Research Tools

How to Find Out if a Journal Is Peer-Reviewed

Use Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory. Search for the journal title in which your article is published. Look at the legend, and see that the “refereed” icon means peer-reviewed. Then, see if this icon  Refereed  shows up to the left of the journal title you searched.
Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory (log in via ALADIN)

Legal Research

Findlaw (free Web resource)

Thomas at the Library of Congress (free Web resource)

LexisNexis Academic (log in via ALADIN) Click on the “Legal” tab to search for law reviews and federal/state cases. Click on the “News” tab to search for major newspaper articles orbroadcast transcripts.

  • View Alex Hodge’s video tutorial here

ProQuest Congressional (log in via ALADIN) Search for Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Legislative Histories

  • View Alex Hodge’s video tutorial here

U.S. Supreme Court

Govtrack (track legislation in Congress)

HeinOnline Law Journal Library (log in via ALADIN) Search for law review journal articles.

Timeline

Dipity timeline. This free timeline generator allows you embed images and video as well as annotate and post comments.

SIMILE timeline. If you want more control over the display of the timeline and don’t mind learning and writing code, Simile produces appealing interactive timelines. Brian Croxall has a tutorial on how to create interactive timelines using SIMILE and Google spreadsheets.

Multiple timeline tools from MIT’s Mapping Controversies project.

Education Policy

U.S. Department of Education

National Center for Educational Statistics

National Association of State Boards of Education

Education Commission of the States

Policy File (log in via ALADIN) Find fulltext public policy documents and reports written by major policy thinktanks and NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

Federal Education Policy History with primary source documents via Scribd.

Congressional Quarterly databases/publications

CQ Congress Collection (log in via ALADIN) Contains profiles of members of Congress, their legislative voting behavior, interest group ratings as well as information on key votes, the legislative process and public policy legislation.

CQ Press Political Reference Suite of Online Editions (log in via ALADIN) Search or read online fulltextCQ Press books: Politics in America (2000 to present); Washington Information Directory; Congress and the Nation (1945 to present); Political Handbook of the World (2005 to present); Supreme Court Yearbook (1989 to present); Vital Statistics on American Politics; and Historic Documents (1972 to present).

CQ Researcher (log in via ALADIN) Search for reportson “hot” issues in the news, including social, environmental, health, education, science and technology topics. Note some of these reports are dated, but this is a good starting place for broad issue areas.

CQ Weekly (log in via ALADIN) Comprehensive source for recent coverage of the U.S. Congress: status of bills, votes and amendments, floor and committee activity, backroom maneuvering, debates, and reports on issues looming on the congressional horizon.

Education Research – Scholarly Criticism – Secondary Sources

Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) (log in via ALADIN)
Education Full Text (WilsonWeb) (log in via ALADIN)

  • View Alex Hodge’s video tutorial here

Education Journals (ProQuest) (log in via ALADIN)
ERIC (ProQuest)(log in via ALADIN)

  • View Alex Hodge’s video tutorial here

Journals

AU online journal title finder — no login required initially
(find AU’s fully online subscriptions by journal title NOT article title)

Researching in Historical Newspapers

View Alex Hodge’s video tutorial here

Wikipedia

Images

Flickr Commons (images come primarily from the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress)

Internet Archive

Other

Google Scholar
Google Docs
Google docs tour
Google Maps
Technorati (blog search engine)
Guidelines for creating Google my maps page
Social Explorer (log in via ALADIN)
U.S. Census and demographic data from 1790 to present. Updated: Continuously. Contains current and historical U.S. Census and demographic data that can be downloaded. One can create thematic and interactive maps as well as reports at the state, county, census tract, block group, and ZIP code level.