Google
The most basic search tool on the internet is the best research tool!
Citeseer
An archive that includes most freely available computer science articles on the web. Allows you to find articles that reference the one that you are reading. The database is created by a web crawler, so there are some errors. Still, it's a good first place to look for publications. Be aware that a lot of copyrighted articles never appear in this archive. For this, the ACM and IEEE digitial libraries are important.
Google Scholar
A product from Google that is similar to Citeseer. It's currently in beta, but still extremely useful.
The ACM Digital Library
Archive of all publications by the Association for Computing Machinery, including SIGGRAPH conference proceedings until 2002, the journal Transactions on Graphics (which includes SIGGRAPH Proceedings from 2003, 2004, and 2005), and many other conferences and journals in the field. Database is hyperlinked so that you can find articles that reference the article that you are reading, as well other articles with related topics. The univeristy has a subscription to this service; you can access it from any campus machine.
IEEE Xplore
The IEEE's digital library. Includes computer graphics journals and conferences such as Computer Graphics and Applications. In principle, it has a citation and indexing service, but it does not seem as well developed as the ACM's. The univeristy has a subscription to this service; you can access it from any campus machine.
Tim Rowley's Paper Archive
Tim indexes all SIGGRAPH papers since 2000 and provides links to downloadable versions of these papers that are publicly available. He also does this with several other graphics conferences. It is very convenient to browse, and you can use it without subscription. But it's not complete.
The Auckland Univeristy Library
Has real paper books and journals. Also a wide array of electronic resources. The Computer Science subject librarian, Shannon Wellington maintains a list of resources for computer scientists. She's also available for help with library research.
COMPSCI 372
The lecture notes here may help you review the basics
Richard's Lecture Notes from 2003
Covers a few topics that were taught lecture style in COMPSCI 715 2003.
ELSAC
Auckland Uni's English Language Self Access Centre (ELSAC) offers a free service to help improve your English.