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Boyce M. Grier Student Center

How to Study—Many students have used study techniques which have served them well in high school and are often surprised that these skills are often ineffective for University work. The notes referenced here provide a brief outline of some beginning study techniques in the following areas: General Preparation, Deciding When to Study, Starting Study, How to Take Book Notes, How to Take Lecture Notes, and Reviewing for Exams.

Important Internet Resources in Philosophy   

The Bloomsbury Research Centre is a free on-line database containing 17,000 cross-referenced entries linked and fully indexed. The Centre's search engine selects a wide range of subjects by title or by topic including areas of literature, art, myth, human thought, and quotations. The reference works include biographical quotations, thematic quotations, dictionary of English literature, good word guide, guide to art, guide to human thought, myth, and thesaurus. The entries published are selected from Bloomsbury Reference books.

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, in 1973-74.  Now out of print, the Dictionary is published online with the help of Scribner's and the Electric Text Center at the University of Virginia. The dictionary  includes articles on the historical development of a broad spectrum of ideas in philosophy, religion, politics, literature, and the biological, physical, and social sciences.

Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology by James Mark Baldwin is a developing resource, first published in 1901,  including terms from ethics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy of religion, mental pathology, anthropology, biology, neurology, physiology, economics, political and social philosophy, philology, physical science, and education.  Entries A--O are completed.

Edited by Chris Eliasmith, the Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind is a free resource for the major concepts in the philosophy of mind. The dictionary has a policy of blind peer review for all submissions, and is sponsored by The Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis. The definitions provided offer valuable help for key definitions for test review and philosophy papers.

EpistemeLinks.com is one of the oldest and most thorough sites on the Internet having comprehensive links for many different interests in philosophy including philosophers, philosophic subjects, reference works. blogs, philosophy discussion lists, etexts, and bibliographies. The site created by Thomas Ryan Stone is now a nonprofit organization with a board of directors. EpistemeLinks includes about 20,000 well-categorized links to all areas of philosophy—a highly recommended and excellent place to find sources or start your investigations.

This collection of e-texts contains philosophic classics and links to scholarly philosophic organizations. The English Server has other collections in addition, however, in critical theory, history, and in eighteenth century studies, which also address philosophical interests and concerns. The EServer, founded in 1990 at Carnegie Mellon as the English Server, is now based at Iowa State University.

FOLDOP stands for the Free On Line Dictionary Of Philosophy, edited by the SWIF (Sito Web Italiano per la Filosofia). This resource contains about 2500 entries as of 01.01.05 contributed by qualified volunteers. The entire database is downloadable offline. The terms are searchable by name, list of entries, or on the entire database. The current definitions are somewhat uneven in this rapidly improving philosophical dictionary.  Although the definitions provided by Garth Kemerling's dictionary of philosophical terms on his Philosophy Pages are a bit more reliable for some  philosophical terms, Foldop is well worth consulting for many common academic terms.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (subtitled "A Field Guide to the Nomenclature of Philosophy") consists of regularly updated original articles by fifteen editors, one hundred academic specialists, and technical advisors. The articles are authoritative, peer-reviewed, and available for personal and classroom use. The general editors are James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. The site is most useful for students in obtaining secondary source information on the key terms and personages of philosophy. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy can also be recommended for obtaining an overview of the problems of philosophy for background readings for lectures and papers. In general, the articles are well researched and are accessible by undergraduates. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, its main competitor, is perhaps better suited for more advanced work.

The Internet Philosopher is a tutorial on the use of the Internet for studying philosophy. The tutorial covers the prominent Internet sites, how to search, what to trust, and how to maximize information skills. Other features include printer friendly pages, glossary, and a link basket, teaching resources, workbook, slide presentation, handouts, and downloadable poster. The site is authored by Stig Hansen at the University of Leeds and is a tutorial designed for UK higher education by the RDN Virtual Training Suite. For students of philosophy, the Internet Philosopher is most helpful at the beginning of the semester since the visitor quickly learns how to access some of the most useful and authoritative sites on the Internet.

Self-described as "an intellectual "field guide" that provides brief definitions of theories, doctrines, movements, and approaches in philosophy, religion, politics, science, the arts, and related disciplines. It was originally written in 1990 and was first posted on the web in March 1996. In 2005 it was totally revised and nowadays it is continuously updated on the web by Peter Saint-Andre, who has placed it in the public domain." As a guide to the terminology of philosophy including some of the ordinary language meanings of the central terms, the list of terms is interlinked and is especially useful in reviewing for examinations or for obtaining definitions of key terms for philosophy papers.

Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy--a dynamic resource, by Andrew Chrucky,  accessing the following sources: Dagobert D. Runes (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942 ,  Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ,  Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind ,  The Ism Book ,   The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) , and A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names .

The Orb--the online reference book for medieval studies includes an encyclopedia, medieval text, links to related sites, and resources for teacher and beginning students. Religion, history, art, law, literature, magic, music, philosophy, and science of the Medieval Period are all covered. A guide to online studies of the Middle Ages is also of note.

The New York Times philosophy news with newletter or email alerts about academic philosophers and philosophy as well as societal applications of philosophy published in the Times over the last several years with links to additional articles on ethics. 

The Philosopher's Magazine has a sampling of online articles with popular and introductory philosophical topics. Links to international newspaper articles with philosophical content are provided, but access to full content requires subscription. The editors are Jeremy Stangroom and Julian Baggini.

The World Philosophy Information Gateway is an extensive set of links rivaled only by EpistemeLinks.com, although the later site is somewhat better organized. The Internet resources include bibliography, books, journals, mailing lists, news, reference materials, and resource guides. The site includes many of the sub-subjects of philosophy and is fairly comprehensive. The Philosophy Information Gateway is part of the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG), in turn part of the UK Resource Discovery Network. Visitors can sign up for special accounts with priviliges for utilizing the site. Also available are related extensive links for Philosophy Resources (Europe), and Philosophy Resources (UK).

The Philosophy Pages includes a dictionary of philosophical terms and names, a survey of the history of Western philosophy, a timeline for key figures, discussion of several major philosophers, a summary treatment of the elementary principles of logic, study guide for students of philosophy, and links to other philosophy sites on the Internet. The site is developed by a former professor of Newberry College in South Carolina and has developed dramatically over the last few years. The site is widely cited, and the information is reliable.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a continuously updated reference work and is a publishing project of the Metaphysics Research Lab at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford University. The General editor of the Stanford Encyclopedia is Edward N. Zalta.  Authors of subject entries are well-known scholars in their fields; even so, the subjects discussed are authoritative and well balanced. The Encyclopedia is the most scholarly general source for philosophy on the Internet and is essential as a starting point and background research for philosophy term papers.

Wikipedia an online free encyclopedia for all subject, not just philosophy, is licensed under the Gnu Free Documentation License and contains a half-million articles maintained and edited by Wiki according to the philosophy of the free software movement. The project was founded by Jimmy Wales, and its strengths are its decentralization, peer reviews and thousands of contributors from all over the world. Articles on philosophical topics are especially useful in their breadth and variety. The site is especially recommended for an accessible introduction and survey of philosophical topics for review.

Laura Lander Hall