There are many good Internet sites that are useful to the research process. Included here are free Web sites that we have found useful. To report problems with broken links, please send an email message to library@muskegoncc.edu
Searchable databases
- AJR Newslink Worldwide newspapers, magazines, radio, television.
- Movie Review Query Engine A searchable database of over 26,000 movie titles. Reviews appear in magazines, newspapers, and other online sources.
- PubMed Medical Database provided by the National Library of Medicine. Includes MEDLINE and other resources.
- Thesaurus of Geographic Names from the Getty Information Institute.
- Journal TOCs (The latest Journal Tables of Content.)
Encyclopedias
- World Book Online contains the World Book Encyclopedia. The site also includes a dictionary, an atlas and information about current events and news headlines.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
Book Databases (Some also include videos and compact discs.)
- Barnes and Noble This site includes new books as well as over 6 million used and/or rare books.
- Chegg for buying and selling textbooks.
- Digital Book Index is a large index to the many full text books located online. Included in the index are books from netLibrary, Library of Congress eTexts, and many universities.
- Best Book Buys search through 28 book stores to find the best prices.
- ISBN.NU An ISBN search to compare prices from online bookstores.
- Schuler Books with reviews.
- Amazon Books Large listing of currently available books.
- Advanced Book Exchange Find out-of-print, rare and antiquarian books. Searchable database of bookstores’ inventories.
- Alibris “The Ultimate Source for Out-of-Print & Rare Books”.
- Bookfinder Will locate new or used books by searching through several different databases including Advanced Book Exchange, Bibliocity, Interloc, Antiqbook, Powell’s Books, and Amazon.com.
- What’s Next provided by Kent District Library. Use this site to determine the order of (fictional) books in series. Searchable by author, title of book, or title of series.
- Library Booksales Search the booksales of libraries in the United States.
- Biblio database of over 100 million used, rare and out-of-print books.
- BookGilt Metasearch for book collectors, including antiquarian and rare books.
People/Biographical
- A&E Biographies over 20,000 searchable biographies.
- WhoWhatWhen Interactive Historical Timelines use for finding people, dates, and historical events.
- Family Search Genealogy database provided by the LDS Church in Utah.
- Social Security Death Index provided by FamilySearch. Includes reported deaths to the Social Security Administration up to February 2014.
- Switchboard directory is a database of United States telephone books. Includes yellow & white pages.
- AT&T Any Who Free, easy phone, white pages directory.
Governmental, city, state and local information
Governmental Search Engines
- USA.Gov the U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal.
- GovENGINE.com Government search engine for local, state and federal governments.
- Government agencies and elected officials is used to find contact information for agencies and elected officials from local through U.S. government.
Local Government/Local Information
- Michigan Votes Voter Information Center Find your polling location, view your sample ballot, and other information
- City of Muskegon
- City of Muskegon Heights
- City of Norton Shores
- Michigan Senate find your senator by district, name, or by your address.
- Michigan Legislature find your legislator by district, county, or your zip code.
- County of Muskegon
- Lakeshore Museum Center contains local history information. Includes essays written by Tom Carlson about businesses, buildings, landmarks, people and events in Muskegon’s history such as Continental Motors, the Occidental Hotel, and the Muskegon Lassies.
- Ottawa County
- Michigan Hometown Locator includes information about Michigan physical, cultural and historical features.
State of Michigan
- State of Michigan
- Michigan Senate find your senator by district, name, or by your address.
- Michigan Legislature find your legislator by district, county, or your zip code.
- Michigan Supreme Court Decisions
- Michigan Compiled Laws
- Michigan Voter Information Center provided by the Michigan Secretary of State. Registered voters may enter their name to find out where they are registered to vote, what voting equipment is used, and view the ballot and election calendar.
- Michigan Tax Forms
- MultiMag Michigan A comprehensive directory of information about Michigan. Includes cities, counties, townships, events, weather, and other topics of interest.
- Michigan Hometown Locator includes information about Michigan physical, cultural and historical features.
United States Government
- USA.Gov the U.S. Government’s Official Web Portal.
- U.S. House of Representatives Directory
- IRS Tax Forms
- U.S. Code
- The U.S. Supreme Court
- The U.S. Supreme Court blog
- U.S. Courts This site contains links to federal courts and judicial systems.
- Core Documents of US Democracy from the Government Printing Office. Includes current and historical legislative and legal, regulatory, presidential, demographic, and economic documents..
- U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO)
- U.S. Peace Corps
- Factfinder Census Information
- American Community Survey US Census Bureau
- Historical Census Data covering 1790 through 2000.
- Statistical Abstract of the United States
- The White House
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office searchable database.
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Information
- National Technical Reports Library searchable government documents repository.
- U.S. National Safety Council Leading safety advocate, nonprofit organization with the mission of eliminating preventable deaths at work, in homes and communities, and on the road through leadership, research, education and advocacy. Reliable information from the past, and present to anticipate and improve the future.
