Link of the Week – Search Engines and Databases

A[image error]uthors do a TON of research on any given topic. I, myself, will research even the smallest, insignificant detail just to make sure my writing is authentic. I’ve been known to haunt libraries and used bookstores for information. These days it is so much easier to utilize the internet. Scour, really. There are countless rabbit holes to fall down. But sometimes, you want a more refined search.

You may have heard of Google Scholar, a search engine that allows you to search literature.

Here are some other online databases that might be helpful.

Google Books Ngrams Viewer – a graph showing how words/phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years.
IMDb – Internet Movie Database – movies, television, and video game
Encyclopedia Mythica – mythology, folklore, and religion
Omniglot – encyclopedia focused on languages and writing systems
AnC – American National Corpus –
Worldcat – a network of library content
Encyclopedia Astronautica  –  a reference web site on space travel
Acronym Finder – searchable dictionary and database of abbreviations (acronyms, initialisms, and others) and their meanings.
AllMusic – music albums, artists and songs; reviews and biographies
Animal Diversity Web – database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology
Web Gallery of Art – virtual art gallery website

Wikipedia offers a list of academic databases and search engines that are ” useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, institutional repositories, archives, or other collections of scientific and other articles.”