MYTHING LINKS

For the site's search engine, please click below (if you're seeking homework help, the page also includes links on webwide search strategies, stats on popular search engines' rankings, & other useful facts):

..Search Engine Page ..
 

Reference Resources,
Online Texts,
Writing Research Papers,
World Languages, Etc.

Scholars burning their midnight oil
(Russian lacquer art courtesy of Russian Sunbirds)

Reference Resources & On-Line Texts

http://www.ipl.org/

This is the Internet Public Library (IPL) run by the School of Learning at the University of Michigan. It offers an amazing array of information, including reference librarians who'll help with your questions.  There are some 9000 online texts (including essays by T.S. Eliot) that can be browsed by author, title, or Dewey Subject Classification. The "Literary Criticism Collection" contains over 2500 critical and biographical websites about authors and their works (both American and international) that can be browsed by author, by title, or by literary period.

There is a large "Pathfinder" section -- this is a series of essays (with clear examples and links) on how to find "paths" to data on such subjects as reading & researching fairy tales; finding images online (great search engine techniques applicable to more than images!); medieval European history; Celtic culture; Jewish culture; Women's Studies; American folklife and holiday traditions; and tons more. New Pathfinder additions include one on "How Things Work" and another on the conflict in the Balkans. The Pathfinders are continually updated and expanded, making this a splendid resource.  There are also many IPL-sponsored online art exhibits, including a current one on New York City's Harlem from 1900-1940 (with old photos and essays), and another with sixty stunning pieces of Pueblo pottery from the American southwest.

I browsed in the worldwide newspapers -- I found several broken links at one site in the Nepal section, but also some fascinating information at another. Under Taiwan, one paper hadn't been published in several years but the site contained an oddly eloquent plea for a return to oldtime newspaper formats, even when online. Several other countries also have newspapers still online whose last issue is months, even years old, but I have to say that there's something refreshing about knowing there are still places on earth where updates aren't expected at the speed of light (besides, reading old regional newspapers sometimes throws into high relief the roots of a problem only currently manifesting in the world at large). In addition to newspapers, there are magazine articles -- if they don't have something, they'll tell you who might.

This site really does live up to its name -- a public library at your fingertips -- online.

This is another online library, "Library Spot." Its design lacks the clean, simple lines of IPL (see directly above) but it offers a wide array of online dictionaries, encyclopedias (including the best of all, Britannica, with a week's free subscription); libraries (including direct links to all the presidential libraries as well as libraries for law, medicine, and music); access to newspapers, magazines, journals; maps; and many other features (like getting grants; checking your credit rating; genealogies; quotations; buying a car; downloading games; viewing museum art). The tone and "look" is geared to a younger audience, but graduate students have also found it valuable in dissertation research. The site is based in the Northwestern University/Evanston Research Park in Evanston, Ill. and is managed by StartSpot Mediaworks, which "strives to create exemplary Web resources that engage, enlighten and inspire."

This is the far-ranging website for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  'Nuf said <smile>.  The exhibits alone make this a worthwhile visit.

This is the "Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web," compiled and maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York.  The range of this huge, annotated selection of links is mind-boggling, a feature that has not passed unnoticed by others:

At last count, there were over 1,000 libraries of various sorts linking to Digital Librarian, as well as a number of non-profit organizations, businesses and individuals. . . .

This is the "Translators' Site du Jour" -- Susan Larsson updates it daily with excellent research-focused sites.  Archives are available for all earlier weeks  (Note: MythingLinks was the Humanities Site du Jour on 20 September 1999).  She also has a section on her 8 top search engine choices -- here's the direct link: http://home.ncia.com/~slarsson/search.html
(Other searching tips and strategies will be found on my Search Engine page.)

"Maps in the News":  if you're looking for maps related to recent events from the past few years, this is a great site from the University of Minnesota.  The maps include: sites in Kosovo & Bosnia; Princess Diana's funeral route; the 1998 winter Olympics; Pakistan cyclone; tornados in Oklahoma and Kansas; sites of American high school shootings; African bombings and violence; Kurdish protests; the Wye River Memorandum.

