Best Reference Website
These are some outstanding and recommended free reference sites in the World Wide Web; included is the list issued by Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) of the American Library Association.
1. About.com (www.about.com)
About.com offers over570 expert "Guides" a feature that is exclusive to the site. Since 2005, the site is handled by The New York Times Company. Only About.com is “Guided” by experts. With a network of more than 570 Guides, About.com provides information that are accurate and dependable.
2. All Recipes (http://allrecipes.com)
The Allrecipes.com food portal is the largest community of active, engaged online home cooks in the world. With more than 40,000 recipes Allrecipes.com provides cooks with tools and advice to teach everything from how to stock a pantry to how to make a marinade.
3. Answers.com (www.answers.com)
Formerly GuruNet, Answers.com is a free search engine that has 120 sources, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, and atlases. Additionally, it features WikiAnswers that is a dynamic question and answer Web site collaboratively written and edited by a community of users.
4. Art & Architecture Thesaurus (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat)
The Art & Architecture Thesaurus ® (AAT), the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names ® (TGN), and the Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN) are structured vocabularies that can be used to improve access to information about art, architecture, and material culture decorative arts, material culture, and archival materials. It is a structured vocabulary currently containing around 131,000 terms and other information about concepts.
5. AskOxford.com: Free Online Dictionary (www.askoxford.com)
A free online dictionary resource is a website produced by the publishing house Oxford University Press, a department of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. The site is largely dedicated to extend help on the use of the English language, including spelling, grammar and writing tips.
6. Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com)
"This is the preeminent internet publisher of literature, reference and verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious, with unlimited access to books and information on the web which is free of charge."
7. CorporateInformation (http://www.corporateinformation.com)
A source for global corporate information on the leading companies in over 55 countries, CorporateInformation contains extensive information and reports of different companies world wide.
8. Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org)
The Directory of Open Access Journals covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. It aims to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 2824 journals in the directory. Currently 864 journals are searchable at article level.
9. EarthTrends (http://earthtrends.wri.org)
EarthTrends a major Initiative of the World Resources Institute is an online collection of information regarding the environmental, social, and economic trends that shape our world. Committed to the principle that accurate information drives responsible decisions by governments and individuals, EarthTrends offers the public a large breadth of statistical, graphic, and analytical data in easily accessible formats. Furthermore, EarthTrends gathers data from the world’s leading statistical agencies, along with WRI-generated maps and analyses, into a single database for rapid searching and retrieving.
10. Educator's Reference Desk (http://askeric.org/)
The Educator's Reference Desk provides access to resources such as: Resource Collection which provides links to over 3000 resources on a variety of educational issues. This collection includes Internet sites, educational organizations, and electronic discussion groups; it also contains Lesson Plans collection link with more than 2000 unique lesson plans written and submitted by teachers from all over the United States. It also has Question Archive, a collection of over 200 responses to popular questions on the practice, theory, and research of education. These responses may include citations from the ERIC database, Internet sites, discussion groups, and/or print resource information.
11. Elemental Data Index (http://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/Elements/cover.html)
The Elemental Data Index provides access to the holdings of NIST Physics Laboratory online data organized by element. It is intended to simplify the process of retrieving online scientific data for a specific element.
12. EpistemeLinks (http://www.epistemelinks.com/index.aspx)
EpistemeLinks includes over 19,000 categorized links to philosophy resources on the Internet and has several additional features. Online since early 1997, this site is free to use, and doesn't require user registration of any kind.
13. Encyclopædia Britannica Online (www.britannica.com)
Just like its printed version, the Encyclopædia Britannica online is a search and directory site featuring its printed counterpart the Encyclopædia Britannica. This site includes graphics, audio and video files right at your fingertips. It also includes the Web's best sites, news, magazines and more.
14. Food Reference (www.foodreference.com)
Foodreference.com contains over 13,000 pages information for food enthusiasts. It has been recommended by countless magazines, newspapers, universities, food critics and cookbook authors, television and radio programs, and thousands of other food related websites.
