Discover the .edu underground

Lifehacker has an interesting article about the .edu underground. That is, the world of college and university websites that often get ignored by major search engine algorithms. Colleges and universities are in the business of scholarship, and a lot of this scholarship tends to languish in the nooks and crannies of the information universe. Some scholarship ends up in obscure journals. Some gets presented at a conference, or prepared for a dissertation but never published. (This is known as grey literature, and can be an excellent source of fresh information.) Now, somewhere in between is the .edu underground. The department web pages, individual databases and other miscellanea that is readily available but hard to discover. Lifehacker suggests using the Google search string site:.edu "insert subject here". Even if you aren't looking for some esoteric data for your research it can be fascinating to see what others have dedicated their scholastic careers to. You just might be inspired to create some underground resources of your own!