FREE QUALITY RESOURCES FOR
STUDENTS, ACADEMICS AND
LIFELONG LEARNERS
Stephen Perry
IRO for Central Africa
Washington, D.C.
202-453-8295
THE FOUR REVOLUTIONS
NOW ON THE INTERNET
What are these four revolutions?
Four important revolutions taking
place in the Internet
> Free Databases of articles:
EX: www.doaj.org
> Free Books:
EX: http://demo.openlibrary.org
>Better, More Precise Search
Engines www.lii.org, www.ipl.org
And, the Fourth one
> Distance Education Sites: Free
Lecture Notes, Free Student Projects,
Syllabus of Course contents, Student
Papers, Exams, Answers to Exams
> Lectures available in audio, video or
text
Examples:
>ocw.mit.edu, open.yale.edu,
youtube.com/ucberkeley
Google is NOT a Professional
Search Engine, BUT, if you going to
use Google, use it well: here are
some guides for using Google
better
GOOGLE: Guides to using
Google most efficiently:
http://www.blueroom.com/
google/
http://www.blueroom.com/google
Google for Power Searchers:
http://www.accrediteddldegrees.com/20
08/google-for-librarians-50-tips-toolsand-resources-for-power-searching/
PART ONE: Alternate Search
Engines to Google: please give
these a spin!
These are fantastic for your research!
Here are some other quality Search
Engines you might find useful; these all
provide sites that have been evaluated in
advance by subject experts.
One of my favorites is the Internet
Public Library through the
University of Michigan:
www.ipl.org
www.ipl.org
Note the Reading Room Links on the right hand side
that give access to free electronic books, journals and newspapers
Note that the IPL has a search
engine: www.ipl.org
Librarians Index to the Internet:
www.lii.org has a search engine,
categories and a featured site.
Infomine tries to categorize the best of the
Web by Library of Congress Subject
Headings: http://infomine.ucr.edu
Here are some subject headings for
English Language
Here are some free English
Language dictionaries identified
through Infomine
Specialized Search Engine for Research
Studies: OAISter: www.oaister.org
Here is a sample search on Rwanda in
OAISter: OAISter searches 20 million records
and so retrieves heavily specialized research
studies, all free
Another useful search engine is Virtual
Libraries, updated constantly: www.vlib.org
Here is the Virtual Library for Engineering for
example: www.vlib.org
Here are some useful directories of quality
information compiled by resource experts:
http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/alpha.htm
New York Public Library Links:
http://www.nypl.org/links/
Alcove 9 from the Library of Congress is a
directory of quality, free resources:
www.loc.gov/rr/main/alcove9
Here is a listing of free reference sites
chosen by experts at the Library of
Congress:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
Now that you know some alternative search engines
and a few directories for quality information, where do
you find free tutorials for more information?
The SUNY ALBANY SITE in the
previous slide teaches skills: how
to search better, how to evaluate
what you find, and how to avoid
plagiarism
The site address is:
http://library.albany.edu/usered/
Another tutorial teaching Information Literacy skills is provided by
the U of California, Berkeley: includes free handouts
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindI
nfo.html
A free dictionary in many languages
is: http://www.wiktionary.org/
Speaking of Wikis, one which has scholarly material,
contributed only by experts is the new
Scholarpedia: www.scholarpedia.org/
PART TWO: FINDING FREE
ONLINE BOOKS
EXCELLENT, and LITTLE KNOWN
SITES HERE
Now, let’s look at the area of free
books and how to get them on the
Internet
One useful site is the University of
California Press making available
some 2000 free academic books on
all topics:
http://content.cdlib.org/escholarshi
p/
A Subject index may be found at:
http://www.escholarship.org/editio
ns/index_subjects.html
University of California: Free
Academic Books
Another useful site is the University of Pennsylvania Free Online
Books: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/lists.html a
browseable collection of over 30,000 books
WikiBooks just emerged as another source of books,
including educational textbooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
Educational Textbooks may be found at:
http://wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/e
ducator/open_textbooks
The University of Virginia now has an E
TEXT Page at:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/
One can read scanned books at this site:
http://demo.openlibrary.org/
Here is the actual scanned book from a real
library : one can flip pages just like a real
book: over a million books available in full
text format
Other sites where you can access
full text books free are:
Online Books through the Internet Public Library:
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/
International Children’s Digital Literature, Full Text, in 20
Languages: http://icdlbooks.org/
Google Books: http://books.google.com/
Also see Google Scholar for information about books and authors:
http://scholar.google.com/
Google Book Search: http://www.google.com/books?hl=en
Besides being able to search for actual books, this search also lets
you find keywords and phrases that appear in books.
PART THREE: FINDING FREE
ONLINE ARTICLES AND
DATABASES
Give these sites a try for finding
articles, full text, online
How about free articles? Where can
you access these?
One of the best new free sites is the
DOAJ: Directory of Open Access
Journals at www.doaj.org
Includes the full text of over 3,800
journals arranged by subject
category.
This is what the site looks like
DOAJ: www.doaj.org
Here are journals in the category of
literature in DOAJ:
And, here is a full text article from
the journal titled COMPOSITION
The full text: all free!
Social Science Research
Network: www. ssrn.com
Have to register first, but registration
is free.
The next few slides demonstrate
SSRN’s research capabilities: SSRN
covers papers given at International
Conferences as well as published
articles, many of these peer-reviewed.
