The sites below are a good beginning for finding material on the affirmative action issue that has been published over the Internet. They contain valuable material and links to other useful sites. In addition, you will find the general search tools for internet documents valuable for tracking down Internet information on specific issues, if you use well-formed searches.

Also, most important, remember that much of the research on this issue must be found in printed documents. Some of these you find through the general search tools for printed documents (and some can be viewed "on line"). For others you may need to conduct searches at the library.  The first item following focuses on these sources for printed works to stress their importance.  The remainder concern material published on the Internet.

Printed Publications Databases, such as ProQuest, WilsonWeb, and JStor.    These will lead you to crucial work by scholars and commentary related to the social sciences.  (ProQuest probably finds a better range of work but does not provide "SFX" links to online sources if it does not carry the full text; WilsonWeb does provide "SFX" links; JStor has the best scholarly content and all items are available on line, but it does not contain recent works from the past several years.)  Generally you should start with a simple search, but for some databases simply using "affirmative action" will prove too broad.  If so, you will have to experiment with ways to narrow the search successfully.  For example, one reasonable search pattern for ProQuest might be:                     "affirmative action" AND (rac* OR gender*) Alternatively, with WilsonWeb you may want to start with a simple search using "affirmative action" but limit the search to social science materials.  You may find that a simple search often requires you to sort through a fair number of irrelevant titles as you pick out the potentially useful ones, however it has less chance of missing important things.  Remember, you can limit (or broaden) searches not only by the keyword combination, but by the databases, by dates, by which part of a publication is searched, and so forth.  If the search seems to find too much, narrow it further as needed.  Too narrow a search, however, can miss important materials.    To give you a quick start here are some links that will take you to these databases and automatically run simple searches defined above: Click here for a simple search for "affirmative action" in either the title or abstract of social science journals with WilsonWeb, or Click here for a simple search of scholarly journals over the past six years with Proquest, or Click here for JStor searching for "affirmative action" in titles and abstracts of scholarly journals in economics, political science, and sociology.      See the general search tools for printed documents for further suggestions

General Information Sites:

Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action Offers a particularly good bibliography including considerable printed sources as well as internet links.

Affirmative Action Resource Center at The National Center for Public Policy Research offers material meant to balance the opposing sides.

The Affirmative Action and Diversity Project Wide ranging sources for research on affirmative action, includes material both for and against, academic debates about affirmative action, and on race and gender inequality and discrimination. Also source for current and past legislation. Focus on California Proposition 209.

Affirmative Action Sites Found Through Teoma Links to various sites on affirmative action (notice the special links on the right hand side).

Affirmative Action Sites Found Through SurfWax (multiple search engines) More affirmative action links, but with representing a somewhat different range of sources.

Yahoo: Society and Culture: Issues and Causes: Affirmative Action Even more affirmative action links.