Make your own custom online library, right on your desktop!
All net-o-philes know that there is hardly a subject which cannot be thoroughly researched on the net. Some of us get hooked on research, simply because there's so much information for a curious person to find. Others research topics for a term paper, to make vacation plans or for professional reasons. If you regularly make use of the net to find information, you'll benefit from making your own customized online library resource list. It's quite simple to do, and you can store this little cheat-sheet right on your desktop.
Let's say you're planning an extensive vacation to a destination you've never visited, in another country. No matter how you cut it, it's going to cost a substantial amount of money. It's well worth your time to invest a couple of hours researching websites that answer all your questions.
Your online library may consist of city guides, history sites, travel products, museum sites and air and ground transportation sites. Tackle each resource, one by one. You may want to find a specialized travel search engine to start. Do a search on your city guides. You know you'll come up with hundreds of thousand results. Sift through several pages of results and take a look at the ones you find most promising for your purpose. Make a heading for each category. As you locate the best sites, copy and paste the urls of the sites' home page into a simple word processing notepad and save it to your desktop. You've got yourself a super vacation planning online library. As time permits, surf your chosen sites, saving the information you can use. Using this personal online library method makes your search quicker and better organized.
If your project is a term paper, you'll want to fill your online library with plenty of reference resources. Include online dictionaries, thesauruses, quotation libraries, encyclopedias and other standard references. Then pursue sites relevant to the topic of your paper. When you feel you've exhausted the resources you need, begin reading. Again, this method allows you to focus on the task at hand in a systematic manner. You're far less likely to go surfing off into the wild blue, chasing some interesting, but irrelevant information.
Some people are incurable researchers. Such researchers invariably end up a tremendous number of bookmarks, that are ultimately categorized in a somewhat haphazard way. If this sounds like you, the customized online library is a valuable tool. As you research sites and information, you simply continue categorizing and expanding your listings of the best sites. You just slip them into your online library desktop file for quick and easy access.
Keeping your online library on your desktop is handy, but as it grows, you may want to store it in a directory on your hard disc for safekeeping. You won't want to risk losing this incredible resource in a system glitch!
