General Reference Internet Sources

Electronic Books Accessible from DOI Locations Only

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Includes:

• American Men and Women of Science
• Dictionary of American History
• Encyclopedia of World Biography
• Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. History: Government and Politics
• Gale Encyclopedia of Science
• Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary
• Worldmark Encyclopedia of the States

There are too many reference sources on the Internet for all to be listed on our pages. Below, we've listed some web sites we've found especially useful. They are arranged by type of reference work, or by subject.

ALMANACS

• 50 States and Capitals

• Infoplease

BIOGRAPHIES

• Biography Center

• Find A Grave

• In the First Person: An Index to Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories, and Other Personal Narratives

• National Academy of Science: Biographical Memoirs
  Biographical Memoirs are brief biographies of deceased National Academy of Sciences members, written by those who knew them or their work. These biographies provide a personal and scholarly view of the lives and work of America's most distinguished scientists and a biographical history of science in the United States.

• National Inventors Hall of Fame

• Nobel Foundation

BOOKS, JOURNALS, and PUBLISHING

• Bartleby.com
  "Great books online"

• DPLA: The Digital Public Library of America
  DPLA strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. It aims to expand the realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used.

• Law and Politics Book Review

• National Outdoor Book Awards

• New York Times Books on the Web
  Contains more than 50,000 book reviews, author interviews, and book news articles that appeared in the newspaper and the New York Times Book Review since 1980. Free registration is required.

• Publishers' Catalogues

• Pulitzer Prizes

COPYRIGHT and PATENTS

• Copyright Crash Course

• Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center

• U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index
  The Fair Use Index tracks a variety of judicial decisions to help both lawyers and non-lawyers better understand the types of uses courts have previously determined to be fair—or not fair.

• U.S. Copyright Office

• U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

   

DICTIONARIES and THESAURI

• Acronym Finder

• American Heritage Dictionary

• Logos Multilingual E-Translation Portal

• Merriam-Webster Online

• OneLook Dictionaries

• Roget's International Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases

• Thesaurus.com
   

ENCYCLOPEDIAS

• Encyclopedia.com

• Encyclopedia Mythica

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 

• Wikipedia

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

• Common Errors in English Usage
  By Paul Brians

• CopyEditing.com

• The Elements of Style
  By William Strunk, Jr.

• Quick and Dirty Tips, from "Grammar Girl" Mignon Fogarty

GOVERNMENT

• The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
  Major U.S. and international documents in law, history and diplomacy, from ancient times to the present

• Core Documents of American Democracy
  Provided by the Government Publishing Office

• FedBizOpps: Federal Business Opportunities

• USA.gov
  The U.S. Government's official web portal

• The Plum Book
  United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions, 2016 Edition

• Presidential Libraries

• The United States Government Manual

HEALTH INFORMATION

• American Indian and Alaska Native Health

• Arctic Health

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

• Familydoctor.org

• Global Health Observatory
  A portal to online health data and analysis provided by the World Health Organization

• Healthfinder
  Sponsored by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Health News Review.org
  Health News Review provides objective reviews of media stories covering therapeutic claims.

• MEDLINE plus

• MentalHealth.org

• Native Health Database
  The Native Health Database contains bibliographic information and abstracts of health-related articles, reports, surveys, and other resource documents pertaining to the health and health care of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canadian First Nations.

• Oncolink
  Cancer information sponsored by the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

• QuackWatch

• RxList: Internet Drug Index

• Travelers' Health
  Sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this site assists travelers and their health-care providers in deciding the vaccines, medications, and other measures necessary to prevent illness and injury during international travel.

• WebMDHealth

• WomensHealth.gov
  Sponsored by the National Women's Health Information Center (NWHIC), Office on Women's Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

INTERNATIONAL

• C.I.A. World Factbook

• embassy.org
  The Electronic Embassy provides information on each of the embassies in Washington D.C., with links to Web-based resources where available.

•  U.S. Bilateral Relations Fact Sheets

• World News From Reuters, UPI, and the Associated Press

• Worldwide NGO Directory
  Provided by the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (WANGO)

MAILING INFORMATION

• U.S. Postal Service

• ZIP Code Lookup
  United States Postal Service

MAPS and GAZETTEERS

• Atlas Obscura
  A collaborative project that looks for the most unusual, hidden, secret, or otherwise amazing places in the world.

• Color Landform Atlas of the United States
  Color relief maps

• David Rumsey Map Collection
  An extensive digitized gallery of maps, globes, atlases, charts, school geographies, and material in other formats. The site focuses on "cartography of the Americas from the 18th and 19th centuries," but has offerings from all over the world.

• Geographic Names Server
  Information about names of geographic features in the United States and Antarctica.

• GEONet Names Server
  Information about foreign geographic feature names.

• Map History / History of Cartography
  Old maps, early maps - non-current maps in general - are the subject of this site.

• MapQuest
  Maps, driving directions, live traffic reports, directories, and travel guide.

• National Map Small-Scale Collection
  Provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, replaces the National Atlas

• Social Explorer
  Visually explore demographic data, create and share maps, presentations, and tables

• U.S. Gazetteer Files
  U.S. Census Bureau

• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

• BrainyQuote.com

• Quotations Page

SPEECHES

• American Rhetoric
  Includes the Online Speech Bank, a database of and index to 5000+ full text, audio and video versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, and other recorded media events.

• Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States
  From George Washington to Donald J. Trump

STANDARDS

• American National Standards Institute

• International Organization for Standardization

• National Institute of Standards and Technology

STATISTICS

• Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Census Atlas of the United States

• CensusScope
  CensusScope is an easy-to-use tool for investigating U.S. demographic trends, brought to you by the Social Science Data Analysis Network at the University of Michigan.

• Data and Statistics about the United States
  Contains links to Federal agencies that produce statistical information.

• Guide to State Statistical Abstracts
  U.S. Census Bureau

• International Database
  Population statistics, U.S. Census Bureau

• National Center for Health Statistics

• Population Reference Bureau Data Finder
  This database contains data on 137 population, health, and environment variables for more than 220 countries, 28 world regions and sub-regions, and the world as a whole. Not all countries have data on all variables.

• UNdata: A World of Information
  UNdata pools major UN databases and those of several international organizations into a single entry point for easy access.

• U.S. Census Bureau

• World Development Indicators

WEATHER

• National Weather Service

• The Weather Channel
   

Updated October 2021