This is the online "Newsletter For Graduate Students" created by Dr. Robert S. Butters of the Creative Learning Services.  It covers research, job hunts, employment, grants, fellowships & awards, education, and many other aspects of graduate study.  The Newsletter comes out monthly; back issues are archived on line. (Note: Butters offers an interesting looking "Ph.D. Toolkit" CD ROM for $20.)

Writing Research Papers

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html[Link updated 27 May 2000]

On copyright issues, this is Brad Templeton's invaluable "10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained."  A related site of his looks at Copyright issues in general: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html.  (Note: the Library of Congress site, above, also has a section on copyrights for those who wish to delve more deeply.)

From DeskRef in upstate New York comes these excellent college-level links to sites on grammar and style, writing research papers (both APA and MLA), and good writing style in general.

From the Internet Public Library (see above) comes another page on grammar and style in writing A+ research papers -- the well organized page is aimed at teens but has much of value for all age groups, especially adults returning to the academic world after an absence of many years.

This website from Michael B. Quinion is specifically designed to assist you in citing online sources correctly (it includes both MLA and APA styles as well as links to other style manuals).

World Languages

http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/guides.html

This site from the Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon is a huge resource for the world's languages.  The site provides information on 115 languages (e.g., where they can be studied, online courses, recordings of native speakers, history, news groups, mailing lists, etc); it also has fonts available for 40 languages.

From Tyler Chambers comes another fine site on languages.  He writes:

"The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of language-related Internet resources. The over 2000 links in the HLP database have been hand-reviewed to bring you the best language links the Web has to offer. Whether you're looking for online language lessons, translating dictionaries, native literature, translation services, software, language schools, or just a little information on a language you've heard about, the HLP probably has something to suit your needs."

(Note: I found it interesting to take a specific language and look at the links provided by both of these language sites; in those I checked, there was no overlap.  Between the two of them, you should meet your language-oriented requirements.)

For Lovers of Words

Scholarship B.C.  -- i.e., Before Computers
(Courtesy of Tradestone International)

http://www.clever.net/quinion/words/index.htm

This page, World Wide Words, is, in the words of its author, "devoted to the English language - its history, quirks, curiosities and evolution."  Click on the above link and you'll have access to wonderfully erudite essays on words by England's Michael B. Quinion (who contributes frequently to the Oxford English Dictionary and various Cassell's dictionaries).  Quinion updates his site weekly with new features.

This site is called "A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia."  It's compiled and maintained by Jeff Miller, a Florida high school teacher.  If you love words, you'll love exploring here.  There are such categories as the most beautiful words (my favorite), Scrabble words, the most frequently misspelled words, names of people that turned into words, Italian words, words starting with "Z" ("last" words), and much more.

Film Plots & Data
[This section added 27 May 2000]

......
Posters from All Movie Guide
(see directly below)

This is All Movie Guide, an excellent resource with plot synopsis, cast, crew, and much more for a huge number of films in all categories.

From the always excellent and thorough Professor Paul Halsall at Fordham University in New York comes this site on "Medieval History in the Movies."  It is, he writes:

A thematically organized guide to over 200 medieval-themed films...."Medieval" has been taken very widely - from the first-century (CE) Roman Empire until the 17th-century.

Again from Professor Halsall comes "Ancient History in the Movies," subdivided into the following categories: Pre-Historic Humans, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Biblical Epic/Ancient Israel, Classical Greece, Hellenistic Greece, Roman Empire, and Biblical Epic/Early Christian.

Again from Dr. Halsall is "Modern History in the Movies."  The timespan ranges from Columbus to the present time.

This is MRQE, the "Movie Review Query Engine," a search engine for a database of over 19,000 English-language and foreign titles (with over 140,000 reviews of those films).  It also looks at the latest films from Cannes.  In addition, there are several specialized links -- e.g., for buying videos & DVD's, and even for finding out if a given film or documentary will be on TV in your area in the near future.