Researching Your Next Book

I’ve been thinking a lot about non-fiction books lately. For those of you working on a non-fiction book, or maybe a fiction book that requires a lot of research, here are some resources I’ve recently found (in no particular order):

Journalist’s Toolbox: “The site is updated twice a week, typically on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, or as news dictates. The site contains more than 20,000 free (and some paid) resources organized by beats on more than 125 searchable pages.”
MojoJojo TextTeaser: “TextTeaser is an automatic summarization algorithm.”

Snopes: Fact checking and reference.
Refdesk.com: Fact checker for the Internet.
ProfNet: Connects journalists with expert sources.

Expertise Finder: Search engine to find experts from universities.
Ethics Adviceline for Journalists: Submit questions of phone them.
John Tedesco: “How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques”

Google Advanced Search: Advanced search form.
Library of Congress: Ask a librarian.
WhoRepresents: Contact information for celebrities and representatives.

eHow: Articles and DIY.
Wonder How To: All about phones.
How Stuff Works: Covers a wide range of topics.

SSRN: An e-library of research papers.
Alex: Catches insensitive, inconsiderate writing.
Blackfacts: “BlackFacts.com endeavors to become the premiere online repository of black culture both nationally and internationally.”

Content Marketing Institute: “3 Keyword Research Trends to Get Your Content Seen”
Hans Rosling TED Talk: “You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.””
Vice: “Libraries and Archivists Are Scanning and Uploading Books That Are Secretly in the Public Domain”