Search Engines
A search engine is a helpful tool for you to find necessary information available on the Internet. There are more than two thousand search engines and they all vary, each having its particular strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, do not do just one search but try different systems. Here are some of the most commonly used search engines:
Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com
Google Scholar provides a way to search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
Subject Directories
A subject directory is a database of titles organized by category. Unlike the search engine, the information in the subject directory is catalogued and organized by a human being, thus a subject directory is usually smaller than a search engine. It is designed to ease the process of searching.
Some of the best subject directories:
Open Directory
http://www.dmoz.org
The Open Directory Project is one of the largest directories of the Web. “It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.”
Meta-tools
Meta-Tools are search engines of search engines. They do not create their own databases, but rely on databases provided by other Internet search engines.
Best Meta-Tools:
Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com
The most thorough of all meta-tools and very flexible, permitting searches up to 25 search tools simultaneously.
Search.com
http://www.search.com
“Metasearch more than 800 specialized engines from around the Web.”
General reference sources
Reference Desk
http://www.refdesk.com
DeskRef: Sources for Quick Answers
http://www.rcls.org/deskref
LibrarySpot
http://www.libraryspot.com
Quest Dot Net
http://www.re-quest.net
University of Virginia
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/reference
BCCLS Internet Reference Sources
http://www.bccls.org/reference
European Union Information
General
Europa: the main portal to the EU’s official web pages, with access to information from all EU institutions and bodies.
European Union A-Z index: a topical index to high-interest web pages in Europa.
Activities of the European Union: Overviews and portals to various sources of information on 32 major EU activities, such as agriculture, environment, external trade, and human rights.
Glossary: Extensive definitions of 200 EU concepts.
History of the European Union: A timeline of major events, 1946 to the present.
How to find information on Europa: Links to Europa pages, by type of information (e.g., official documents, legislation, press releases, newsletters, etc.)
EU databases: Access to EU databases, by subject.
Essential European Union websites (from the Washington delegation’s website).
European Union member states: Links to the websites of the governments and, at a minimum, the foreign ministries of all European nations.
Treaties and EU policy
Treaties and law: The basic EU treaties with explanatory information and complete consolidated texts.
Treaties: This version of the treaty texts includes a search tool.
EUR-Lex: Access to European law in force, including treaties, legislation, case-law and legislative proposals; with extensive search features and access to the Official Journal.
Pre-Lex: Tracking of proposals for legislation currently under consideration, with links to the official documents, such as COM documents and documents in the Official Journal.
Legislation in force: Analytical directory of EU regulations, directives and other legislative instruments, with links to the official documents.
Summaries of EU legislation: Public access to information about its initiatives and European Union policies.
White Papers: White papers are Commission documents containing proposals for Community action in a specific area. This site links to full texts or summaries.
Green Papers: Green papers are discussion papers created in the early stages of policy development. This site links to full texts or summaries.
How the EU takes decisions: The EU’s decision making processes, with explanations and diagrams.
Institutions and bodies
Introducing the European Union: An explanation of the organization of the EU, with links to the home pages of the institutions (Commission, Parliament, Council, Court of Justice, Court of Auditors), the major bodies (such as the European Central Bank), and the specialized agencies (such as the European Environment Agency).
Council of the European Union: The EU’s main decision-making body, whose members are ministers of the Member States.
European Parliament: The parliamentary body elected directly by the citizens of the EU, which shares legislative power with the Council.
European Commission: The executive arm of the EU, representing Europe as a whole, and which drafts proposals for new EU laws.
Directorates-General and Services: The executive departments of the Commission, with responsibility for particular policy areas.
Statistics
European Central Bank Statistics: Statistics relevant to the monetary policy of the ECB, with a focus on the euro area. Main series include money, banking, balance of payments, national accounts, government finance, prices, and labor markets.
EU Statistics: While not an EU site, this webpage from Northwestern University provides extensive links to EU statistical sources.
European Environment Agency, browse by themes: Reports, indicators, links and data sets for 30 major environmental themes.
Public Opinion: The Eurobarometer website, linking to public opinion polling data in the Member States, 1973 to the present.
Documents
Official Journal: The EU’s official gazette and primary publication source for new and proposed EU laws.
Bulletin of the European Union: Current report of EU activities, with links to official documents, issued 10 times each year.
General Report on the Activities of the European Union: The annual report of EU activities, with links to official documents, and an appendix that summarizes the status of pending proposals for new EU laws.
Financial programming and budget. Current and previous budgets and financial reports.
Business and Economics
Essential European Union Business Websites
Industry Sectors: Industry surveys for 30 major sectors in the European economy, including structural description, statistics on business activity, regulation, and networks.
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD): Not an EU institution, the EBRD nevertheless is an important financing partner in the development of market economies and democratic institutions in central and eastern Europe and former Soviet countries.
