Doing research for a term paper, project or just for fun can be approached in many different ways. Try using r-library as follows:

1. Select a topic and begin your search using your favorite search engine.
2. Save web pages and documents that you find interesting. Be sure and hilite those sections that are the most relevant.
3. When you want to see what you have saved in your library use Search Library (found in Library Tools) to generate a list of documents related to a particular identifier (i.e. keyword, project, or category).
4. Review the list and select those documents that you want to work with by using the check-box on the left or select them all.
5. Generate a Mosaic of the selected documents to easily navigate to the stored documents for further review and hiliting.
6. Generate a report of the hilited sections of your selected documents and copy that document to your word processor. This report will contain an automatically numbered list of hilites along with a cross reference to where that site can be found.
7. Using the open word processor document just simply type in the outline for your research paper. Cut and paste the hilited items under the appropriate section within your outline.
8. Using your outline write your research paper.

Each search engine approach is slightly different. These are some helpful hints about some of them:

Google What can you say except that they do a little of everything and a lot of some things. They use algorithms mostly to prioritize results. Available at www.google.com.

Yahoo Great search engine. Reportedly rivalling Google in index size and results. Available at www.yahoo.com.

iBoogie iBoogie is a search site developed and owned by CyberTavern. This search engine uses Clusterizer™ - a clustering engine developed by CyberTavern. You now have a way to navigate through large numbers of search results. Clusterizer puts documents with similar content or with related topics into the same group. Each group is assigned a label based on the content of the documents. You can easily see the main topics and focus on the ones that are of interest to you, without being forced to scroll through a very long list of ranked documents. Available at www.iboogie.com.

Grokker Grokker is not a search engine, but rather a content access tool that provides federated access to any digital information source. Grokker features a powerful clustering engine that analyzes and presents search results in topically organized visual maps. Grokker can access any type of digital data and can be customized for business enterprises, academic institutions and research-intensive organizations. Available at www.grokker.com.

A9 A9.com, Inc. researches and builds innovative technologies to improve search experience for e-commerce applications. A separately branded and operated subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Available at www.a9.com.

What is a blog? Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author. Searching the Blog universe lets you in on what people are saying on just about any topic. Some of the more well-known blog search engines include:

Google Blog Search blogsearch.google.com

IceRocket Blog Search www.icerocket.com

Blog Search Engine www.blogsearchengine.com

PubSub www.pubsub.com

What is an RSS Feed? Many web surfers confuse an RSS search with a blog search. Many blogs have RSS feeds, but not all RSS feeds are blogs. An RSS feed, as a rule, is designed to send out updates or notices whenever new information is available. News, weather, research? Get the information in real-time. Why is this helpful? You can watch updates online, or you can be notified when new information is available. You don’t have to find it – it finds you. Some examples include:

Feedster www.feedster.com

Bloglines www.bloglines.com

Online libraries have become increasingly popular. Each library specializes in certain types of content. One of the best is available from Questia. The Internet Public Library is a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of Information. One of its main purposes is to provide library services to Internet users. Activities include: finding, evaluating, selecting, organizing, describing, and creating information resources; and direct assistance to individuals. Available at: www.ipl.org. The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 130 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts.

The Library of Congress occupies three buildings on Capitol Hill. The Thomas Jefferson Building (1897) is the original separate Library of Congress building. (The Library began in 1800 inside the U.S. Capitol.) The John Adams Building was built in 1938 and the James Madison Memorial Building was completed in 1981.

An agency of the legislative branch of the U.S. government, the Library includes several internal divisions (or service units), including the Office of the Librarian, Congressional Research Service, U.S. Copyright Office, Law Library of Congress, Library Services, and the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Available at: www.loc.gov www.libraryspot.com
www.answers.com The World's Largest Online Library of Books Questia is the first online library that provides 24/7 access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles. You can search each and every word of all of the books and journal articles in the collection. You can read every title cover to cover. This rich, scholarly content -- selected by professional collection development librarians -- is not available elsewhere on the Internet. Available at www.questia.com.

Links to sites that may be useful when verifying research notes, references, citations and bibliography forms.

www.mla.org

www.ccc.commnet.edu/mla/format.shtml

thewritesource.com/index2.htm

www.apastyle.org/

thewritesource.com/APA/APA.HTM

www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools.Documentation.html

Note that many school districts, colleges and universities also sponsor websites dedicated to examples of formatting for APA, Chicago/Turabian, MLA among other formats. Simply perform a web search on the format type, example: a Google Search for "MLA format"