Today was another workshop with Meg Wolitzer to go over other people's work, but I do find that I learn something about my own writing even when discussing specifics of someone else's.
We also had a great lecture about research (one that I very nearly skipped!) from Catherine Creedon*, a research librarian at the Sag Harbor Library. Thank goodness I was a serious student today, because this lecture will directly impact my upcoming WIP. She spoke about the limitations of Google and provided us with a nifty little handout of other sources for research. I'll give you the Cliff Notes:
Regular Search Engine Stuff besides Google:
Clusty--this organizes the returns in clusters to refine your search
Dogpile--searches several search engines at once
SPUTTR--another good source
Reference Sites:
Bartleby--this one was very cool. It has just about every reference book you can think of online, plus lots of fiction.
Gutenberg Collection--another very cool site with thousands of whole books available to download. I'll use this a ton.
Jstor--search academic articles from scholarly journals
Specialized Sites:
PodScope--search videos and podcasts
CyberCemetery--archive dead government web pages
Wayback Machine--archive dead non-governmental web pages
And, of course there is Wiki, but you all know that it should only be used as a starting point, right?
Go forth and research!
*Let's make a librarian happy and cite sources here. Thanks Catherine Creedon.
