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In order to support student projects, a multitude of lines of inquiry need to be provided for. School media centers' collections are generally not up to the task of supporting the full range of student inquiry. Traditionally, classroom teachers have dealt with this problem by limiting the areas of inquiry open to students or by attempting to use resources from outside collections, either by bringing such resources into the classroom or by assigning students to seek out external resources such as the public library.
A number of sites on the Web seek to support student inquiry by making available or indexing large amounts of information. In the best organized of these sites, an organizational structure is imposed on the data, so that students can quickly find material on their chosen topic.
Some types of information can be difficult to find on the Web. Two examples are information likely to be only of very local interest, and content which is copyrighted and likely to be revenue-producing. Teachers have a fine line to walk; they need to have a feeling for the kinds of projects which students are likely to find fruitful, while respecting student choice as a powerful motivating factor for learning.
With these caveats in mind, the sites listed below can be excellent hunting grounds for students seeking information. The human effort expended by the people behind the sites provides a rich scaffold for student inquiry.
The Argus Clearinghouse (http://www.clearinghouse.net/)
Argus is a content-based index of Websites. Its interface allows students to browse using a hierarchical topic interface. As broad, generic indexes go, this one is fairly user-friendly.
Medline (http://www.healthy.net/library/search/medline.htm)
Not for the faint of heart. Medline provides abstracts of medical studies on line. If you can wade through the vocabulary, there's a lot of information here.
The Middle Years Digital Library (http://mydl.soe.umich.edu/)
A Kellogg Foundation and NSF funded project, the MYDL seeks to support on-line inquiry by middle school students. From their curriculum pages, you will find links to many of the biggest and best sites for middle school science research.
Project Gutenberg (http://www.promo.net/pg/)
Concentrates on full text public domain literature. Here you'll find the collected works of Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Virginia Woolf, among others.
The Louvre (http://mistral.culture.fr/louvre/louvrea.htm)
Beautiful reproductions of some of the great art works of all time.
Windows to the Universe (http://www.windows.umich.edu)
Vast array of images from space, along with curriculum ideas for working with them.
Using the breadth of the resources available on the Web allows students to choose and pursue questions of interest to them. However, allowing student choice does not by any means guarantee student ownership, investment, or interest in research projects. I believe that any on-line inquiry which uses large collections as a resource should be coupled with a classroom inquiry to generate interest and provide context for the inquiry.
For instance, students might collect data on the water quality of their school's drinking water. Using the information they uncover, they could investigate any found contaminants by seeking information on the World Wide Web.
Alternatively, information found on the Web could be incorporated into creative writing projects. Students might do research on climate and economic conditions in Russia, incorporating the information into short stories set in the former Soviet Union.
