Search engines to maximize your research results

Technology tip: Although Google is a great search engine to use for your research, different search engines often return different results.  Why not use a meta search engine (a search engine that queries other search engines and then combines the results) to maximize your search results? Here are a few of my favorites:

http://Dogpile.com

http://mamma.com

http://ixquick.com

This afternoon I went on a field trip to the Smithsonian’s Museum of National History—a virtual field trip, that is. The 22-minute video tour of the site is introduced by author David Baldacci and divided into four sections:

1.       Welcome; Lewis and Clark Compass

2.       Star Spangled Banner

3.       David Drake Pottery

4.       Lincoln’s Pocket Watch

The field trip is designed for K-12 students and their teachers who want to explore historic objects and connect them with American history. Anyone can take the free field trip and download the supplementary materials and activities at the site, however.

As a writer of historical fiction, I often use objects (such as a compass, a flag, a pot, a watch) as symbols for something going on in my plot. Exploring the objects on the virtual field trip reminds me that I should do more of that in my narrative text.

Create a free author's website

Your book is published, but you can’t sit back and rest on your laurels.  In fact, there won’t be any laurels unless you take an active role in connecting your book to readers.  Your publisher may help with this, but there are many tasks you’ll need to do on your own.  If you self published your book, you’ll be promoting all on your own.  Here is a list of suggestions for promoting your book along with some technology tools to help you accomplish them.

·         Create an author’s  website—readers like to know something personal about the authors they read.

Technology tip: The Wix website at http://wix.com  allows you to make a free Flash website using text, graphics, links, music, video and more. The tools are easy to use and the sites look good if you can stand the ads. 

Unfortunately, WIX websites were not viewable on iPads and other mobile devices, but I recently learned that soon the problem will go away when Wix moves to HTML5.

Documentaries as research

I must admit that I am a big fan of documentaries, which can be great informers of historical events.  Recently I found a rich source of free documentaries on the web. DocumentaryZ  is a portal for documentaries on a variety of topics, including biography, science, health, military, and history.  At the history link, I found videos about U. S. and World history, including a great documentary on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which yielded some useful information for a post Civil War novel I’m working on. The site has a search bar, but when I entered the term “Lincoln,” I only got the one result.  Nevertheless, the site could be useful for a researcher who prefers a multimedia approach to historical research rather than straight print.

Make your own word cloud poster

Want to make a promotional poster or logo for your book?  Try the free tool at http://www.wordle.net/

Type in a list of words or cut and paste a piece of text from your book into the tool and click “go.”  According to the website, “You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”

Here is a word cloud I created using this toy:

Procrastination

This winter I am trying to finish a book about Marie Peary, the daughter of the Arctic explorer. Fact is, I’m not making very much progress. Too many distractions. First, there is the holiday rush to contend with—present wrapping, cookie baking, and so on. The biggest distraction of all, though, is the technology I am using to finish researching and writing the damn book. Yesterday went like this:

I woke up and decided to devote the entire morning to writing chapter 4 (I told you I hadn’t got very far). I sat down at the computer, opened up a new file, and titled it Chapter 4. Hmmmm. How to begin? I reread the draft of Chapter 3 and fiddled with a few sentences there. This all took about 20 minutes and I still couldn’t think of how to begin Chapter 4.

So, I decided to check in on my email. Three messages---all from students wondering about their final grades. It only took five minutes to read the messages, but one student gave a link to website she wanted me to review as a follow up for her final project. That took another 10 minutes. Oh yes, and while I was on the internet, I decided to check my Face book posts. Oops, someone posted something controversial on my wall—I then needed to post and upload a video and link in order to make a rebuttal. First, I had to find the link. Another fifteen minutes.

I decided to knock off for lunch at 11 a.m. and after that I had to watch the news and after that, I was a little sleepy so I took a walk to wake myself up. The walk made me tired, so I decided to take a little nap, and when I woke up, I didn’t feel like writing anymore. Therefore, I decided to devote today to working on Chapter 4, and here I am writing this blog post. Now that it’s done, I think I’ll have lunch because it is 11 a.m. After that, I’ll work on Chapter 4.

Technology tools you can use

One of my favorite email subscriptions is called “Free Technology for Teachers.” This daily message outlines three or four web tools that teachers K-12 can use for teaching and learning.  Although I teach college, I can usually find an application for higher ed in using these tools. I write about some of them in this blog, giving applications for using the tools for researching and writing historical fiction.

Last week, one of the tools in the mailing was a video showing how to sit at the computer if you are doing serious work—not just browsing the internet.  Here is the link directly from the Free Technology for Teachers, so you can check out both the video and the blog.

Researching historicaL fiction details

Looking for a fast way to find out what happened in a particular year in history?  Want to add more authentic time-specific detail to your historical novel?

For example, what novel would your protagonist have been reading in 1888? What was the latest technology in 1666? To what play would your London villain have taken his mistress in 1750?

The Timesearch website allows you to search the web through timelines.  Although it is a bit awkward to use at first, the tool does allow you to search by date, area and theme.  Themes include arts, literature, performing arts, politics, religion, science, technology and war.  Clicking on a theme for a particular year and area doesn’t give a whole lot of information, but is useful for finding tidbits of info that can help flesh out the historical time period about which you write.

