Start early. When using a source consider it carefully. Who is the author? Does he or she have authority, credentials, a political axe to grind, etc.? When using a Web Site as a resource, consider who sponsored that WebSite. Be careful to cite information accurately. Attribute ideas not your own to those of the proper owner.
FRANCIS [Locate books owned by Williams College Libraries; advanced search with follow-up subject searching is the best way to retrieve relevant information; use to access NEXP]
WorldCat [Locate books held in the United States]
Expanded Academic Index [First database you should use for almost any research topic]
PAIS International [Journals and government documents worldwide focused on political issues; covers 1917 - present]
EconLit[Articles in the economics literature; covers over 400 major journals as well as articles in collective volumes (essays, proceedings, etc.), books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers; certain journals]
JSTOR [Articles in the more prestigious mostly peer-review journals in many disciplines; coverage is from journals inception to 3-5 years ago]
Social Sciences Citation Index [Comprehensive search of titles of articles in the social sciences; few abstracts - so most searching, particularly early searching is limited to titles; forward citation searching.]
Statistical Universe [Statistics published by government, intergovernment, and business organizations; using the table search option focused on subject searching will yield greatest results.]
NIRA's World Directory of Think Tanks[Guide to thinktanks worldwide]
RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) [Repository for research papers (working papers, journal articles, etc.) in Economics; many are freely available; beginning in 2000, EconLit began including RePEc documents in its database. Best place to search for a working paper.]
RGE Monitor [News, working papers, and blogs on economic issues; includes NBER publications]
NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) [Repository of Working Papers published by the National Bureau of Economic Research]
Historical Statistics of the United States: Millenium Edition and Statistical Abstract of the United States also in print [Statistics complied by various US federal agencies. Compiles yearly.]
ICPSR [Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research; researchers deposit and share dataset; largest repository of dataset; many available as in SPSS and Stata friendly formats]
University of Michigan Document Center Statistical Resources on the Web [One of the more comprehensive listings of dataset and statistics available over the web]
NBER Economic Indicators and Releases [Provides links to economic indicators and provides a timetable for their release]
The standard citation guide in economics is the Journal of Economic Literature style. A style guide for using Journal of Economic Literature is available on the JEL styles page. Click here for journal Abbreviations used in JEL style.
Created: Fall 2007
Need Assistance: Walter Komorowski (wkomorow@williams.edu) - Library liaison for Economics