Useful resources for researching?

October 1, 2006

I have an interesting presentation to make later this week. I’ve been invited to talk with some post graduate students about useful technical resources for making the dissertation process a wee bit easier. My post graduate training (Masters and now PhD) were undertaken using online library access and as a result I probably spent more time online in the name of “research” than was necessary (It was around the time of my dissertation that I started blogging, case in point!). I also hadn’t a clue what software existed that might help me compile my ever expanding reading lists into Harvard referenced bibliographies. Right now I’m using EndNote for that latter task and it’s revolutionised how I organise my material. One click of a button and out comes a formatted bibliography complete with citations in all the right places. I summarise papers using Mind Mapping software and I’ve found a great piece of software called MaxQDA for coding and analysing qualitative data (mainly interviews in my case).
But for students who don’t have online access to an academic library I’m wondering what other resources are out there? I’ve used Find Articles quite a bit and have found some great material through it – but are there more reference sites that would be helpful? If you have ideas or references then please let me know.