European Economy: Survey of the European economy, issued 6 times a year, with special topic supplements.
Statistical tradeflow database (from Market Access Database)
Techniques for EU web research
- When first exploring a topic, use the index sites in the General section of this guide, such as “European Union A-Z Index” or “Activities of the European Union“, to get an overview of the issue.
- To assemble a large number of potentially relevant pages, use Europa’s search tool.
- Some researchers prefer to use a general search engine, such as Google, limiting the results by internet domain. For example, using Advanced Google, limit to the domain “.eu.int” or-after 9 May 2006-”.eu”.
- Most Europa pages provide a “bread crumb trail”-a horizontal set of links at the top of the page that lead you back to higher level pages. Use this trail to “back out” to the higher level pages of the EU body that produced your original web page. Here is a typical “bread crumb trail: EUROPA> European Commission > Employment and Social Affairs > Anti-discrimination and relations with Civil Society
- Identify the appropriate EU bodies for your topic, and navigate their web pages. Investigate such bodies as Directorates-General, Parliamentary committees, and specialized agencies. “Introducing the European Union” and “Directorates-General and Services” are useful for this purpose. Or follow the “bread crumb trail” from relevant pages.
Other Useful Web Sites
Humanities
Association for the Computers and the Humanities
www.ach.org/
National Humanities Institute
www.nhinet.org/index.htm
Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes
www.chcinetwork.org/
In Other Words: a Lexicon of the Humanities
www.sil.org/humanities/index.html
Symbols.Com
http://www.symbols.com/
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences OnLine
http://www.h-net.org
The Internet Public Library
Arts & Humanities Reference
http://www.ipl.org/ref/RR/static/hum0000.html
Humbul Humanities
http://www.humbul.ac.uk
Humanities-Interactive
http://www.humanities-interactive.org
Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
http://infomine.ucr.edu
The Voice of the Shuttle
Web Page for Humanities Research
http://vos.ucsb.edu
Arts and Humanities Data Service (http://ahds.ac.uk)
Electronic Text Center (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu)
The Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu)
Social sciences
Social Science Research Council (http://www.ssrc.org)
Social Science History Association (http://www.h-net.org)
International Association for Social Science Information Service & Technology (http://datalib.library.ualberta.ca/iassist/)
Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST)
MOST Clearing House
www.unesco.org/most/welcome.htm
Online Dictionary of the Social Sciences
http://datadump.icaap.org/cgi-bin/glossary/SocialDict
HNet: Humanities & Social Sciences Online
http://www.h-net.org
Research Resources in Social Sciences
http://www.researchresources.net
Social Science Information Gateway
http://sosig.ac.uk
Internet Scout Project
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu
Research Resources for the Social Sciences
http://www.socsciresearch.com
Social Science Research Network
http://www.sshub.com
The Internet Public Library
Social Science Reference
www.ipl.org/ref/RR/static/soc0000.html
INFOMINE:
Schorlarly Internet Resource Collections
Social Sciences and Humanities
http://infomine.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/search?liberal
10 Influential Sociologists of the 20th Century
http://degreeinsociology.net/influential-sociologists/
Business
The International Alliance (http://www.t-i-a.com)
Business.Com (http://www.business.com)
LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com)
Academic Info Business (http://www.academicinfo.net/subject-guides)
Thomas Register of American Manufacturers (http://www.thomasregister.com)
Lithuanian higher education schools
State Schools
Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija (http://www.kam.lt)
Kauno medicinos universitetas (http://www.kmu.lt)
Kauno technologijos universitetas (http://www.ktu.lt)
Klaipėdos universitetas (http://www.ku.lt)
Lietuvos kūno kultūros akademija (http://www.lkka.lt)
Lietuvos muzikos akademija (http://www.lma.lt)
Lietuvos veterinarijos akademija (http://www.lva.lt)
Lietuvos žemės ūkio universitetas (www.lzuu.lt)
Šiaulių universitetas (www.su.lt)
Vilniaus dailės akademija (http://www.vda.lt)
Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitetas (http://www.vtu.lt)
Vilniaus pedagoginis universitetas (http://www.vpu.lt)
Vilniaus universitetas (http://www.vu.lt)
Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas (http://www.vdu.lt)
Vilniaus universiteto Tarptautinio verslo mokykla (http://www.tvm.lt)
Private Schools
Tarptautinė aukštoji vadybos mokykla (http://www.ism.lt)
Telšių kunigų seminarija (http://www.tks.lt)
Evaluating Sources
- The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly: or, Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Resources.
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html - Information Literacy: The Web Is Not an Encyclopedia.
www.oit.umd.edu/units/web/literacy/ - Evaluation Techniques of Internet Resources.
http://www.teachercertification.org/teach/evaluation-techniques-of-Internet-resources.php - How To Evaluate the Sources You Find.
www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/evaluate.html - Evaluating Web Sites.
www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/webeval.html