Research tips and tricks for SCAdians!

[Moving this here, since Facebook keeps deleting this post. I'm telling people how to find the information without stealing, and they claim I'm telling people how to violate Intellectual Property!]

--- Google "Dorks", advanced operators for Google searches and many other engines. You probably know making something "a quote" tells Google to return that exact phrase. You can also control results by the website, or phrase in the address, filetype, and more. For example, I'm very tired this morning of seeing pinterest:
"search term" -inurl:pinterest
This will return results with "search term" where the address does NOT include 'pinterest'. This is handy for removing ALL of the domains (.com, .ca, .co..uk, etc)
You can also search a specific site with "site:" or exclude it with "-site:"
Only want a specific filetype? Use it's common Windows extension, such as "filetype:pdf" to only return results within PDF files.
Others:
Related:domain.com (for finding websites 'related' to another)
cache: (for finding Google's last copy of it, see also Wayback Machine below)

--- Google Reverse Image Search, at https://images.google.com/, lets you search by uploading an image. Trying to find the source of a picture for attribution or to get permissions? Try and upload it here. If you use Google Chrome as your browser, you can also right click the image and just hit 'S' and this is done automatically.

--- Wayback Machine, provided by Archive.org, allows you to enter a website and see old cached copies of sites which may have been offline for years. A precious bookmark or unique site go down? Try this! The website also hosts a large amount of public domain content like books. I use it several times a week.

--- Academic Publishers pretty much look like a scam to me. I was trying to track down an article and one major publishers site would sell a copy to me for $25, another for $10. The website for the actual journal it was published in offered it as a free download without even a login. If you are not blessed to have well-connected academic or librarian friends (I won't name you for your sakes, but you three know who you are and I love you), many times you can get free access to massive academic databases by using the computer at a library or college campus. It may even work just using the wifi anywhere on site. If you are near an academic hospital, it may even work there, too.

One local academic library has great access, but no ability to save/email documents. I asked the Librarian if I could print the most important two and she said "no one prints here anymore, use all the paper you want".

On that note, many libraries which may seem closed are not if you ask nicely. Libraries associated with colleges and museums may easily give you access upon request. The academic library I just mentioned is in a museum, but an e-mailed request gets you a free pass to go ONLY to the library inside.

Your Public library may also provide patrons with database access (Ebsco, Jstor, etc). Check the website or consult your local reference librarian-- you might not even have to be at the library! Academia.com is also a good source for papers.

As a last resort, I have had great success just e-mailing the author. They are almost always allowed to give you a copy, even if it's only otherwise available through a paid publisher. I spent weeks trying to get a copy of a doctoral dissertation, including offering to pay fellow SCAdians to physically go to the university and scan their archive copy. The author kindly e-mailed me his second-to-last draft, the only copy he had on hand.

--- Speaking of Libraries, I've also had repeated good results e-mailing a Library and saying "You have this rare book and I would really like these 4 pages from it, is there anyway I can request photocopies? I'll gladly pay your xerox fees, postage, etc." has always gotten a reply with a PDF attached.

--- The term "Independent Researcher" carries a lot more power than "obsessive nerd with a burning passion for this subject" trust me on this. Seriously, though, many academic websites recognize "Independent Researcher" as a status/position, It's what you are, it's dignified, use it!

--- Storing your documents online is very handy. Someone (Jen? Dena?) pointed me toward Mendeley, an online 'citation manager'. Except it also lets you store and organize the entire documents too. I currently have 500 research papers and ebooks organized and searchable, and available anywhere with internet access, for free.

--- Did you know Interlibrary Loan (ILL) can be arranged even out of state? I didn't until recently. It all depends on your library, but you may just have to pay postage for the privilege.

--- Google Scholar: You can filter by content types, subscribe to alerts when something new matches your favorite search, and tons more! (my most-hit search involves a particular set of includes and excludes for digital preservation, for example.) http://scholar.google.com (From Dena)

This is not an exact match for all-museum searches, but you can do CC0 image searches here: https://search.creativecommons.org/ - Europeana is a huge collection of digital images that are largely European museum affiliated? (From Aurora)