Shmoop - A Little Help from Your Friends

Sarah Eriksen emailed me the other day to tell me about Shmoop. Shmoop? Yeah, Shmoop. It's a great little gift to students like yourself who might need a push in the right direction on occasion when you sit down to write that paper on The Great Depression, Jane Eyre, or Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Shmoop is a website that helps you write about literature, history, and poetry, for now. It looks like additional subjects will be added as the site develops. Each book, historic period, and poem includes help in categories like summaries, themes, analyses, study questions, character sketches, literary devices, techniques, and best-of-the-web links for more info on the subject matter. Sarah says:

"Don’t let our playful name throw you off; our content is painstakingly researched and our writers are primarily Ph.D. and Masters students at Stanford and Berkeley. We offer some of the most in-depth literary and historical analysis available on the internet, and unlike some of those other “notes” sites, we’re teacher-approved."

Most topics even include a section on why you should care. Many students have trouble with applying concepts to real life. If that sounds like you, you'll appreciate these paragraphs.

If you join, which is free, you also have the ability to outline and write your paper right on the site. Great little features like stickie notes help you keep track of passages you might want to quote. There's even a dictionary button. Highlight any word, click dictionary, and voila! You can clip whole sections and paste them in a folder, and start discussions with others working on the same topic.

The outline page offers six format options, which is really nice.

Shmoop also helps you to understand and avoid plagiarism, and teaches you three styles of citation.

At first, I didn't realize I had to scroll down to see the content I had clicked on. I suppose it depends on your browser and your monitor resolution. Be sure to scroll down so you don't miss anything.

I also had a little trouble making my way back to the blank paper page, but the site is still in beta test mode. I have a feeling this group of go-getters will be working hard to make this a popular site with students of all kinds in short order. They've already won recognition as "Best of the Internet" by PC Magazine for January 2009.

Shmoop around a little and let us know what you think about this new site.