Ready Reference Sources

You must be a Lawrence faculty, staff, or student to use resources marked [LU]. Off campus access to restricted resources is available through the Lawrence proxy server.

Almanacs ~ Awards ~ Biography ~ Dictionaries ~ Directories
Encyclopedias ~ Government ~ Maps ~ Phone books ~ Quotations
Statistics ~ Thesauri ~ Weights and Measures ~ Writing Guides

General Reference

• Credo Reference. Over 200 reference titles covering a wide range of subjects. Includes full text, images, sound files, maps and more.

Almanacs

• InfoPlease
• Old Farmer's Almanac
• This Day in History from the History Channel.
• UK 2004 - The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• World Factbook from the CIA

Awards

• Academy Awards from Oscar.com
• Grammy Awards
• Ig Nobel Prizes
• Literary Awards from Barnes and Noble.com
• Nobel Prizes
• Pulitzer Prizes

Biographical Information

• American National Biography
• Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-present.
• Biography and Genealogy Master Index [LU]
• Biography.com
• Contemporary Authors, use: Literature Resource Center [LU]
• Dictionary of National Biography [LU]
• Nobel Prize winners
• Who's Alive and Who's Dead
• Who's Who [LU]
• Wisconsin Genealogy Index . Includes the Wisconsin Name Index which allows you to "search through more than 100,000 obituaries, personal sketches, and other short biographies of Wisconsin people."
• World of Scientific Biography by Eric Weisstein.

Dictionaries

• English Dictionaries:
  Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
  Oxford English Dictionary Click on "Enter OED Online" to search. [LU]
• Language Dictionaries:
  Latin-English Dictionary
  Oxforld Language Dictionaries Online translates French, German, Spanish, and Italian, into and out of English
  YourDictionary.com: a large collection of language dictionaries
• Science and Technical Dictionaries:
  Biology Online Dictionary of Biology
  BioTech's Life Science Dictionary
  Beilstein Dictionary, a German-English/English-German dictionary "for users of the Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry."
  The Jargon File: "a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers"
  Medical Dictionary from MedlinePlus
  Scientific and Technical Acronyms, Symbols and Abbreviations
• Specialty Dictionaries:
  RhymeZone Rhyming Dictionary
  SYMBOLS.com: "contains more than 2,500 Western signs, arranged into 54 groups according to their graphic characteristics"

Directories

• AON: Associations on the Net
• Books in Print. "The first place to find books, audios, and videos." From RR Bowker. [LU]
• CollegeSource Online: directory and full-text of more than 14,000 college catalogs [LU]
• Finding Legal Services: a directory of lawyers and more
• LibWeb: libraries on the web
• Musical America. The business source for the performing arts. [LU]
• Thomas Register of American manufacturers Login as "seeleyg" with password "mudd"
• Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory "provides users with essential serials...information that ranges from subscription rates to the latest web sites." [LU] 
• World Directory of Environmental Organizations
• Zip Code Lookup from the USPS

Encyclopedias

• Britannica Online [LU]
• Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Courtesy of our friends at Bartleby.com
• Encarta Online: "an abridged version of the award-winning Encarta Encyclopedia on CD-ROM"
• Encyclopedia.com: "more than 17,000 articles from The Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia"
• Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan [LU]
• New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [LU]
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Governmental Information

• Congressional Universe: legislative information from the Congressional Information Service.  [LU]
• THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet. The best source for information about Congress, text and status of legislation, and committee hearings. 

Maps and Geography

• Blank and outline maps from About.com
• MapQuest
• PCL Map Collection from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas
• Thesaurus of Geographic Names from the Getty Information Institute
• U.S. Geographic Names Information Service
• U.S. Gazetteer from the Census Bureau
• Weather maps from the NOAA. Daily, going back to 1871.

Phone numbers

• General Phone Number Info
  • AT&T Toll-Free Directory
  • International Calling Codes
  • Telephone Directories on the Web: links to phone books worldwide
• White Pages
  • Smartpages White pages
  • Switchboard
  • WhoWhere?
• Yellow Pages
  • Smartpages Yellow pages
  • BigBook
  • GTE SuperPages

Quotations

• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the 1901 edition
• Quoteland
• The Quotations Page
• Sources for Quotations in the Sciences

Statistics

• Census Bureau
• Dow Jones Averages -- currently and over the years
• FedStats: "one stop shopping for federal statistics"
• LABORSTA: the International Labour Office database on labor statistics
• OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms
• Penn World Table: build your own international economic statistical tables
• Statistical Abstract of the US
• Statistical Resources on the Web
• Statistical Universe. Statistical information from Congressional Information Service.  [LU] 
• StatLib, "a system for distributing statistical software, datasets..."
• Wisconsin Demographic Services Center

Thesauri

• Roget's Internet Thesaurus
• WordNet: a lexical database for English
• WWWebster Thesaurus from Merriam-Webster

Weights and Measures

• Fundamental Physical Constant Data from NIST
• megaConverter: what equals what?

Writing Guides

• Citation Guides from Purdue
  • MLA Format
  • APA Format
  • Citing Electronic Sources
• Online Writing Lab at Purdue
• Paradigm Online Writing Assistant
• Writer's Workshop Online Writing Guide from UIUC

 

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