Free Resources for Students and Researchers

There are a ton of great free resources out there both for students and for researchers, and I wanted to share some that I've found before the semester kicks into high gear. I know I've mentioned some of these resources before, but I've come across so many more that it's good to keep the list updated. If you know of anything that I missed, please include it--I'd love to make as complete a list as possible!

Open Access Journals
Open Access is something I'm very passionate about, because it lets scholars publish their work in a way that reduces or eliminates overhead and thus allows our work to be available to more people. Two that are near and dear to my heart are B Sides, and Library Student Journal. You already know that I'm an editor for B Sides, but I was just offered a position at LSJ as a member of the Editorial Review Board too, and I'm really excited about doing even more with OA student publishing!
Common Place is a great source for scholarly research from many disciplines that address life in early America. A lot of exciting Internet research is published in First Monday, an OA journal that was recommended to me in my first semester at SLIS. There are so many great journals out there that it would be hard to name them all (and this post would be ridiculously long!) To find hundreds more, spend some time browsing on the Directory of Open Access Journals to see openly accessible journals covering a wide range of disciplines (a hint to LIS students: this is a great place to go when comparing journals for publishing your work!)

Online Collections
More and more institutions are placing their collections (or rather, parts of them) online, and while some are still password-protected, many are available to everyone free of charge. This post from the blog, mary and mac design, is a really outstanding collection entitled "100 Extensive University Libraries from Around the World that Anyone Can Access." It's organized by subject, so you can look at everything from law and religious libraries to general collections. I ran across it on Twitter this morning, and it immediately was added to my Delicious bookmarks!
The University of Iowa has the Iowa Digital Library, which not only has a wealth of information related to Iowa history, but also highlights some of their great collections of women's history materials, illuminated manuscripts, and maps.
I think I've mentioned the World Digital Library before, but it's definitely worth a check out. The interface is great and easy-to-use, and makes it simple to constrain your search to certain time periods or geographic areas.
There a a few collections on British history that I think are a lot of fun. The Word on the Street is a collection of broadsides from the National Library of Scotland. Not only is it a useful collection, but it's presented in a fun way that would be accessible to undergraduate and high school students. The British Library's Evanion Catalogue is a great resource for ephemera and other goodies relating to life in the Victorian period. The Bodleian Library is another good resource for ephemera, with their Broadside Ballads collection. 

Reading/Book History
The LUCILE Project is also associated with the UI Libraries by way of the head of Special Collections, Sid Huttner. He has put together this really awesome project for those interested in publishing history, in that the whole site is devoted to uncovering the publishing history of one book (Lucile by Owen Meredith). It's a great way to get an in-depth look at how one title moved through the publishing industry.
The Reading Experience Database seeks to compile instances of reading experiences in the UK from 1450-1945. It's a great first place to look when trying to learn a bit more about how reading operated in a certain time period. Harvard has put together a great site entitled "Open Collections Program: Reading-Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History," which allows you to learn about many different types of reading and many different types of reading materials.
The Index Translationum is a searchable record of books that have been translated and published in UNESCO member states since 1979.

Resources for new LIS Students

After going to meet the new cohort at orientation on Friday, I've been thinking a lot about good resources for new students. I thought up a couple that I e-mailed to a friend who is in LISSO (Library and Information Science Student Organization, our department's student group), then it occurred to me that other students might find them useful too!

The Infornado
This is a blog by someone who's new to the field, and has a lot of great information. Last night in an e-mail chat I learned that he's coordinated a project where he invites LIS students to share what they've learned so far in their programs (about the field and more generally). I read some this morning and really enjoyed it--so many times I found myself saying 'yes! I've had that experience!' I also gained some really valuable perspective about what other students are getting out of library school, along with some new ideas for avenues to pursue in my own experience (Micah's other posts are worth a read too!)

Lauren in Libraryland
Lauren is currently a student in Alabama, and her blog is a fun and accessible way to learn more about her experiences in school and her thoughts on the field. I've always found her posts to be both thought-provoking and enjoyable to read, and its a great way to get another perspective on LIS education.

SAU Curriculum Library
This blog is written by Courtney Walters, an alumnus from our program who graduated in 2009. I love it because she provides a lot of useful information for educators about current trends and techniques, especially for those seeking to incorporate paperless teaching into their curricula. For LIS students, this blog is a great way to see how someone new in the field is using blogging professionally, and to get inspired for your own professional blog.

The Wikiman: LISNPN
This blog is a great resource, and this post in particular is one that would be great for new students. It discusses the LIS New Professional Network, which was created for those who've joined the field in the last 10ish years. This is a great place for students to network and to hear first-hand about the transition from work to school from others who've recently been there.

Stephen's Lighthouse
This is a blog that has a pretty wide readership, and Stephen updates it very frequently. This is one of my go-to sources for learning about emerging trends in the field. It's written in a way that's accessible to those with or without experience with the different technologies/areas of library service/etc that he might talk about in a given day, but he's great at staying on top of what's new and letting his readers know!