If you are a reporter, an editor, a story producer, or a researcher, you need to find experts and spokespeople you can talk to for quotes and background information. You need to find them quickly,
but you also don't want to go back to the same tired sources time after time.
You also want to get more than one point of view.
A selection of some of the best "expert" pages and sites appears below:

 

Selected Quality Information Resources
Current topics, experts, newsmakers, media contacts	Sources comprehensive subject index for journalists, writers, news editors, researchers looking for experts, spokespersons, scientists, lobbyists, officials, speakers, university professors, researchers, newsmakers, media relations contacts, talk show guests, PR representatives, story ideas, universities, associations, research institutions, lobby groups, NGOs.
Sources Directory	The directory of experts media contacts spokespersons news sources.
Sources Calendar	Check out newsworthy events from across Canada.
News Releases	Media releases from Canadian organizations, companies and institutions.
Getting publicity	How to raise your profile and get media coverage with Sources, the directory of experts media contacts spokespeople and news sources.
Media Names & Numbers	Directory of Canada's print & broadcast media – Canadian media lists: televison, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, community, campus, ethnic publications.
Canadian government directory	Parliamentary Names & Numbers – Contact information for Canada’s federal & provincial governments, MPs, Senators, MLAs, ministries, agencies, political parties, lobbyists.
Connexions Library	A catalogue of more than 5,000 resources dealing with social justice, human rights, civil liberties, environment, democratization — Title Index or Subject Index or Author Index including more than 1,000 full-text articles.
Sources HotLink	Media relations newsletter with tips and practical ideas to get positive news coverage.
Amicus	Canadian national catalogue giving search access to over 30 million records from 1,300 Canadian libraries including Library and Archives Canada. English and French.
Archives Canada	Search archival holdings across Canada. Access provincial and Territorial Archival Networks. View digitized photographs, maps, documents and online exhibits developed around Canada's history.
Bureau of Public Secrets	Articles from a Situationist perspective.
Canada411	Online phone directory.
Canadian Encyclopedia Online	Canadian history and much else about Canada. English and French.
Chomsky.info	The Noam Chomsky website.
Clusty	Instead of delivering search results in one long list, Clusty groups similar results together into clusters that help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you're looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items.
Google Scholar	Search scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles.
Guardian Weekly	A global view on the week's international events.
ibiblio	Conservancy of freely available digital information, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies.
IceRocket	Blog research tool.
Kartoo	Meta-search engine that presents results in clusters of interactive maps.
Libcom	A resource for all people who wish to fight to improve their lives, their communities and their working conditions.
Library of Congress Web site	Gateway to massive amounts of information. Main site of the U.S. Library of Congress.
Libweb	Library servers via WWW. Lists over 7700 pages from libraries in 145 countries.
Marxmail	Marxism mailing list: worldwide moderated forum for activists and scholars in the Marxist tradition who favor a non-sectarian and non-dogmatic approach. Puts a premium on independent thought and rigorous but civil debate.
Marxists Internet Archive	The most complete library of Marxism with content in over 40 languages and the works of over 400 authors readily accessible by archive, subject, or history.
Middle East Conflict Resources	Israel/Palestine: Selected resources for peace justice and human rights.
News & Letters	Working out a philosophy of liberation that spells out an alternative to both capitalism-imperialism and religious fundamentalist terrorism.
Online Books Page	Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web.
Project Gutenberg	Free online electronic library of thousands of books.
Radical Digressions	A left-libertarian perspective.
Skeptical Inquirer	Encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public. Also promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason in examining important issues.
Wikipedia	Multilingual user-edited encyclopedia.
Wikipedia - English	User-edited encyclopedia.
AboutUS	Descriptions of websites.
Alexa	Website statistics.
Wikipedia - Français	Projet d'encyclopédie librement distribuable. Plus de 500,000 articles en français.
Wikipedia - Deutsch	Ein Projekt zum Aufbau einer Enzyklopädie aus freien Inhalten in Mehr also 600 00 artikel in deutscher Sprache.
Wikipedia - Español	Edición en español de Wikipedia.
Yahoo	Internet directory.
Other sites	Other sites worth checking.

 

According to Wikipedia, an expert is "someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peers or the public. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study. Experts are called in for advice on their respective subject, but they do not always agree on the particulars of a field of study. An expert can be, by virtue of training, education, profession, publication or experience, believed to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the individual's opinion. Historically, an expert was referred to as a sage. The individual was usually a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment."

"Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field. In specific fields, the definition of expert is well established by consensus and therefore it is not necessary for an individual to have a professional or academic qualification for them to be accepted as an expert. In this respect, a shepherd with 50 years of experience tending flocks would be widely recognized as having complete expertise in the use and training of sheep dogs and the care of sheep. Another example from computer science is that an expert system may be taught by a human and thereafter considered an expert, often outperforming human beings at particular tasks. In law, an expert witness must be recognized by argument and authority.

Expertise consists of those characteristics, skills and knowledge of a person (that is, expert) or of a system, which distinguish experts from novices and less experienced people. In many domains there are objective measures of performance capable of distinguishing experts from novices:expert chess players will almost always win games against recreational chess players; expert medical specialists are more likely to diagnose a disease correctly and so on.
There are broadly two academic approaches to the understanding and study of expertise. The first understands expertise as an emergent property of communities of practice. In this view expertise is socially constructed; tools for thinking and scripts for action are jointly constructed within social groups enabling that group jointly to define and acquire expertise in some domain.
In the second view expertise is a characteristic of individuals and is a consequence of the human capacity for extensive adaptation to physical and social environments. Many accounts of the development of expertise emphasise that it comes about though long periods of deliberate practice. In many domains of expertise estimates of 10 years experience or 10,000 hours deliberate practice are common. Typically recent research on expertise emphasises the nurture side of the nature versus nurture argument. It should be noted that some factors not fitting the nature versus nurture dichotomy are important as well. These typically are biological but not genetic factors, and include starting age, handedness, and season of birth."

An expert differs from the specialist in that a specialist has to be able to solve a problem and an expert has to know its solution. The opposite of an expert is generally known as a layperson, while someone who occupies a middle grade of understanding is generally known as a technician and often employed to assist experts. A person may well be an expert in one field and a layperson in many other fields. The concepts of experts and expertise are debated within the field of epistemology under the general heading of expert knowledge. In contrast, the opposite of a specialist would be a generalist, somebody with expertise in many fields.

The term is widely used informally, with people being described as 'experts' in order to bolster the relative value of their opinion, when no objective criteria for their expertise is available. The term crank is likewise used to disparage opinions. Academic elitism arises when experts become convinced that only their opinion is useful, sometimes on matters beyond their personal expertise.

By a similar token, a fear of experts can arise from fear of an intellectual elite's power. In earlier periods of history, simply being able to read made one part of an intellectual elite. The introduction of the printing press in Europe during the fifteenth century and the diffusion of printed matter contributed to higher literacy rates and wider access to the once-rarefied knowledge of academia. The subsequent spread of education and learning changed society, and initiated an era of widespread education whose elite would now instead be those who produced the written content itself for consumption, in education and all other spheres."

 

 

 

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