Diego Rivera and his San Francisco Murals

Use these websites from trustworthy nonpartisan organizations and academic departments to flesh out and augment the research you conduct using Library resources.

Description

• Websites are online spaces that host a multitude of content. The collection of content for a website is within the same domain. (In the example below, sfdph.gov is the domain).
  • Examples:
    • Website Name: San Francisco Department of Public Health
    • Website Address (URL): https://www.sfdph.org

What do they contain?

• Webpages (which contain articles, blog posts, etc)
  • Example
    • Webpage: Environmental Health
    • From the Website: San Francisco Department of Public Health

How often are these sources published?

• Continuously

Found on:

• The "open web." Search engines "crawl" and "index" items found in the open web, such as webpages, blog posts, infographics, PDFs, and other material that people post to the web. The open web contains materials not behind a paywall (such as when an online journal website asks for payment to show you an article). Databases are technically behind a paywall, because they contain material that is accessed after the library pays a subscription fee.

In general, we recommend searching CCSF Library resources first, because they contain material that is not freely available on the open web. However, there is lots material on the open web that is not in the library! Therefore, combining these efforts (searching library resources, and then searching the open web) can be effective.

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