Self-directed study
- The Open Syllabus Explorer is a great way to find out what books are canonical in any given field you’d like to learn about.
- Better World Books often has previous editions of textbooks available for just a few bucks. (Note: textbook versioning is largely a scam – publishers release new editions largely to ruin the secondhand market, and quite often there’s little or no new content. You can usually find out quite easily whether the previous edition will suit your needs by checking reviews etc.)
Organising your research
- Zotero is a free tool to “collect, organize, cite, and share research,” equivalent to EndNote (used in many universities)
Access to research sources
- Open Access Button web browser extension helps you find or request free versions of research papers.
- Twitter: use the #icanhazpdf hashtag (along with relevant tags for your field, eg. #histsex #queerhist)
- Jake Orlowitz, “You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do? Investigating solutions for frustrated scholars, nonprofits, independent learners, and the rest of us.“
- MyJSTOR: How to Register & Get Free Access to Content (provides a few papers a month from a subset of their collection)
- State Library of Victoria (and maybe your nearest large public library?) offers a membership for Victorian residents that provides remote online access to a range of academic journal databases.