INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
A multi-disciplined, annotated
directory of tens of thousands of links to "university level research and
educational tools on the Internet." Includes "databases, electronic
journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card
catalogs, articles ... [and] other types of information." Tens of
thousands of records, some created by librarians, others generated by
robot-crawlers. Searchable and browsable. From the
This is the merged site that
combined the venerable Librarians Internet Index and Internet Public Library. Recently re-designed and revised. Searchable, browsable website of information
resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to public
librarians and the general public. All entries are carefully reviewed and
evaluated before entry into the database
and then maintained throughout their life cycle. The motto of IPL2: "Information You Can Trust."
Answers.com displays quick answers for factual queries. With one search, Answers.com will search content from over 100 encyclopedias, dictionaries, glossaries, and atlases and display results from matching entries.
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/extra/egyeb/poly-bio.htm
"Access biographical information, sketches, and full biographies of famous and infamous historical figures, politicians, scientists, authors, artists & athletes." Designed by library school professor and reference reviewer Peter Jacso.
http://www.brbpub.com/pubrecsites.asp
Links to national,
state, county, and city public record sites as well as Canadian and
OneLook Dictionaries, The Faster Finder
Search hundreds of general and specialized English dictionaries simultaneously, or select the ones you want to search. Millions of words indexed.
Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records: A Genealogy Guide
This site "gathers together links to online death indexes by state and county. Included are death indexes, obituaries, probate indexes and cemetery and burial indexes." Browsable by state.
http://www.bartleby.com/reference/
This site has a combined database of more than twenty
respected reference works and several anthologies and individual works of
poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. In addition to out-of-copyright editions of
classic works such as Bartlett
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
"Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by contributors from all around the world. The site is a WikiWiki, meaning that anyone ... can edit any article. ..." Without editorial oversight, the quality of the content on this site varies, but it is worth exploring. The English version has over 3,496,000 entries. Spanish, French, and Esperanto are among the dozens of other languages offered. LII
Federal website for consumers, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies, with links to information and websites from over 1,500 health-related organizations. Advanced search allows you to limit by audience (teens, men, etc.). Also available in Spanish. LII
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
This directory site is designed
to lead the user to resources containing information that will help with
researching their health questions. It includes information from MEDLINE, links
to self-help groups, the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) drug database,
medical dictionaries, directories of doctors and hospitals, access to National
Institute of Health consumer-related organizations, clearinghouses, health-related
organizations, and a search databases section with dozens of databases on
topics such as clinical trials, nutrition, AIDS, cancer, etc. Also available in
Spanish. LII
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
Free full-text
articles from biomedical and life sciences journals. The database is managed by the
FindLaw: Internet Legal Resources
http://www.findlaw.com/
FindLaw is the best place to start consumer-level legal research. Run by a private company, the site provides intuitive and easy access points to relevant information for the public, students, legal professionals, business, corporate counsel, and legal news sources. The site also features a lawyer search, legal forms, organizations, and other valuable legal information. LII
The best single starting
point on the Web for doing research into all laws: case law, state and federal
code, Supreme Court decisions, etc. Full-text, searchable database of all law
reviews and journals on the Internet. Updated nightly. Another search
interface, LawCrawler, helps you focus your search on legal issues on the Web.
Also includes Legal News, legal forms, organizations, law firms and lawyers,
judicial opinions and case law, consultants, and more. LII
An encyclopedia of mythology, folklore, and religion, divided
to six geographical regions: Africa,
http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm
This site consists of
"significant primary texts relating to religion and mythology." There
are Ancient texts including neolithic, Australian, Pacific, African, Ancient
Near East, Greek and Roman, Northern European, Egyptian, Native American, and
Modern Pagan. Eastern contains Shinto, Hinduism, I Ching, Taoism, Confucianism,
Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Western has a hypertext Bible and other
Christian texts, Judaism, Mormonism, Bahai
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/world_religions/
Each of the six religions covered -- Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Sikhism -- includes the basic tenets of faith, history, and useful links. Some also include contemporary issues, glossaries, or biographies of major figures. LII
Business
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/
BigCharts offers, among other
things, historical stock prices dating from
Small Business Resource Network
A research center for all things related to small
business. The most relevant part of the
site is the “Business Resources” – useful link section, offering recommended
websites for doing business with the government, demographics and market
research, laws and requirements, start-ups, and more. The site also offers a Spanish version.
Directories
All Nations Expatriates & Travelers Telephone Search Engine
http://www.embassyworld.com/directories/global_telephone.html
"It gives you the calling code instructions from each of
the world
White Pages, Yellow Pages, as well as a trip planner and an e-mail directory. Search six separate directories from one page. Includes reverse look-ups and map look-ups. LII
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
Country profiles, flags, and reference maps for the popular print version. LII
USGov is the official
HyperHistory Online
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
Short biographical sketches of famous people in history (browsable by time period or alphabetical index), timelines for world civilizations (browsable by time period), key historical events by year, and a decent collection of historical world maps. A lot of things are cross hyperlinked, so you can get more information and move from one section of the site to another. LII
http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
A central source for graphically
comparing nations by data from the CIA World Factbook, United Nations,
World Health Organization, World Bank, World Resources Institute, UNESCO,
UNICEF, and OECD. Also includes data for
individual countries, including maps and flags.
