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These are the research sources I keep on my bookmarks list.
Some are free, some cost money - but reasonable amounts for the data made
available. (For general references such as web search engines see my
general search and reference page.)
Free:
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Supreme Court of the United States - 2008 Slip
Opinions of the Court
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08slipopinion.html
This site contains the "slip", or first
officially-printed version, of decisions of the US Supreme Court.
Opinions are generally released on the website in the afternoon of the
decision, in Adobe Acrobat format. Although Mark Twain was of the
opinion that "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session", the members of the legislature, unlike US
Supreme Court Justices, don't serve for life. Who knows what will
happen while the Court is in session? At least you can find out
at this site what's just become legal or illegal. |
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Bartleby.com - Great Books Online
http://bartleby.com
This site allows you to read or search several
publications, including:
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the American Heritage Dictionary (current
edition), the Columbia Encyclopedia, and three collections of
quotations;
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specialized references such as the King James
Bible, Gray's Anatomy, and Strunk's Elements of Style;
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various works such authors as Shakespeare, Aesop,
Chesterton, and many others.
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FindLaw - Laws, Court Decisions, and General Legal
information
http://www.findlaw.com/casecode/
This site contains the US Code (US Federal law), the
US Code of Federal Regulations (rules established by Executive Branch
departments), the Federal Register (proposed or newly approved Federal
Regulations), the laws of the several US States, as well as general
legal information and assistance in finding legal representation. |
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iLoveLanguages - places to find language resources
http://www.ilovelanguages.com/
This site is not a resource in itself; rather, it
contains a comprehensive catalog of language-related information.
Generally, easier to use than a general index like Google or Yahoo when
looking for specific language-related information. |
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PoemHunter.com
http://www.poemhunter.com/
This site contains about 100,000 poems, browsable
and searchable, from both widely recognized authors and from people
you likely never heard of. It also has lyrics to 40,000 songs, and
a collection of quotations. |
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RhymeZone
http://www.rhymezone.com/
Writing your own poems? Stuck for a rhyme?
Go to this site and your problems may be ended - at least in rhyming. |
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stats
http://www.stats.org/
This site, maintained by George Mason University,
researches the statistics presented by news media. |
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These sites want
money - but look at what you get! |
HighBeam Research
http://www.highbeam.com/
This site is an aggregator
of magazine, newspaper, and journal content. This service includes
(so far) over 3,500 publications, including Newsweek, US News and
World Report, The Economist, the Yale Law Journal, the Journal
of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, and the Journal of Forensic
Nursing.
On the yearly plan, HighBeam charges (as of Jan 2009)
just under US$ 300 / yr for the service. |
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questia
https://www.questia.com/
This site is so not kidding. About the size
of the library, I mean. Over 60,000 books, fully searchable
and browsable. 100 magazines, mainly not overlapping with
KeepMedia; and over 500 journals, also fully searchable and browsable. The
site also provides a way to quickly organize multiple research projects
and to create citations to the source media easily and quickly.
On the yearly plan, questia charges (as of Jan 2008)
US$ 100 / yr for the service. |
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Safari
http://safari.oreilly.com/
An item for those who are not computer geeks to
skip.
For the rest of you... isn't it a pain when you're
sitting there programming, or configuring a network, and you just
don't have the proper instructions for what you're trying
to do - or you have them somewhere, buried under what seems to be 20
tons of coax cable and those old 300-baud modems the department never
threw out? Safari is the solution to that problem. Questia
(above) doesn't cover computer science books. Safari only
covers those. Over 1300 of those, including all the
O'Reilly books.
There is a two-tier pricing structure: the Basic Bookshelf
service allows access to up to ten books at at time, and costs US$253/yr.
Each book placed on the "shelf" must be there for at least 30 days
before removal; I've found this option sufficient for my needs. There
is also a Library service which does not have the 30 day limitation
and which offers training videos as well as pre-publication books;
this costs US$473 a year and is good for those who work on the bleeding
edge of computer technology.
It may seem a bit pricey... but if you're
an alpha geek, just look at how much you spent on computer books
in the past year - and just see if you can find them.
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