Finding an agent is a numbers game, a waiting game, and a game of straining every muscle to make your book seem like it's the god of books.

What is an agent? A good agent has connections to a number of publishing houses, the smarts to read, understand and negotiate a contract, and the motivation of making some fifteen percent of the money you earn from your art. Before he or she even picks up the phone to Random House, though, the focus will be on you, and your book. A good agent will show you everything that's wrong with your manuscript, and help you fix it. This can be a lot of work, and is just another step toward being not only a published novelist, but a published novelist who's manuscript doesn't get laughed out of publishing houses.

This page is a work in progress, and should gain amazingness over time.

Good advice for starters.

Query Tracker
querytracker.net goes above and beyond. Not only does it have a very large database of agents, but, with a free membership, you can record who you've sent queries to, who's replied and how, and, best of all, each agent's page has a list of comments from other authors that have queried the agent, so you do not feel like you're alone in your search. To me, at least, this site is priceless.