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (NIOSH) Research, recommendations, and other materials on improving workplace safety and preventing occupational injuries and illness.
Miscellaneous City, State and U.S. Information
- City Search allows users to enter a zip code and find information about events, lodging, entertainment, job postings, and much more.
- Compare demographics of cities at Moving.Com.
- U.S. Hometown Locator includes information about U.S. physical, cultural and historical features.
Business/Commercial Information
- PR Newswire Business and financial news including stock quotes.
- CNN Financial News
- Yahoo’s Stock Quotes and Financial Data.
- Big Charts Locate both historical stock quotes and current stock quotes from the early 1980s to present.
- Economic Statistics Briefing Room provided by the U.S. government.
- Hoover’s Online
- Thomas Register
- MiBiz Michigan business information with searchable archives.
- Froogle search engine provided by Google. Use to search for merchandise available online.
- Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds Use to find information on new and used cars. Also, MotorTrend contains information on new and used cars with local and regional information.
- Fuel Economy Guide U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency provide fuel economy information for vehicles.
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Information
- Searchable SIC Manual (1987)
- Business Menu from the Michigan Electronic Library.
- GuideStar search for nonprofit organizations.
- Bankrate Aid to compare bank rates. Calculators for mortgages, credit cards, and banking.
Subject Searches and Subject Catalogs
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Searching Tips
- Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web. Search Engine Watch includes an overview of the major search engines, search engine reviews and tutorials on how to use search engines.
Metasearch Engines and Collections of Search Sites
- Metacrawler metasearch that searches through google, bing, yahoo, etc…
- IxQuick Claims to be the world’s most powerful search engine. Searches are from 14 of the top search engines including AOL, Altavista, EuroSeek, Excite, Fast Search, GoTo, Hotbot, Infoseek, LookSmart, MSN, NBCi, Webcrawler, Yahoo and xRefer
- Vivisimo A metasearch tool with results folders. Has the ability to limit a search to news sources, Web search engine sites, or other online sources.
- SurfWax includes a variety of search engines and databases.
- Dogpile A multi-engine searching tool.
- Search Engines of the World A large collection of search engines from many countries.
- ZapMeta In addition to grouping results into related folders, this metasearch engine arranges results in order by domain, by relevance, by title, by search engine, or by popularity.
- MSN Web Search provided by Microsoft.
- Starting Point Search engine and subject catalog.
- Teoma Results are grouped and users may refine their search or look through directories which contain their search terms.
- WiseNut This search engine also groups results into related folders.
Search Engines
- A9.com a comprehensive search engine that saves users’ searches. Linked with Amazon, it also searches through the full text of thousands of books.
- All The Web A search engine with advanced features. Also called Fast Search, has a very large database.
- Excite search Keyword search of the Web.
- Google Keyword search of the Web. Maintains a cached copy of Web pages.
- Google Scholar Search for scholarly materials.
- Google Groups Keyword search of Usenet newsgroups.
- Google Blog Search searches only through blogs.
- Hotbot Large search database.
- Infoseek Keyword search of the Web.
- Microsoft’s Live search.
- LookSmart Keyword search of the Web.
- Lycos Keyword search of the Web.
- WolframAlpha Search for answers to factual questions.
Other Libraries and Library Issues
- Association of American Publishers, Inc.
- Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
- LibrarySpot Resources for Librarians.Cataloging Information Area
Library Societies, Associations and Services
- Lakeland Library System Libraries include the County Library systems of Muskegon, Ottawa, Newaygo, Kent, Allegan, Barry, Gratiot, Ionia, Mecosta and Montcalm.
- Grand Valley State University
- Western Michigan University Library online catalog. Includes regional libraries.
- Michigan State University Library
- Ferris State University
- University of Michigan Library
- Library of Michigan Our state library in Lansing.
- Hackley Public Library Now includes their online catalog.
- State Libraries of the United States.
- Libweb is a portal to library servers from over 100 countries.
- Hytelnet Libraries with Telnet interfaces world wide.
- Library of Congress
- Ariadne
- D-Lib Magazine The Magazine of Digital Library Research
- EContent Formerly Database
- Library Hi Tech
- Library Journal Digital
- Library Quarterly (Table of contents only.)
- LIBRES Library and Information Science Research Electronic Journal
- Online
- Provenance The Web Magazine for Information Professionals
- PACS Review Public Access Computer Systems Review
- Wilson E-Connection The print version of Wilson Library Bulletin ceased publication in 1995. This site contains the book reviews and library news that were part of that print publication.
- Michigan Library Association
- Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS). Formerly Michigan Library Consortium (MLC)
- Michigan eLibrary (MeL) Formerly known as Michigan Electronic Library. Provided by the State of Michigan under the auspices of the AccessMichigan program.
- SIRSI, Inc. Provider of our integrated library system.
- American Library Association (ALA)
- Council on Library and Information Resources
- Library Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) searchable database with coverage from last 40 years.
