Where to find published research papers?

Coming from the POV of someone who is thinking about pursuing a PhD in Computer science.

I am having trouble deciding what I would focus my research on when I go for my PhD. See also this question on academia.SE.

So I am thinking that reading/keeping current on what research is being done and what research papers are being released is a good source of....inspiration? Plus good knowledge to know.

Is there central place/database of/good starting place to see recently published CS research papers, or are they all hidden deep within the websites of the University they were written at?

As AJed mentioned, ACM digital library and IEEE xplorer would be near the top of list.

Additionally Goggling with advanced search for the name of the reference with the option to search for PDF or PS increases the change of a hit.

Sometimes limiting the search to cs.xyz or xyz.edu increases the quality of results.

If you are just starting out on a subject, try adding the word survey as a search term because many researchers write survey papers so that someone new to the subject has an informed person guiding the way.

I also like to hit CitSeerX, WorldCat and Google Scholar

Don't forget to look at the patents in Google Scholar, I don't usually but every now and then companies have to give out something good they may not publish anywhere else.

If you don't attend school, you can see if a school provides access to their library for outside third parties. I found out that I can do this for Princeton University for $300 a year.

Added 3/2/2013

Microsoft Academic Search

This can also visualize publication trends in computer

Added 1/1/20016

arxiv.org - Open access to 1,106,143 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.

semanticscholar.org

This has a nice feature that list survey papers which is useful when you are starting on something new.

StackExchange Computer Science Q#7136, answer score: 15