Useful Links: Home
Welcome!
Welcome to the
Pearl River Public Library Useful Links page.
This collection of links began as an archive of the Websites to Try column created for our library newsletter and now continues to grow with the addition of other helpful, informative, or just plain fun websites.
Search the Web
- JustWatch Find out where to watch movies and TV shows legally online with JustWatch. The streaming search engine.
- RefSeek Currently in public beta, RefSeek is a web search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers. RefSeek's unique approach offers students comprehensive subject coverage without the information overload of a general search engine—increasing the visibility of academic information and compelling ideas that are often lost in a muddle of sponsored links and commercial results.
- Sweetsearch SweetSearch is a Search Engine for Students. It searches only the 35,000 Web sites that our staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved when creating the content on findingDulcinea. We constantly evaluate our search results and "fine-tune" them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and university Web sites. SweetSearch helps students find outstanding information, faster. It enables them to determine the most relevant results from a list of credible resources, and makes it much easier for them to find primary sources. We exclude not only obvious spam sites, but also marginal sites that read well, but lack academic or journalistic rigor. As importantly, the very best Web sites that are often buried on other search engines appear on the first page of SweetSearch results.
Search Online Databases/Journals/Portals
- DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
Full-Text access to scholarly journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access.
- Scitation (Physics) Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from American Institute of Physics Publishing and AIP Member Societies.
- Social Science Research Network Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences
Best of the Web
- 101 Best Websites for Writers 2008 Links cover these categories: Agent Blogs, Challenges/Creativity, General Resources, Genre/Niche, Jobs, Just for fun, Protect Yourself, Publishing Resources, and Writing Communities. Lists for later years may be available for a fee or free at the Writer's Digest website.
- Best of History Websites This award-winning portal was created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts. In addition to links to history websites of general interest, the site also features links to teacher guides, K-12 history lesson plans, activities, games, quizzes, and more.
- NY Times Newsroom Navigator For more than 10 years, the Newsroom Navigator has been used by New York Times reporters and editors as the starting point for their forays onto the Web. Its primary intent is to give the news staff a solid starting point for a wide range of journalistic functions without forcing all of them to spend time wandering around to find a useful set of links of their own. The list is by its nature highly selective and constantly changing.
Reference Link Bibliographies
- NYS Library Internet BibliographiesThe Library's reference librarians have assembled a collection of World Wide Web sites that they find useful in answering questions.
- Index of Library of Congress Research GuidesResearch guides to the Library's general collections of books and periodicals, as well as general subject guides prepared by Library of Congress reference librarians, are listed below. More online guides covering other Library of Congress collections are available via the LC Bibliographies, Research Guides and Finding Aids page.
"Page" a Day
- Earth Science Picture of the Day "The Earth Science Picture of the Day highlights the diverse processes and phenomena which shape our planet and our lives. EPOD will collect and archive photos, imagery, graphics, and artwork with short explanatory captions and links exemplifying features within the Earth system. The community is invited to contribute digital imagery, short captions and relevant links."
Fact-Checking Sites
- AllSides AllSides strengthens our democracy with balanced news, diverse perspectives, and real conversation. We expose people to information and ideas from all sides of the political spectrum so they can better understand the world — and each other. Our balanced news coverage, media bias ratings, civil dialogue opportunities, and technology platform are available for everyone and can be integrated by schools, nonprofits, media companies, and more.
- Check Your Fact About Us Check Your Fact is a fact-checking news site produced by the journalists of The Daily Caller. Our job is to independently fact check statements by influencers, as well as reporting by other news outlets. We also vet the many widely-shared claims that rocket across the internet every day. We additionally welcome our readers to send us claims to fact check. If you believe a story or statement deserves a fact check, or an error has been made with a published fact check, please contact our editor at aislinn@dailycaller.com.. Our mission is a non-partisan one. We're loyal to neither people nor parties -- only the truth. And while the fact-checking industry continues to grow, there are still countless assertions that go unchecked. We exist to fill in the gaps. We commit to being fully transparent with how we conduct our fact checks. Whenever possible, any reader should be able to retrace the steps we took in establishing the truth.
- Factcheck We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. A project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.
- Lead Stories Lead Stories is an innovative fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. Our editorial team used the technology provided by Trendolizer™ (patent granted) to quickly find the most trending content on the internet to write about but our mantra has always been "Just Because It's Trending Doesn't Mean It's True."
- Politifact This nonpartisan fact-checking website strives to sort out the truth in American politics. It is managed by the Tampa Bay Times, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists. Its Truth-O-Meter rulings have six ratings from True to Pants on Fire.
- Science Feedback Our mission Our first mission is to help create an Internet where users will have access to scientifically sound and trustworthy information. We also provide feedback to editors and journalists about the credibility of information published by their outlets. Our mission is pedagogical: we strive to explain whether and why information is or is not consistent with the science. We are nonpartisan and apply the same methodology to claims made in a variety of media outlets, as well as exposing claims that either contradict or over-hype science. We believe it is scientists’ civic duty to better inform our fellow citizens in our area of expertise.
- Snopes This site was founded to research urban legends and has grown into the oldest and largest fact-checking site on the Internet. A good resource for checking popular culture stories shared on the web.
Great Starting Points
- Finding Dulcinea : Librarian of the Internet Our mission is to bring users the best information on the Web for any topic, employing human insight and methodical review. FindingDulcinea presents only credible, high-quality and trustworthy Web sites, saving time for the novice and the experienced user alike. Each piece, whether a Web Guide, a Beyond the Headlines story or a Netcetera article, receives the same meticulous research. The Web sites included in each piece are connected through original narrative, providing users with information on each site before they even click on it.
