A scholarly approach

If you need to get some research done in the midst of March Madness, here are three sites where you can dive into deep topics and maybe even change your career.

The three are Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), arXiv.org and Project MUSE (muse.jhu.edu).

Of the three, Google Scholar is the simplest to use, thanks to its familiar layout and display. If you can use Google search, you can use Google Scholar.

It’s also the most indiscriminate of the three, including both academic papers as well as assorted other Web publications and Web sites as sources.

Most specialized is arXiv, as it focuses on physics, computer science, math and quantitative biology. Its advantage is being a constantly refreshed clearinghouse of scholarly works. Its main disadvantages are that it’s fairly esoteric (unless math is your thing) and many of the articles are not edited.

Project MUSE, operated by Johns Hopkins University, is easy to use and extremely diverse in topic areas covered. Its material encompasses more than 300 university and academic journals, all collected into this handy catalog.

We plugged “P.Diddy” into the Project MUSE search window. Up came the following: “Biggie Envy and the Gangsta Sublime,” by Michael S. Collins, appearing in the summer issue of the academic publication Callaloo.

We ran the same search in Google Scholar and scored more than 300 results. The publications cited ran the gamut from Newsweek.com to Art Journal.

When we searched on “P.Diddy” and “Biggie,” Google Scholar scored 14 results. Mr. Collins’ article was at the top of that list. We’re impressed.