed to provide the student with a structured learning program for self-study of Tanach.” For each shiur, there are questions to prepare for the class, an abstract of the shiur, and the shiur itself, which includes a virtual blackboard to display images and the text of the lesson.  Whether you use this site for independent study or support for classes you are taking, the Tanach Study Center has the resources necessary to help you learn.

Open Access Journals

Open access journals are available to users free of charge. The reader has the ability to download, copy, and distribute the material as needed. Linking to the full text of these articles is also permitted by the user, making these documents versatile resources. These open access sites house many scholarly and peer-reviewed articles.
 
Academic Journals Academic Journals “provides free access to research information to the international community without financial, legal or technical barriers.” Journals from the medical sciences, social sciences, biological sciences, arts and education, and more can be found.
 
The Directory of Open Access Journals "Free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering all subjects and many languages.” All journals are peer-reviewed or have strict quality control. You can search by topic or browse through the journals.
 
HighWire Press Highwire Press provides a detailed list of free full-text articles by journal, providing links to each journal and dates when the recent articles are available for free.
 
Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a world wide collaborative of over 800 leading scholars that is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research.” SSRN provides access to articles from its connecting networks for accounting, cognitive science, economics, health, marketing, and English and American literature.

Reference

Citation

BibMe is a free automatic citation creator that supports MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian formatting. BibMe leverages external databases to quickly fill citation information for you. BibMe will then format the citation information and compile a bibliography according to the guidelines of the style manuals. If you prefer, you can enter your citation information manually. BibMe also features a citation guide that provides students with the style manuals' guidelines for citing references.
 
EasyBib An Automatic Bibliography and Citation Maker
 
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University provides up-to-date information about a variety of citation styles, providing resources about citation and style guides for both MLA and APA.

Dictionaries

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus Quick and basic reference site for definitions and synonyms.
 
One Look Dictionary By using One Look, you can search several dictionaries, including specialty dictionaries, at once.
 
Wordnik With its goal to provide as much information as possible, Wordnik offers much more than definitions, including definitions, synonyms, antonyms, example sentences, related words, images, audio pronunciations, etymology, and more.

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Life "The Encyclopedia will be an online reference and database on all 1.9 million species currently known to science and will stay current by capturing information on newly discovered and formally described species. The Encyclopedia of Life will help all of us better understand life on our planet.”
 
Encyclopedia of Chicago Online version of the print encyclopedia that combines text, images, audio, multimedia, essays, and interactive maps to  “stimulate readers to think differently about Chicago – by walking new paths through history.”
 
Infoplease is the source to go to with factual questions. With its encyclopedia, almanac, dictionary, and more, InfoPlease can help answer your basic questions.
 
Wolfram Alpha “Wolfram Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers—not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.”  It is useful for finding technical or scientific information.

Science

How Stuff Works How Stuff Works is an “award-winning source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works.” From giant squids to electricity, How Stuff Works demystifies complicated scientific information in engaging, fun ways.
 
Khan Academy Students can make use of Khan Academy's extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web. Our library of videos covers K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history. Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer.
 
Medline Plus Created and constantly updated by the National Library of Medicine, Medline Plus includes extensive health information including an encyclopedia, interactive tutorials, various pictures and diagrams.
 
World of Science “It is often difficult to find explanations for technical subjects that are both clear and accessible, World of Science bridges the gap by placing an interlinked framework of mathematical exposition and illustrative examples at the fingertips of every Internet user.” World of Science contains budding encyclopedias of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, and physics.