Using the Internet for Academic Research

|| Introduction || Online Scholarly Communication
|| Search Engines | Internet Directories | The Invisible Web ||
||Image DatabasesCurrent Awareness |Tutorials||

Introduction

The Internet first began in higher education as a way for researchers to communicate and share project data. Today the .edu domain is still one of the largest contributors to the Internet. As everyone knows, however, the Internet is disorganized, volatile and dynamic. Web sites appear, disappear, move or mutate daily. The Internet is difficult to search. It is even more difficult to search it well. Moreover, the information found on the Internet is often of uneven quality. The useful and useless co-exist in cyberspace much as they would and do at a flea market.

Despite these drawbacks, the Internet has a few advantages: it is relatively fast, it is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you can use it from your own computer. More and more students are doing their research exclusively on the Internet. This phenomenon is a sign of the times; however it is important that students are aware that not everything is available on the Internet.

Online Scholarly Communication

• Electronic Journals & Catalogs
  
  • Electronic Journals at NMSU Library at http://lib.nmsu.edu/journals/index.shtml
    Search by journal title or browse the collections.
  • Electronic Journal Miner at http://ejournal.coalliance.org/
    Search by keyword, subject or title. Can limit to free publications
  • WorldCat at http://catalog2.nmsu.edu:2048/login?url=http://lib.nmsu.edu/resources/dbwc.html
    A union catalog of some 30,000 libraries worldwide. World's most comprehensive bibliography, with 40 million bibliographic records. Includes items dating back to the 11th century. Provides information on library ownership for each record. Linked to the NMSU Library's Interlibrary Loan Service
• Electronic Lists
  
• Directory of Scholarly & Professional E-Conferences at http://www.kovacs.com/directory/
  A searchable directory of electronic conferences (e-conferences) on topics of interest to scholars and professionals. Provides information on subscribing