.gov This is a government agency and will be seen in sites like http://www.usdoj.gov or the the United States Department of Justice
.net An internet service provider
.com A commercial site that usually is selling a product or requires a fee for retrieving information provided.
.edu Sites provided by institutes of higher learning, like http://www.ut.edu
.mil This is a military site, for example http://www.army.mil
.org This designates an organization. Sometimes charitable organizations, religious groups, watchdog groups, etc.
Personal sites usually have the name of the company supplying space for a website followed by the author’s name ex. http://members.aol.com/~bodine/rocketscience.html
Another element provided in the URL is the country abbreviation, for example:
.au is Australia
.ca is Canada
.jp is Japan
.uk is the United Kingdom.
Another path for locating scholarship is to use Google Scholar.
Google Scholar defines scholarship more broadly than most of your professors, so always double-check to make sure what you're finding is suitable. Google Scholar also includes much material which is not available in the library databases (but is typically available through interlibrary loan).
If you are not on campus, you need to adjust your settings in Google Scholar so it can search the library's databases.
For more information about effective use of Google Scholar, see our handout.