Best online libraries with articles on weblogs? Free is better

April 11, 2004 8:51 AM

Anybody know of any good online libraries? I'm especially interested in libraries containing articles on weblogs, as that's the theme of my dissertation and that's what this research is for. If you can point me directly at good interesting articles on weblogs, that would be great too. :) (Yes, I'm aware I may be asking too much, but I figure there's no harm in asking.)
Bonus points if they're free resources, but I'm not opposed to paying a small sum to get articles if I have to.
posted by sailoreagle to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Check with your city's actual Library. Quite a few of them (including mine) offer free access -- on site or remotely -- to NetLibrary which may or may not offer the material you're looking for. Your and other nearby universities or city colleges may also offer access to online resources to residents, or in some cases, all comers.

The net knows no geography, but a lot of the best resources on it are local.
posted by majick at 10:33 AM on April 11, 2004

Unfortunately, I live in Italy, not in the USA... and we're rather behind on the internet, my local library doesn't even offer a computer for internet access. :| I'll go ask anyway - but in the meantime, any alternate solutions? (My university doesn't offer many resources either, was the first place I checked.)
posted by sailoreagle at 10:44 AM on April 11, 2004

These aren't libraries, but I know this and this were once good starting points. There are also a few books out now that could be useful, but you'll need to check out Amazon for those (I know Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook has been translated into Italian, I'm not sure about the others). I'm not sure what way your going with your dissertation, but these places cover the technical, cultural, and practical matters of weblogs. Also check out Online Journalism Review.
posted by rodz at 2:37 PM on April 11, 2004

You might want to try searching Google for articles published by academicians and stored on university servers. Lecturer sometimes store them for their students' perusal or for draft-vetting by other academicians.

1. Use http://google.com/advanced_search

2. at least one of the words: weblog blog

3. Return pages written in English

4. File format ONLY .pdf (academicians' favoured format is .pdf)

5. Domain ONLY .edu (do another search for .ac.uk to cover Brit unis)

6. Set to 100 results

7. Hit Google Search button

Or try this one
(.edu - 1850 results)

Or this one (.ac.uk - 150 results)

After you find some interesting articles, look in the biblio of each article for other articles that you might be interested in. Do the search in google for the full article title. Of the hundreds of universities around the world with the thousands of lecturers, there's a good chance that one of them will have stored that article you're looking for online.

This method is good, but is probably not as comprehensive as stepping into a real library. Good luck!
posted by timyang at 9:20 PM on April 11, 2004

Academics also favor Microsoft Word.
http://www.kairosnews.org

http://technoliteracy.blogspot.com

I didn't html those, because I want you to earn it, old skool-style, by having to type them in, as opposed to getting on the bus and going to a physical library and having to gather all of your books into a bundle and cart them off with you every time you have to pee during a marathon research session.
posted by mecran01 at 10:19 AM on April 12, 2004

Mecran01, only for their own articles. Top online academic article libraries like Emerald distribute in pdf format (with no msword option). So you are more likely to find articles searching for pdf than msword docs.
posted by timyang at 10:52 PM on April 12, 2004