Two excellent indexes that approach the 18th century from other disciplines are Sociological Abstracts and ATLA Religion . Researching on the internet means making judgments about the quality of information. Some sites are simply misinforming, like the humorous Mankato Home Page , which attributes tropical qualities to a town just south of the Canadian border. To find scholarly resources on the web, look for sites that have academic or government affiliation, that cite the original source of information, and that list credentials of the author. One way to screen web sites is to use a web directory as your search engine.
Web directories vary in restrictiveness, but all have some sort of rating system for site inclusion.
In general, for scholarly resources on the web, look for sites that have academic or government affiliation, that cite the original source of information, and that list credentials of the author. Style guides for composing a bibliography Trexler Library's MLA Style Examples offers models for citing print and electronic sources in a bibliography.