LII
Bureau of Labor Statistics we have already used this one!
http://www.bls.gov/
Easy entry into the full range of economic data and
analysis produced by BLS. Here is where you'll find the statistics and reports
on employment and unemployment, price (such as the Consumer Price Index), living conditions, compensation,
productivity, and more. LII
http://www.prb.org/
The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) website
provides a comprehensive virtual gateway to data and reports on population
trends. Most useful to first-time users is the access by topic, available from
the left sidebar menu, which includes 16 subjects ranging from education to
gender to income and race. Also found here are menu options for the six major
regions of the world, and links for quick access to PRB's main focus areas of
health, environment, and population trends. Other features of interest on this
site are the "DataFinder," which offers searching by 95 demographic
variables for 220 nations of the world, as well as for the
http://www.amstat.org/sections/sis/
How do TV commentators know that Barry Bonds
United States Census and we have explored this before
Census 2000 statistics in the following categories: people, business, geography, newsroom, and special topics. The site includes complete access to the Statistical Abstract of the United States and quick access to information by location using the American FactFinder. LII
Links to more than 2,600
daily and weekly
Weather conditions and forecasts from around the globe, as well as hard to find daily historic weather records from airport weather stations. Use FastForecast to "enter a city, state, country, zip code, or station code for the current National Weather Service forecast." Includes links to hundreds of weather sites; weather cams with live pictures of current weather conditions in hundreds of locations; tropical storm-related sites; ski reports; radar and satellite imagery; and temperature, jet-stream, and upper-air maps. LII.
world-newspapers.com: World Newspapers, Magazines, and News Sites in English
http://www.world-newspapers.com/
A searchable directory of online world newspapers, magazines, and news sites in English, from the customary to the bizarre, including alternative online publications. In addition, the news is searchable by magazine, newspaper, news, and television photo galleries. LII
Online index to exhibits searchable by artist, and browsable by movement, medium, subject, nationality of artist, or women artists. Painting and sculpture are most heavily represented, but other media are also included. LII
http://www.askart.com/AskART/index.aspx
The free content available on this
site (which also contains for-pay content) includes directories of artists,
dealers, auction houses, galleries, and museums in the
From the publishers of the standard print reference by the same name, AllMusic.com provides ratings and reviews of over 700,000 albums. Searchable by artist, album, label, song, or style. There are music maps that track the evolution of music genres, articles, and an extensive glossary. Artist entries are exhaustive—complete discographies, history, influences, reviews, and more. LII
http://www.free-scores.com/index_uk.php3
A directory of links to sheet music for dozens of instruments—wind, string, keyboard, voice, and other. Currently boasts over 2,300 fully free pieces of sheet music. LII
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/
Searchable by author or book title, this free site gives biographical, bibliographical, and award information for authors and excellent information about various print editions, as well as links to purchase the books from retailers or second-hand.
Gnooks is a reader’s community that helps you discover new writers you will like based on the books and authors you already like. Their ever-changing “Map of Literature” is the chief attraction—pointing you to new authors based on authors you already know and enjoy.
http://www.mymcpl.org/books-movies-music/juvenile-series
From the Mid-Continent Public
Library in
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
Project Gutenberg is the longest existing producer
of free eBooks. Their collection totals
over 33,000 eBooks produced by volunteers.
Most of the Project Gutenberg eBooks are works that are in the public
domain, at least in the
The most complete collection of movie and film information you’re going to find—search for movie titles, characters, quotes, plots, people working together, and more. Now includes television.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html
Access to approximately 2/3 of the LOC’s prints and photographs, approximately one million digital images. The site warns fairly obviously that “not all images displayed in this catalog are in the public domain.” LII
http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=3
Search audio archives of NPR radio programs from 1996 to date. LII
“A search engine for pictures and images with a relevancy ranking they claimed is unrivalled among other web image search engines. Picsearch also claims to be 100% family friendly due to its filtering of “offensive material.”
http://video.aol.com/
Once called "Singingfish’ it offers
the “world’s largest index”of streaming media, treams, mp3s, and downloads, and
200,000 to 300,000 files added monthly." Streaming media is content
delivered over a network that can be played on a receiving computer prior to
the delivery of the entire file. Offers more than just video but not as large
as Youtube.com/
Consumer Resources
The Better Business Bureau provides consumer and business tips, information on non-profits, e-commerce, and consumer ratings of various websites. LII
California Department of Consumer Affairs
Look up a company or individual
in an occupation licensed by the CDCA (accountants, acupuncturists, architects,
chiropractors, dentists, doctors, veterinarians, and much more). Also check out the Bureau of Automotive
Repair, that registers and regulates over 30,000
http://www.consumersearch.com/
Product reviews in over 800
categories, both browsable and searchable.
Their reviewers include "former writers for Consumer Reports,
PC Magazine, & The New York Times."LII