More sites where one can retrieve
full text articles are below:
University Of Houston Libraries: Scholarly
Journals Distributed Via the World Wide Web
http://info.lib.uh.edu/wj/webjour.html This
directory provides links to established Web-based
scholarly journals that offer access to English
language article files without requiring user
registration or fees.
Free E-Journals Arranged By Subjects And
Themes: http://ejw.i8.com/ Includes the best web
sites and free E-Journals in over 40 different
academic disciplines, constantly updated.
Results of SSRN SEARCH ON GENDER STUDIES
FULLTEXT OF ONE OF THE ARTICLES
Other sites for full text articles are
☼ Gateway for Free Ejournals:
http://www.icast.org.in/ejournal/ejournal.php
☼ Free E-Journals: http://www.e-journals.org
☼ Open Humanities Press:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/ Absolutely free access to
scholarly EJournals such as Cosmos and History, Fast Capitalism,
Film-Philosophy, Image and Narrative, and Postcolonial Texts.
☼ HighWire Press http://highwire.stanford.edu/
HighWire recently loaded their 5 millionth article. “A division of the
Stanford University Libraries, HighWire Press hosts the largest
repository of high impact, peer-reviewed content, with 1189 journals
and 5,028,291 full text articles from over 140 scholarly publishers.
HighWire-hosted publishers have collectively made 2,014,513
articles free. With our partner publishers we produce 71 of the 200
most-frequently-cited journals.”
Also don’t forget about the free reading room from
the Internet Public Library: arranged by broad topics
http://www.ipl.org/div/serials/
THESES AND
DISSERTATIONS: FULL TEXT
For serious research and research
projects
If you want free access to theses
and dissertations, here are two
excellent sites.
☼ Theses and Dissertations from the
University of Maryland:
http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum
☼ Theses and Dissertations from MIT
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]
http://dspace.mit.edu
Here is what the Maryland site
looks like
Here is the actual full text of the
dissertation, all 549 pages, free!
Now that you know how to find free books and free articles,
want to know other secrets? This is from the Sawyer Library at
http://www.suffolk.edu/sawlib/webcollect.htm#other
Here are other sources for finding free
valuable publications. One is the
Student Corner at www.America.gov
The Student Corner site gives you access to free books and free
electronic journals in many fields. America.gov offers free
webchats and articles of interest and the opportunity to share
your opinions with others. www.America.gov
Example of a free publication in Student
Corner: Outline of American Literature
See others below
America.gov also comes in Language
Versions: here is the French version:
www.america.gov/fr/
Interested in American Studies? Here are two
great sites: this is the American Memory
Project from the Library of Congress.
Cross Roads Project from
Georgetown University
Here is their Encyclopedia of
American Studies
URLs
The American Memory Project of the Library of
Congress contains millions of digitized
documents in all formats and in all fields of
study pertaining to American society and
history:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
The Crossroads Project at Georgetown
may be found at:
http://crossroads.georgetown.edu/
Other free resources: Biography.com
Here is a Bio of Abe Lincoln as one example
FREE VIDEOS FOR EDUCATIONAL
AND
TEACHING RESOURCES
FROM WWW.LEARNER.ORG
Where to find free videos explaining
concepts in detail? www.learner.org is a
great resource.
Note this free English language program on
www.learner.org 15 free videos, completely
viewable
VoD means Video on Demand: seeing videos
requires free registration; entire video
viewable
PART FOUR:
FREE DISTANCE EDUCATION
RESOURCES FOR YOUR INTELLECTUAL
GROWTH AND FOR PROFESSORS TO
SEE HOW OTHERS HAVE APPROACHED
A TOPIC.
Distance Education Sites; great for Educational
Advisors and prospective students wanting to explore
what an American style Education is all about
EXAMPLE OF MIT COURSES ON LITERATURE: ALL
FREE! http://ocw.mit.edu
Here are free online class courses at Yale,
available for download; courses are not for
credit. This is a class on the American Novel.
Note this course on Richard Wright’s BLACK
BOY (and all other Yale Courses) is available
for download in video, audio and one can
even print out a transcript of the lecture
Another free and new site is
Academic Earth
URLs for these and other resources
are as follows:
Academic Earth: http://www.academicearth.org/
Yale University: http://open.yale.edu (really excellent!)
MIT University: http://ocw.mit.edu
Tufts University (see especially Medical/Dentistry online courses):
http://ocw.tufts.edu
University of California at Berkeley: Video Courses of actual
classes given at Berkeley: http://www.youtube.com/ucberkeley
Utah State University http://ocw.usu.edu (especially excellent for
International Economics)
Johns Hopkins University: http://ocw.jhsph.edu/
Notre Dame University: http://ocw.nd.edu
University of California, Irvine: http://ocw.uci.edu
OCW Consortium: www.ocwconsortium.org Click on Members
Open Educational Resources: http://www.oercommons.org/
A clearinghouse of free teaching and learning resources – from K12 lesson plans to college curriculum.
Other resources to consult
Check out IRO Steve Perry’s Wiki for
bibliographies in many subject areas, all
updated. You can find for example
bibliographies that go into greater depth on
free resources and a complete listing of all
Free IIP Resources and available language
versions.
Available at: http://tinyurl.com/6dfaxn
THE END: THANK YOU! 
IRC LUSAKA developed a WIKI at:
http://irclusakazam.pbwiki.com/
This site has this Powerpoint and the
Researchers Toolkit
Let us know your feedback on this
and other resources that are useful
for your work.