Research Part 2
Continued
General Directories, Libraries and Academic Directories
+Writing Labs and Publishing Tools¹
Sometimes using superficial articles from Wiki resources aren’t enough to support your work. So in order to create an authentic voice for your fiction, especially if it’s for a profound piece of fiction or creative nonfiction: You must know exactly what you’re presenting the reader so that they can feel fully immersed in your story.
Often times, especially with creative nonfiction, we forget the factual information that illustrates the entire narrative. Such as: specific geographical names and locations; the specific cultural impressions and even the foreign languages which heavily influence certain societies.
By researching these important details and re-familiarizing oneself with this pertinent information, it will improve the characters and events you have chosen to write about. Your story will become more believable, thus making the plotmore cohesive and readable. This allows the reader to burrow themselves deeply into your written world. They will be able to identify with it intimately; and that’s exactly what the relationship between the writer and reader should be.
General Directories
Open Directory Project
http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Writers_Resources/
Although this directory is composed of mostly volunteer edited links and categories, it contains a vast amount of resources for reference on every subject matter imaginable. In the Arts directory, there are large amounts of information specifically regarding writing and media. Within this directory, this resource contains close to 200,000 links of various websites specifically about writing. So go, take some time and explore; enjoy the process of researching. Understand what you’re presenting so that you can create a more enjoyable environment for your reader.
Other Directories
Educypedia:
The Educational Encyclopedia
Subject Finder Directory
Best of the Web Directory:
Blogs
Best of the Web Directory:
Major American city guides
Best of the Web Directory:
UK and Ireland
Learning to code WebPages and Websites, Resources for:
Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Technology Learning
Is an excellent resource guide for learning and testing coding/programming languages; especially if you would like to understand how the World Wide Web (WWW) is built and what functionally makes it run.
It has an easy to understand format for learning the most commonly used web coding and programming languages. From beginner to advanced, you can even experiment with their native code compilers to test the web coding-languages you’re learning, thereby making it a truly active learning process. They also provide short quizzes on the coding-languages you’re learning, in code-languages such as:
- HTML/HTML5/CSS/CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, JSON, PHP, SQL, ASP, VBScript, XML
Libraries, Academic Directories and Writing Labs
Librarians’ Internet Index
The WWW Virtual Library
The InfoMine
International Library Index, LibDex
Government Information (Library and Archives Canada)
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx
Statistics Canada
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html
Library of Congress (America)
Free Internet Resources and Journals:
Directory of Open Access Journals
Galileo, from the university system of (the state of) Georgia
http://galileo.usg.edu/welcome/
JSTOR
E-Journals
Google Scholar
Bartleby Free, Great Books Online
Perseus: Collection of Classical,
Renaissance texts and reference materials
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
Project Gutenberg, collection of public (non-modern) texts
English Online Writing Labs, Language and Grammar
Edufind.com
http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/grammar_topics.php
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
Literature Resources (MIT Libraries)
http://libguides.mit.edu/content.php?pid=12397
English Scholar, “A Compendium of Electronic Resources”
Maths, Sciences and Humanities, along with test prep
Khan Academy
Tools for:
Writing, Publishing and Graphic Arts
Free and Open Source Software
Scribus, Open Source (Free) Desktop Publishing Software
http://scribus.net/canvas/Scribus
Lyx – The Document Processor, Open Source (Free)
Free and an excellent PDF real-time editor
PDFy by Sven Slootweg @Joepie31
PDF Xchange Viewer (Free)
http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer
“[The] Web’s Best Graphic Design Software, Page & Logo Maker. Free!”
LibreOffice 4.0 (Free)
PDFescape Free PDF Editor and Form Filler
“PDFzen Free PDF editing in your browser.”
Apache “OpenOffice – The Free and Open Productivity Suite”
PDFedit pdf manipulation library, GUI, tools
http://pdfedit.cz/en/index.html
Qoppa Software PDF Studio (Free Trial Software Downloads)
http://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/
Affordable and powerful software options for design, print and DIY projects
Various software titles for word processing,
desktop publishing and graphics.
Scrivener word-processing program designed for authors
(free trial and paid full version available)
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/
Broderbund Software
“CutePDF ideas for PDF”
Apple-Mac:
“iStudio Publisher, Desktop Publishing. Simplified.”
http://www.istudiopublisher.com/
Serif Software WebPlus, Page Plus, PhotoPlus, DrawPlus, MoviePlus, PanoramaPlus, CraftArtist (both free and paid full version software, very affordably priced!)
Corel: CorelDRAW, WordPerfect, painter, PaintShop, VideoStudio
PDFFusion and CorelCAD
Flip PDF Professional
http://www.flipbuilder.com/flip-pdf-pro/index.html
The Gold Standard for professional
publishing, web design and graphics:
(Higher priced, investment software)
Microsoft Office Publisher
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/publisher/
Quark Desktop Publishing
http://www.quark.com/Products/QuarkCopyDesk/
Adobe:
Adobe InDesign Publishing
http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html
Adobe PageMaker
http://www.adobe.com/products/pagemaker/index.html
“Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
William Shakespeare
References:
¹Hackman, Grant Thomson Nelson Guide to Web Research, 2007-2008 ed. University of New Brunswick at Saint John, 2007-2008. Toronto: Thomson Nelson P, Print.
~Sara
