Research Resources

Independent scholars face extra challenges in accessing needed resources for their scholarship, especially since many important databases are expensive and are only available through educational institutions. Here are some free resources for independent scholars, along with some tips on finding what you need. Academics affiliated with an educational institution may find these resources helpful as well.

If you know of or think I should add other resources to these lists, please contact me. I’d love to hear about them.

Libraries

  • Your Local Library – Your local public library, no matter how small or how big, should be your primary source for research materials. Most people do not take full advantage of all the resources that are available to them at their local library, and many of its resources are available at home through your computer. Thoroughly search your library’s website (especially the databases), become familiar with the extent of its book collection by wandering through the stacks, and talk with the reference librarians. You might be surprised by what you find.
  • Your State or Other Large Public Research Library – Many people do not realize that they might have full access to their state library or other large, public research libraries in their area. In some cases you can even access some of their resources from home. Because I live in Massachusetts, I am eligible for a library card from the Boston Public Library and with it I can access its fabulous collection of online databases. Identify the large, public libraries in your state, and ask what kind of library privileges you are entitled to receive.
  • Your Local College or University Library – If you live near a college or university, see if its library lets unaffiliated researchers use its collections. You probably won’t be able to check out books, but you can often use them in-house. If the library is a depository for U.S. government documents, it must make this collection available to the public, and quite often the library will simply make its entire collection available to the public rather than create a separate space for its government documents.
  • The Library of Congress – The Library of Congress isn’t just for Congress. All U.S. citizens have full access to the library’s collections and services. Spend some time exploring its website, including its Digital Collections where you’ll find links to the American Memory project, Thomas (legislative information), and Prints and Photographs.

Catalogs

  • Your Local Public Library – Your local library is the key to unlocking and accessing books and other resources. Even if your local library does not own a resource you need, it often belongs to a network of libraries, so that you can inter-library loan it from one that does. You can access your library’s network catalog either directly through its own catalog interface or through a separate catalog. If you need help, ask a reference librarian.
    • Dome of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the L...
    The Library of Congress – Image via Wikipedia
  • The Library of Congress Online Catalog – The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and boldly strives to preserve and sustain a universal collection of knowledge. Most libraries rely on its cataloging records to create their own. By searching the LOC’s catalog, you can discover many of the books and resources that exist for your topic.
  • The Catalog for a Large Research University – Elite research universities have libraries with extensive collections, and they are online and freely available. By searching the catalogs of university libraries like Harvard or Yale, especially if the schools are known for having strong departments in your subject, you can identify the most important resources in your research topic.
  • WorldCat – Rather than search the catalogs of individual libraries, WorldCat allows you to search the collections of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide all at once. Unfortunately, unless you are affiliated with an institution that officially subscribes to its catalog, you are stuck using its free, online version that frustratingly tries to mimic Amazon and Google searching, which is inadequate for true bibliographic searching.
  • Google Scholar – Google Scholar offers broad searching across many scholarly disciplines and sources, including articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions. The sources come from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other web sites, but since these sources aren’t specified, you’re never exactly sure what is covered by your search. If you do not have access to online journal indexes through your library, Google Scholar is better than nothing.

Resource Access

  • Internet Archive – This website offers a whole host of moving images, music, and books. It also features the “Wayback Machine” where you can see archived websites that are no longer in existence or have changed design at one point. Its online book collection is extensive, and the books are nicely formatted, including books from Google Books, so reading them through this website is often preferable to reading them on Google.
  • Google Books – The Google Books project has put loads of books online, so now obscure titles that would have been difficult for independent scholars to access before are now readily available. The lack of real indexing makes searching for books on the Google site frustrating, so I prefer to search other catalogs and then see if the book is available on this site.
  • The Online Books Page – This website lists thousands of free books available online. Now that the number of online books are beginning to proliferate exponentially, it is doubtful that this website will be able to keep up, but it can still be useful nonetheless.

Related Articles from The Digital Scholar

Share:

Bad Behavior has blocked 68 access attempts in the last 7 days.