15. Information Please (www.infoplease.com)
Infoplease is a comprehensive reference source that combines the contents of an encyclopedia, a dictionary, an atlas, and several almanacs loaded with statistics, facts, and historical records. A single search engine allows you to search all these sources at once. Aside from its electronic database that is continuously updated and expanded by a team of reference, entertainment, and sports editors, the Infoplease site includes the contents of the following reference works: The TIME Almanac, with Information Please; The ESPN/Information Please Almanac®; The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia; Infoplease® Dictionary; and The Infoplease® Atlas
16. Internet Public Library ( http://www.ipl.org/ )
The IPL is a public service organization and learning / teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of Information which provides library services to internet users. Features include "ask a question," subject collections, ready reference, reading room, special collections, etc. It also includes list of "Frequently Asked Reference Questions" and IPL Pathfinders (in-depth guides on finding information on- & off-lines in a variety of subject areas).
17. Martindale's The Reference Desk (http://www.martindalecenter.com )
This contains extensive information and useful links on subject areas such as language, cyber infrastructure (internet), chemistry, education, engineering, fashion, material science, international business, physics, bioscience/biotechnology, etc.
18. MSN Encarta (www.encarta.msn.com)
MSN Encarta is an award-winning resource for educational content and tools. Some of the content is available free of charge. The encyclopedia contains over 5,000 detailed articles and associated multimedia, such as illustrations and photos. Articles may also include: article outlines, media items, Web links, related items, and further reading lists. Related items give more information about the topic of the article that is currently in view. Further Reading lists provide links to recommended books and journals related to the topic of the encyclopedia article that is being read.
19. NIST Chemistry WebBook (http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry)
This site provides thermochemical, thermophysical, and ion energetics data compiled by NIST under the Standard Reference Data Program.
20. Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org)
With its mission to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks,
Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.
21. Research and Documentation Online
(http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc)
This site offers an extensive annotated list of specialized sources for more than 30 disciplines. The resources are organized by type—databases and indexes, Web resources, and reference books—under four main categories: Humanities, Social Sciences, History, and Sciences. Guidelines for documenting print and online sources are also presented in this site. These guidelines provide the most current advice available for MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles. Sample papers with annotations for MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles are provided. Also included are tips for evaluating print and online sources.
22. Refdesk (www.refdesk.com)
Refdesk is a free and family-friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources.
23. RxList (http://rxlist.com)
RxList is an online medical resource dedicated to offering detailed and current pharmaceutical information on brand and generic drugs. Information on medications can be found using the Drugs A – Z list (an alphabetical listing of both brand and generic drug names).
24. Tutorialized (http://www.tutorialized.com)
The site serves visitors who have come to expect fresh and useful information daily. ‘Tools for geeks’ as it is termed by the website administrators are accessible from this site. Its content is extremely varied and caters to the needs and curiosities of practically every breed of developer. From troubleshooting an Apache web server to programming Java applications to successfully marketing a website, Developer Shed has solutions. Moreover, it features topics such as: Administration, Database management, MySQL, Oracle, Perl, PHP, Practices, Python, and Security. The articles presented are not simple theory or academic study. Articles are packed with the kind of practical code and advice that developers can use immediately to handle various issues.
25. Webopedia ( http://www.webopedia.com )
It is the online encyclopedia dedicated to computer technology. It includes features such as "term of the day," "top 15 terms," "new terms," etc. It also includes a quick reference section for information on common internet and computer facts & occurrences.
26. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com)
Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. Wikipedia is one of the largest reference Web sites. In every article, links will guide the user to associated articles, often with additional information.
27. XE.com Universal Currency Converter (http://www.xe.com/ucc)
XE.com Universal Currency Converter ® is the world's most popular currency tool. One can perform interactive foreign exchange (FX, or forex) rate calculations, using live, up-to-the-minute currency rates.
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