There are a lot of websites out there that can help university students find the right resources for their papers. While you could just search Wikipedia from your computer, the best way to find information is to take advantage of all the free sources available online. Let’s take a look at some of the top rating sites and choose our favorites:
10. University College London Library Services (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library)
10th place goes to UCL Library Services. Need help choosing a topic? Consult their guides by subject area or level (undergraduate, postgraduate), which offer step-by-step advice on finding relevant articles and books in 300 subjects! The process is easy-to-follow, consisting of nine steps: 1) Search 2) Refine 3) Find 4) Read 5) Evaluate 6) Synthesize 7) Organize 8) Present 9) Evaluate. The only problem is that you have to sign up for an account with your university email address to use these article databases! It looks like this site hasn’t been updated since 2014, so it might be difficult to find current sources through here.
9. Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
It is the #2 search engine recommended by UCL Library Online Research Guides! Last year, there were over 5.3 million scholarly articles published in English alone, which makes it difficult to find relevant sources on your own! Google Scholar’s algorithm sorts through all the results to try and give you what you’re looking for by finding content that is important to other people who are searching. It uses “the most relevant webpages indexed by Google based on billions of queries processed.”
8. JStor (http://www.jstor.org)
It is an online archive full of academic journals and books in 75+ subjects in the humanities and social sciences in North America and Western Europe! Search through over 1,800 journals from more than 300 publishers or browse one of their recommended databases: Arts & Sciences V Collection, Business Insights: Essentials, Health and Medical Collection, Teaching Full-Text, and Women’s Studies International.
7. Questia (http://www.questia.com)
It is an online research and paper writing service that claims to offer the largest online collection of full-text books in 75+ subjects! They also boast a large number (over 79,000) of periodicals and scholarly journals in multiple languages, plus easy access to college-level textbooks for over 2000 universities around the world. This site uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to transform book text into HTML or PDF files so it can be easily read and searched on any device with an Internet connection!
6. OneSearch (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu)
It might not look like the most attractive website at first glance, but it is one of the best university libraries in the world! OneSearch offers free access to article databases, ebooks, streaming videos, and online collections of rare books. Browsing through this library is similar to Google Scholar’s search algorithm because it sorts through all their resources for you! You can also limit your results by subject or even time period. It doesn’t get much better than that!
5. Academic Earth (http://academicearth.org)
It provides a one-stop shop for students looking for free college lectures from Ivy League universities like Yale, Harvard, MIT, etc. Interested in some “Invisible Forces” from The Teaching Company? Too bad they don’t have any current courses available on the site… Maybe future classes will be added?
4. Open Syllabus Project (http://opensyllabusproject.org)
It lets you search through 1,110,000 syllabi for college courses in the USA and Canada to find assignments, subjects taught, books used in classrooms, etc. The only problem is that they don’t have a search box (although they do have one on their YouTube channel ). Instead of searching for what you’re looking for using keywords like on Google or Yahoo, try browsing through their list of subject areas or even entering a course name!
3. Flickr Commons (http://www.flickr.com/commons)
It is an online collection of over 770,000 images in the public domain from libraries and museums around the world! They’re also working with WikiMedia to add over 110 million more images to the collection, so stop by every once and a while for new media. You can also look through different time periods or geographical locations!
2. YouTube EDU (http://www.youtube.com/edu)
It is an excellent place to find online lectures and courses because it includes thousands of videos from universities like Yale and Harvard, as well as museums like the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art! This site allows you to search for certain types of content (like audio or video) or languages taught at universities around the world!
1. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki)
It is useful as both a starting point for research papers or as a great resource during your writing process. You can use Wiki’s sources to back up your research, but if you’re ever stuck on where to find information about certain topics, check Wiki first!
Now you have a list of the top 10 websites to find resources for university papers.
I hope that this article was useful, but just remember – every student is different, so what works for one person might not work for another! If you found this article helpful be sure to share it with your friends!