Icons on the web tool allow a user to find text as well as images, linking to Google and History World. Interesting tool for researchers and writers of historical fiction.

Book trailers

One of the biggest challenges to me as a self-published eBook author was to create a book trailer.  I did not have the time to learn Adobe Flash, nor the money to hire a professional.  So I decided to do it myself (you can view may trailer on this blog). I used the free online tool Animoto.  Caveat: the free part gets you a mere 30 seconds, but I felt that was enough time to plug my small nonfiction book.  If I ever self-publish again, I will probably upgrade to Animoto Pro.

Second, since my book is pure text and doesn’t really lend itself to visuals, I chose to use words as images, except for the photo of the cover and of me.  I happen to own copyright to both those images, so I saved some money there.  Then there was the matter of music.  I chose music for which I paid a license fee—about $50 for a 30-second clip. 

Since making that first book trailer, I have discovered there are some free sources or Creative Commons licenses for music you can use in your book trailers:

“14 Awesome Open Source Music Sites for Digital Creatives”

Protect your computer and your information

Keeping your information secure on the internet is important in the digital age.  Google Good to Know gives you five tips for making sure your information stays safe and your computer virus free.  The site reminds you to:

1.      Create safe passwords and change them twice a year.

2.      Enable 2-step verification of password accessed sites.

3.      Update software when prompted because updates often contain important security fixes.

4.      Beware of suspicious sites that resemble authentic ones.

5.      Scan your computer regularly for viruses and malware.

Watch a video on how to perform these five tasks at http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/online-safety/

Get it done---a day at a time!

Every evening at 6 pm I get an email from http://idonethistoday  asking, “What’d you get done today?” I make a mental list of anything I did over the course of the past 24 hours with regard to my current historical fiction project. Then I take a few moments to reply to the email, and the site makes the entry on a monthly calendar.  When I log into the site, I can check the calendar for a full list of accomplishments I’ve reported.

Checking the monthly calendar makes me feel productive, even though on some days I didn’t accomplish much (or anything at all). Over the course of the week or the month, though, I can see that I did actually make progress in my research/writing/ marketing of my historical fiction. It’s all psychological, but it works to keep me motivated.  I believe in the tool’s pitch. The website claims that, “Inch by inch, anything’s a cinch. We’ll keep a calendar for you of what you got done. Look to your streak from yesterday to motivate you today.”

Stop Wasting Time!

If you are like me, you probably waste a lot of time checking email and social media sites before (or instead of) getting down to the nitty gritty of research and writing your historical novel.  Stay Focusd in a new Google Chrome extension that will help you stay focused on your work.

According to the website, the product works “by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.”

I need to take all the help I can get to avoid unwanted distractions! Like all the web tools I write about in this blog, Stay Focusd is free.

Civil War research tool

Do you write about the Civil War?  Do you use primary source documents as research for your historical fiction?  If so, the interactive Civil War poster found at http://teachinghistory.org/civil-war

might be a great tool for your research—or use it to inspire you to explore primary documents on your own as a basis for your research. 

According to the site, “As explorers of the past, we can look at a variety of sources—maps, letters, diaries, objects, music, images, and more—to piece together a sense of the Civil War’s complexity. The images and related resources from this poster are designed to get students thinking about how primary sources can help uncover stories about the past.”  Although this tool is designed primarily for teachers and students of Civil War history, it certainly has applications for researchers and writers of historical fiction. How do you access primary source documents for your research?  Share your tips he

Mobile device apps for writers

Have a mobile device?  Can you recommend a good writing app?  For the iPad, Apple’s Pages is a great full featured word processor with plenty of templates and some basic editing tools. Its $9.99 price may be a bit pricey, but this app is definitely the one to choose if you plan to do much writing on your device. If you want a less expensive app, particularly for capturing great ideas, making lists, or capturing quotes from readings, then Clean Writer may be a good choice for you.  It is a mere 99 cents.  Other good apps for writers include:  Advanced English Dictionary and Thesaurus (free) and Grammar App HD.  Do you have a favorite writing app for your mobile device?  If so, tell us about it here.

Researching old newspapers and the American old West

Recently I found a great website that is a product of the collaboration between journalists and scholars. Stanford University’s Rural West Initiative is a goldmine of credible research information for writers of historical fiction about the American West.  According to the site’s home page,

“The Rural West Initiative aims to create a unique collaboration between journalists and scholars to investigate the forces transforming the rural west.  We are generating reports and stories ourselves and will commission more from reporters, scholars, researchers, and students across the West. Our work uses extensive data visualization as well as text, video, and still photography to tell our stories.”

One of the links I found useful is the interactive map of the growth and decline of U. S. newspapers. So if you are wondering what your historical American characters were reading as early as 1690, you can find out at this site.

Mind map your story

Learn by watching rather than reading

Recently I found a wonderful tool for research at snagfilms.com.  You can access free documentary films to view from this site.  I downloaded a free app that allows me to view films on my iPad, but you can view them on a computer as well.  I tried the site tool “movie matcher” that allowed me to narrow my search.  I was interested in the history of the “go green” environmental movement in the U. S. (you can also find Canada, UK and international documentaries using this tool), so I clicked on “go green” and “history” and the tool located six results for me.  This might be a hit or miss way to research something you want to write about, but if you like to get your information via film rather than via reading, it might be worth a try as a research aid.