Helpful Internet and Online Resources

ENGLISH/LITERATURE

Visit the Library's site at http://library.lsue.edu/.
Use the Library's catalog at http://lsue.louislibraries.org/.

Guide to Grammar and Writing
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
Extremely useful site on all aspects of writing - from parts of speech to organizing a paper. Sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation.

Literary History
http://www.literaryhistory.com/index.htm
"A selective list of open access literary criticism, links directly to articles, with separate pages for more than 200 American and British writers. Literaryhistory.com focuses on signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the Modern Language Association."

The Mississippi Writers Page
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english//ms-writers/
"The Mississippi Writers Page is a multi-faceted Internet Resource about writers in, from, or otherwise associated with the state of Mississippi. Presented by the Department of English at the University of Mississippi, it is designed both as an introduction to the diversity of literary talent in Mississippi and (we hope) as a source of accurate and timely information for the serious literary scholar." This as a good example of what to look for in a website - clear author and goals, good material, signed and dated. The big author included that we use is William Faulkner.

HEALTH/MEDICINE

MedlinePlus
http://medlineplus.gov/
The absolute best place to start for health and medical information, run by the National Library of Medicine. All outside links (for example, to the American Cancer Association) are clearly labeled.


SCIENCE

Science.gov - Government Science Portal
http://www.science.gov/
"Science.gov is a gateway to over 50 million pages of authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. government agencies, including research and development results." Listed by topic, special collections, and featured sites. Also has a search box right at the front of the site.

Science NetLinks - Resources for Teaching Science
http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/
"Providing a wealth of resources for K-12 science educators, Science NetLinks is your guide to meaningful standards-based Internet experiences for students."


REFERENCE

FedStats
http://www.fedstats.gov/
The best place to start looking for statistics collected by the federal government, which are most of them. Browse by subject, agency, or state, or search "across agency websites". The Statistical Research Shelf includes:
Statistical Abstracts and Health, United States.

LII - Librarian's Index to the Internet
http://lii.org/
Organized, annotated collection of websites on a vast array of topics, run by librarians and continually updated. Can be either browsed or searched. As it says, "websites you can trust".

ODP - Open Directory Project
http://dmoz.org/
A directory of websites organized and edited by volunteers - currently over 70 thousand of them, with over 5 million sites. The quality ranges from topic to topic, but overall very well done. As with LII, it can be either browsed or
searched.

Saugus.net - Glossary of Computer File Extensions
http://www.saugus.net/Computer/Extensions/
Simply put, this is a listing of the last 3 letters in a file name that tell which program is needed to open that file (for example, ".doc" for Microsoft Word). This can be very helpful when a file won't open.

Google (http://www.google.com/) and Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/) offer more than just a web search engine. Both provide e-mail accounts, online storage for files and the ability save your searches. Google provides software that you can use to create a WORD document or an EXCEL file. Google and Yahoo are both capable of saving your bookmarks for portability. Yahoo has a directory style based on traditional libraries. For assistance in evaluating information found in any search engine, please ask a librarian or refer to the library handouts located on library’s website. These are not the only web based search engines, but a good start. Try del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) and other social bookmarking sites, you can find a wealth of information useful to you.

Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid It
http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml
Gives examples and explanations of acceptable and plagiarized uses of sources. While the source is another school's Student Code, academic honesty is also listed in the LSUE Student Handbook.

Research and Documentation Online
http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/home.html
Explains the top four citation styles - Humanities (MLA), Social Sciences (APA), History (Chicago), and Sciences (CSE), with both finding and documenting sources. Each style has a sample paper with examples and notes. Please be aware that the author uses both the writing rules and the citation rules, so if your professor only wants to use the citation rules, not all of the examples will apply (such as including an abstract).


OTHER ONLINE TOOLS

Media Convert - Free and Online File Conversion
http://media-convert.com/
This site is full of ads, but just ignore them. This site will convert files from one type to another, which is very helpful if you use a different software at home, but the computer lab only has Microsoft Products. While it does offer automatic detection, that is the only part that doesn't run as smoothly, so here is where the link above can really help. They do say that the files aren't kept, just converted and sent, but as a precaution DO NOT use this with files that have passwords or sensitive data - but term papers should be fine. You can choose to download the new document directly or in a zipped format (mostly for movies or other large files). Please be aware that this does not offer the newest form of Word (".docx") to convert from or into.

OpenOffice (word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software)
http://www.openoffice.org/
If you do not have WORD or other Microsoft Office software required for a class, OpenOffice is a good work around. OpenOffice “is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. … It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.”

PDF Converters/Editors (free)
PDF is Portable Document Format is a document that is readable on almost any computer. There will be times you want to use a converter to transform your Word or other document to a PDF format. Several sites offer this service or the software needed for conversion: PDFCreator at pdfforge.org or PDF online at http://www.pdfonline.com/.