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[Paxiecrunchle]

he oceans.



I will admit I feel like I am totally awful at doing reasearch in the first place, or at least when it comes to writing reasearch papers.... I have been stumped for weeks so far when it finally hit me....I am writing a papper on how science is employed in a science fiction novel, why should i bother with all these litterary sources that mostly shower me with essays about the characers..when I am writing about the setting and the authors handiwork.

I realized I should be looking at scientific sources.

Yet having never undertaken something like this before, I am not sure where to start looking, do any of you have any advice

Note; Before someone starts, I am NOT asking anyone to do my research for me, I am merely asking if anone knows of some good publicly available websites hosting say information on the growth rates of corral or weather patterns over and in the pacific ocean, etc and especially in regrds as to what would have been known in the 1860's.

[Trekkin]

If you have access to a university library, that would be a good place to start; they can, at least, point you toward the relevant archives (or archivists) and this is exactly the kind of thing they're built to facilitate. The 1860s is far enough back that you'd want to find treatises and textbooks as well as research papers (which might be catalogued as monographs) so most online archives of scientific papers are going to be incomplete.

[feelotraveller]

I would start online with Wikipedia, not as a source of 'facts' but as a quick survey of where to look. 

A quick glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanography suggested to me three seminal texts, Darwins's early work on atolls (remember the Origin of the Species was not published until 1859 to keep in context what science was back then) Physical Geography of the Sea by Maury and Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76.  These are all pretty well known and should be accessible in one form or another.  Whether they contain what you are looking for or not it is worth having a look at them for the texts they refer to, and so on.  It would also probably be worth doing an internet (or other) search for sources which cite the above 3 (or whatever refined set you come up with) since in many cases they will in turn mention other notable works in the period and nascent discipline.

Do it relatively quickly and then decide how much time you are willing to put in and winnow accordingly. 

[Paxiecrunchle]

I would start online with Wikipedia, not as a source of 'facts' but as a quick survey of where to look. 

A quick glance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanography suggested to me three seminal texts, Darwins's early work on atolls (remember the Origin of the Species was not published until 1859 to keep in context what science was back then) Physical Geography of the Sea by Maury and Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76.  These are all pretty well known and should be accessible in one form or another.  Whether they contain what you are looking for or not it is worth having a look at them for the texts they refer to, and so on.  It would also probably be worth doing an internet (or other) search for sources which cite the above 3 (or whatever refined set you come up with) since in many cases they will in turn mention other notable works in the period and nascent discipline.

Do it relatively quickly and then decide how much time you are willing to put in and winnow accordingly. 

Thank you sooooooooooooo much.