Amazing Resource from OEDB-Research Beyond Google

Research beyond Google: 119 authoritative, invisible, and comprehensive resources from OEDB (online education database) is one again from that amazing resources. Because of its length, we will be publishing the entire list over 3 days.

From OEDB:

Got a research paper or thesis to write? Want to research using the Internet? Good luck. There’s a lot of junk out there — outdated pages, broken links, and inaccurate information. Using Google or the Wikipedia may lead you to some results, but you can rarely be sure of pinpoint accuracy. And what’s more, you’ll only be searching a fraction of all of the resources available to you.

Google, the largest search database on the planet, currently has around eight billion web pages indexed. That’s a lot of information. But it’s nothing compared to what else is out there. Google can only index the visible web, or searchable web. But the invisible web, or deep web, is estimated to be 500 times bigger than the searchable web. The invisible web comprises databases and results of specialty search engines that the popular search engines simply are not able to index.

Do you think your local or university librarian uses Google? Sure, but certainly not exclusively. In order to start researching like a librarian, you’ll need to explore more authoritative resources, many of which are invisible. Note: Although some of the following resources are visible and indexed, they have all been included here because of their authoritative nature.

$ = Available only by subscription.

Topics Covered in this Article

Deep Web Search Engines | Art | Books Online | Business | Consumer | Economic and Job Data | Finance and Investing | General Research | Government Data | International | Law and Politics | Library of Congress | Medical and Health | Science | Transportation

Deep Web Search Engines

To get started, try using a search engine that specializes in scouring the invisible web for results. None of these can search the entire invisible web, but they make some inroads that Google has not as of yet.

1. Clusty — A metasearch engine that combines the results of several top search engines.
2. Intute — A searchable database of trusted sites, reviewed and monitored by subject specialists.
3. Librarians’ Internet Index — A search engine listing sites deemed trustworthy by actual human librarians, not just a Googlebot.
4. Internet Archive — A database of tens of thousands of movies, live music, audio, texts, and home of the Wayback Machine that allows you to find old versions of web pages, over 55 billion.

Art

Hundreds of other museums all over the world have their own databases. This is just a list of the databases for a few of the most popular. Within these databases are descriptions of the work, its location, and an image of the work.

1. Musée du Louvre — One of the oldest and most famous art galleries in the world. Contains Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Alexandros de Antioch’s Venus de Milo.
2. Guggenheim Museum — A collection of over 160 classical and new artists, searchable by artist name, title, date, movement, medium, concept, and museum.
3. Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery — A searchable database of more than 80,000 portrait records.
4. The National Gallery of Art — A searchable catalog of all of the museum’s 110,000 objects, with images of more than 6,000 available online.

Books Online

There are tens of thousands of classic books with full text available online for free. Some authors whose books are available in full text online include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

1. The Online Books Page — A searchable database of more than 25,000 English works with full text available for free online.
2. Bibliomania — A searchable database of free online literature from more than 2,000 classic texts.
3. The National Academies Press — A searchable directory of 3,000 free books online and 900 for-sale PDFs.
4. ebrary — A searchable database of more than 20,000 full-text books.

Business

The most accurate quantitative business knowledge often comes from specialty search engines and business directories/databases.

1. Explorit Now! — A portal allowing searchable access to numerous business journals and databases.
2. Agency ComPile — A searchable database of advertising and other marketing agencies.
3. GPO Access Economic Indicators — A portal to economic indicators from January 1998 to present.
4. Hoover’s — A searchable database of businesses.
5. ThomasNet — An industrial product search directory.
6. SBA Loan Data — A database of loan program approval activity from the Small Business Administration.

Consumer

For consumers, authoritative product reviews and pricing information often times are hidden in the deep web or among subscription-based reports.

1. Melissa Data — A directory of complete demographic data, sortable by ZIP code.
2. Kelley Blue Book — A guide to pricing new and used vehicles.
3. Edmunds — Another guide to pricing new and used vehicles.
4. Consumer Reports $ — A guide to consumer product reviews, including cars, appliances, electronics, computers, personal finance, travel, and more.

Economic and Job Data

A wealth of information regarding microeconomic and macroeconomic data is available from government sources and other organizations

1. Bureau of Labor Statistics — A directory of job-based and consumer economic data from the US Department of Labor.
2. Salary Wizard Calculator — A tool that shows national average salaries adjusted by location for different jobs.
3. Economagic — A free economic data directory containing over 200,000 data files.
4. Penn World Tables — A database of purchasing power parity and national income data for 179 countries for the years 1950-2000.
5. America’s Job Bank — A searchable database of jobs and resumes.
6. USAJOBS — A searchable database of federal government jobs.
7. Regional Economic Conditions (RECON) — A database of economic data available by state, county, and MSA.

Tags: archives, books online, Google, indexes, research, Resources, Wikipedia