Thought of everything

Before the internet, academia must have been... different.

It's not just about Google Scholar. Scholar is a pretty handy tool, and performs a lot better than my actual university library website when it comes to finding content in journals that my library subscribes to. But at least 50% of my online research is done neither through Google Scholar nor through my library, but through the individual websites of authors, institutions, and professional groups.

There's a paper that I wanted for my referee report. I obtained my original copy from JSTOR, a proprietary database that my library provides access to. But the JSTOR version of the paper was missing its reference list, and I wanted to look up some of the papers cited in the text. So I Googled, and Googled, and found it in the following places:

1. Brooking's Papers on Economic Activity
2. The Social Science Research Network
3. The Federal Reserve Board

... and the Fed version was freely available and contained a full reference list. Win.

There's also groupings out there like the IDEAS network, which is invaluable as an aggregation of cross-referenced pointers to useful stuff. And then, of course, every self-respecting policy institution in the world provides its own collection of discussion papers.