My love of history, which has been dormant since my teenage years has resurged thanks to my luckily stumbling across Mike Duncan's history of rome. I'm interested in reading more with a view to eventually take up writing articles or generating something productive out of my interest. Where should I start for my search in reliable, accessible sources? Is there a trusted search engine or website/s?
The best start would of course be the AskHistorians Books and resources list - here open to the page about the online sources. JSTOR is probably the best place to get academic articles, but it has several downsides (usually the only way to use it is to have an institutional access, it lists only the articles from five years ago and beyond). The best thing would be to find a particuar area and really focus, for which that list should be a nice starting point. Hope that helps a little bit, if you are looking for more specific sources, I wouldn't hesitate to ask as a separate question, there are experts in many fields on here.