Tayari Jones: I did most of my research the old-fashioned way, looking through microfilm and old periodicals. For my particular subject, the Internet wasn't terrible helpful since most of the websites devoted to the Atlanta child murders were really about the case --- grisly forensic stuff. While this was important for me to know as I wrote the novel, I wanted to find the articles that helped me grasp the mood of the city at that time. So I had to look at community newsletters, letters to the editor. I even managed to get my hands on a transcript of a speech written by one of the mothers of the victims.
Megan Chance: I try to use original documentation as much as possible. Diaries, court papers, local histories, letters … that kind of thing. The Internet has made things both easier AND more difficult. There is a great deal of material available now, especially original source material. The big problem with the Internet is that it's extremely difficult to determine the veracity of the information you see. There are many, many self-professed "experts" out there. I have to be extra careful in using information gleaned from the Internet, and check and double-check it. However, the ease of retrieving original documents makes online researching a real joy. There is just so much out there.
Bernard Cornwell: People used to say that if you put a million monkeys at a million typewriters you would eventually get Hamlet. Which ain't true, you get the Internet. It's an extremely unreliable source for anything --- too many nutcases venting, though on occasions it will be useful --- for instance this week I wanted to know more about the "lost wax" method of bronze casting and found a half dozen sites with specific instructions, but mostly it's Babel out there. I research from books, documents in libraries, and visits to the places where the events happened.
Kevin Baker: I do very little research over the Internet. Perhaps it's simply due to my own, very limited computer skills, but I find all the information on the 'net to be incredibly scattershot, and poorly organized.
Most of my research is done in libraries, and usually through books. Newspapers and other periodicals can also be helpful, but there, too, is an awful lot of junk to be waded through for relatively little reward.
Matthew Kneale: I research in the old-fashioned way, sitting in libraries looking up ancient leather-bound volumes. I was living in Oxford when I wrote English Passengers and used the Bodleian Library there, which is a vast resource, while I also researched in Tasmania, and the Isle of Man, as part the story involves a ship of Manx rum smugglers. I find the discoveries that truly bring the past to life are often the most obscure and hard to find. The Internet will never give you anything but a simple overview. I like to get to the original books, written by the people who were there to see and smell what was going on around them. A historian will summarize and analyze away all the richness a novelist wants to find. It was only deep in the vaults of the Bodleian library that I found a long-lost religious tract called "A proof against the atheisms of geology" which suggested to me a scientific-religious expedition to the furthest ends of the earth, to find the Garden of Eden, which became the starting line for the novel.
Karen Essex: Except for a few websites, I find information on the Internet is too shallow for my purposes. I have links to some pretty fantastic sites from my own website, www.karenessex.com. But I am an extremely thorough researcher and thinker. I enrolled in an interdisciplinary graduate program at Vanderbilt University so that I would have access to all the right scholars, not to mention, a tremendous university library. For my tastes, anyone writing about history in any way can't do without this latter resource. After I did the academic research, I traveled to the actual locations so that I could breathe the air, which enabled me to breathe life and authenticity into the books.
Margaret George: I usually buy the books I need so I will have access to them now and for years to come. (Libraries have a bad habit of getting rid of books or requiring you to return them too soon.) Most of the material I need isn't on the Internet (old and out of print books on obscure subjects), so it doesn't figure large in my research. Things also disappear off the Internet even faster than out of libraries, I've found!
Glen David Gold: I'm a libraries/bookstores/happenstance kind of guy. Walk into an antique store, see an odd piece of bric-a-brac, ask what it is, and you have a narrative right there in front of you.
The Internet is a mixed bag. Yes, I love how easy it is to research, but it's also fairly satanic in its attractiveness for a guy who goofs off the way I do. "How long have I been online? Hmmm --- since Tuesday? Wow, didn't even see the sun go down."
I've watched some reviewers get sucked into feeling like experts because they've pulled up a website. Several reviews said something like the phrase "Charles J. Carter, a magician who died in 1936 on stage when crushed by an elephant," which --- well, first of all, it spoils the story of his fate, which I think at least a couple of readers might have cracked open the book for --- but also, it's wrong. Source materials are notoriously slipshod on the 'net, and grabbing at the first (or second or third) one you find is pretty dangerous.
