How to Study

Using Online Resources
There’s so much material on the Internet, it’s easy to be over-
whelmed. While it can be extremely helpful to have access to some
obscure websites that have just the material you need, especially
when a book or two you want to take notes from has disappeared
from the library, I am still convinced that most of you will waste too
much time if the majority of your research is done online. I can attest
from far too much personal experience that it is ridiculously easy to
get sidetracked when doing research online. “Wow, I didn’t know
there were that many cool sites about bungee jumping. I’d better
check them out…right now!”
Chapter 6 
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How to Conduct Your Research
129

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Be careful about the following two things:
While much of the “basic” information on most research-oriented
websites is not going to radically change from day to day, that is
certainly not true of all sites. Just as the identical keyword search 
may yield radically different results if run on two separate days (or on
two different search engines), you may find material you need deleted
the next time you look for it. So if you find something really good,
download it, save it to your hard drive, or print a hard copy.
Online bookstores (amazon.com, bn.com and, if you’re Canadian,
chapters.indigo.ca) will list many books even before they’re published,
and almost always before your local library has ordered, cataloged,
and shelved them. Amazon’s recently added feature of including
searchable pages from many titles—from a table of contents and 
a short excerpt to 50 pages of text or more—should help you get 
a feel for whether the book or a portion of it is pertinent to your 
topic.
Amazon in particular offers a “People who bought this book also
bought” feature, which is a good way to locate related resources
(especially since none of the online bookstores make searches by 
subject easy or accurate).