Help with online research

Nancy, who is currently living in Barcelona, is doing a non-fiction writing course. As she says: living abroad, it’s not always easy to carry out research. Do you know of any good reference sites?

As I wasn’t sure what topic or categories would be of benefit, I’ve collected a range of online reference sites, all of which are useful for those of us who have limited access to English language libraries and museums, but are equally useful to readers who aren’t resident abroad.

Dictionaries

Ask Oxford has built a database on grammar, usage and words, as well as giving a quote of the week, word of the day, spelling help and origins of words and phrases. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Cambridge dictionary is useful: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

Mirriam Webster www.merriam-webster.com/ is another good online dictionary and http://thesaurus.reference.com/ is useful when an alternative word is needed.

Quotes and Sayings

www.quotesandsayings.com/ is a wonderful site to find quotes by subject or author, excerpts from speeches and poetry, and a good selection of proverbs and sayings. The site also provides the full text of several books by Arthur Conan Doyle and the following works by Shakespeare: All's Well that Ends Well, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and his Sonnets.

Museums

www.24hourmuseum.org.uk is a gateway to various UK museums, galleries and heritage attractions.

www.britishmuseum.org/ provides access to a database of about 5,000 artefacts from the British Museum's collections.

www.cornucopia.org.uk/ produced by the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council, this is an online database of more than 6,000 collections in the UK's museums, galleries, archives and libraries. 

www.iwm.org.uk/ The Imperial War Museum covers conflicts from the First World War to the present day.

www.museumspot.com/ is an American site that provides information on museums and galleries worldwide.

www.nationalgallery.org.uk/ the National Gallery Search allows you to explore by artist, subject, theme or title. 

www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/ the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television gives details of the collections which include the world's first negative and the earliest television footage.

www.npg.org.uk/live/index.asp the National Portrait Gallery lists collections by name of artist or sitter, by medium, or by subject. 

www.nhm.ac.uk/ the Natural History Museum has details of the museum's collections, information about research, details of services and access to the catalogue. 

www.tate.org.uk/ the Tate Online gives access to works in the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. 

Fee-paying sites

The British Library http://www.bl.uk/ gives online access to this incredible resource and offers copies of documents for a fee.

www.britannica.com/ is the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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Do Your Homework

Thanks, Lorraine for inviting me onto your blog today. I'd like to talk about research. I'm not sure if it's because I taught for so long that I pick up on tiny mistakes automatically or if I am just a pernicketty (fussy) person.

How much research is enough? I expect that depends on the writer's genre. Obviously historical fiction is going to take much more time on homework than a subject in which the author is already an expert. This could be tricky.

“OK so I'm a world renowned authority on the Dewey library system – now how do I make my novel interesting?”

So the answer is to create your own world and make up the rules as you go along, is it? That may work for some readers but I rather like there to be rules and not have “get out of jail free cards” introduced as soon as the characters get into a sticky situation.  Suddenly Thegisha remembered the dissolving walls spell her Granny had taught her as a child. Not convincing!

I was highly flattered when a well-known writer asked for my advice on the handling of certain magical or cursed items as, even though her world was fantasy, she wanted it to ring true to readers who knew something about the subject. Never, ever say “nobody will notice” because one of them will!

In these days of internet and Google etc. I find no excuse for writers getting very simple things totally wrong. I read with interest when two characters drove from Lyon to Caen in two hours. I live in France and I was wondering what they were driving – a Harrier jump jet?

Also, please don't show off. There are details that are necessary and those that are plain padding. A certain male adventure novelist loves to display his in-depth knowledge of irrelevant detail such as the names of hatch covers on different types of sea-going tankers. Very clever, dear, put it away, nobody is interested.

It is a fine line to tread and I expect that many readers are not as bothered as I am. Some, I suspect, are even more so. Even in these days of electronic fact-finding, you can always ask a friend.

BIO – Ailsa Abraham retired early from a string of jobs, ending up with teaching English to adults. She has lived in France for over twenty years and is married with no children but six grandchildren. Her passion is motorbikes which have taken the place of horses in her life now that ill-health prevents her riding. She copes with Bipolar Condition, a twisted spine and increasing deafness with her usual wry humour – “well if I didn't have all those, I'd have to work for a living, instead of writing, which is much more fun.”. Her ambition in life is to keep breathing and maybe move back to the UK. She has no intention of stopping writing.

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