- WebJunction provided by OCLC and other organizations to act as an information source for libraries. Started with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
- OCLC Online Computer Library Center
Resources for Our Faculty and Administrators
- Michigan Department of Education
- United States Department of Education
- National Center for Education Statistics
- Measuring Up: The State-by-State Report Card for Higher Education from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education
- American Council on Education
- The Chronicle of Higher Education Headlines, summaries, and brief articles from current issues and browsable archives. A password is needed to read the full text of articles and to search the archives. See MCC reference librarian.
- Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Includes information from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) which is “The Nation’s Oldest and Largest Empirical Study of Higher Education”.
- ERIC Run by the US Dept of Education, this link provides access to many education related journals. At the bottom of the homepage, click journals, then “H” for journals pertaining to higher education. You can also look for journals pertaining specifically to community colleges.
- American Association of Community Colleges Site includes weekly news, AACC publications, and information regarding programs, services and conferences.
- Community College Survey of Student Engagement
- Michigan Community College Association
- Michigan Education Association
- Michigan Community College Virtual Learning Collaborative
- Center for Academic Transformation from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute headed by Dr. Carol A. Twigg.
- National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) Contains the NITLE News.
- Association of American Colleges and Universities included resource hubs focused on liberal education, including the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusive Excellence hub.
- The Center for Academic Integrity sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.
- National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development
- National Academy Press Reading Room contains full text of its publications.
- League for Innovation in the Community College
- Teaching History
- Classroom Assessment Techniques
- ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation
- Buros Assessment and Evaluation Test Locator from the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements.
- Student Assessment from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Includes a section on designing test questions.
- Grant and Proposal Writing
- The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance contains information on developing and writing grant proposals
- The Foundation Center an online version of the CD-ROM available in the library.
- National Science Foundation publications for grantseekers.
- Grants and Contracts from the United States Department of Education.
- National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Grant Resources from The NEA Foundation.
- The Art of Grantsmanship by Jacob Kraicer.
- NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts from the National Institutes of Health, Office of Extramural Research
Internet Information
- Living Internet informational site on the history of the Internet as well as current information.
- Citing Internet resources when writing research papers. Purdue O.W.L. provides MLA and APA information
- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is “the non-profit corporation that was formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions…”
- World Wide Web Consortium The W3C was founded to promote effective use of the Internet. The site contains a wealth of information about Internet activities and protocols.
- American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
- A-Z Listing of Security Threats and Risks provided by Symantec.
- Snopes.com is a good place to check the truth of email legends.
- Internet Crime Complaint Center provided by the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
- First Monday Peer reviewed Internet journal.
- Internic
- Domain Name Translator Will give IP address from domain name, or will give domain name from IP address.
- Connect Michigan A non-profit organization detailing broadband access throughout Michigan.
- CERT Computer Emergency Response Team. Deals with security issues regarding the Internet.
- Creative Commons Free images for reuse, copyright permissions granted.
News Sources
- ABYZ News Links contains links to over 16,200 newspapers and other news sources from around the world.
- News from the New York Times and the Associated Press.
- National Public Radio (NPR)
- CNN News
- USA Today
- BBC News
- Al Jazeera news
- Voice of America US and world events available in 50 different languages.
- Muskegon Chronicle
- Muskegon Times
- WOOD TV NBC Grand Rapids
- WXMI TV FOX Grand Rapids
- WZZM TV ABC Grand Rapids
- Detroit Free Press searchable archives from 1982. MCC participates in the AccessMichigan Project which makes the full text of these archives free to its members. For current news, go directly to the Detroit Free Press site.
- Google News taken from CNN, international newspapers, Associated Press, and other news sources.
- TVEyes a searchable archive of news clips from CNN, Fox, MSNBC and others. The database is created by voice recognition.
- Books
- Digital Book Index is a large index to the many full text books located online. Included in the index are books from netLibrary, Library of Congress eTexts, and many universities.
- Online Books listing put together at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Project Gutenberg Large database of full text books.
- Making of America archives at the University of Michigan. Contains scanned full text of books and periodicals from the 19th century.
- National Academy Press Reading Room contains the full text of many of its books.
E-mail Services
Other Useful Sites
- Images and Video
- Google Image Search
- Yahoo Image Search
- Digital Collections from the University of Washington Libraries. This searchable site offers nearly 40 different image collections from the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and other areas.
- UPI News Pictures contains over 100,000 pictures from the news. They currently are adding about 1,200 new images each month.
- Sounds
- Use FindSounds to search for brief sound effects, musical instrument samples, birds, animals, and a variety of everyday sounds.
- Finding People
- Switchboard A telephone book for the U.S. Use to find residential and business telephone numbers and addresses. Also will retrieve maps and directions.
- WhoWhere from Lycos.
- Whitepages People, business, reverse phone and address searches.
- Family Search Genealogy Database provided by the LDS Church in Utah.
- ZoomInfo
- Quick Facts and Statistical Information
- Reference Desk from the Michigan Electronic Library (MEL).
