Whitney Collins
Scotty Brooks
Abbie Keel
LM 520 – Dictionary Scope
March 6, 2012
Oxford English Dictionary (database)
Purpose: Provides current and past meanings to words in the English language
Publisher/ Authority: Oxford University Press
Coverage/ Scope: The Oxford English Dictionary provides definitions to 600,000 words
and 3 million quotations
ERIC Thesaurus (database)
Purpose: To organize education-related words and phrases assigned to ERIC records
Publisher/ Authority: ERIC – Education Resources Information Center
Coverage/ Scope: The ERIC Thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary; the words are
carefully selected and education-related.
The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (access electronically through the
library catalog)/ by Rawson & Miner
Purpose: Browser-friendly reference for writers, editors, students, teachers, and people
interested in what other have to say
Publisher/ Authority: Oxford University Press
Coverage/ Scope: 6,000 quotations covering 500 topics
The Children’s Literature Dictionary (5th floor Ref- LB 1573 .L377x 2002)
Purpose: Provides teachers, librarians, and book reviewers who work with books for
children definitions of words related to children’s literature
Publisher/ Authority: Neal – Schuman Publishers
Coverage/ Scope: Comprehensive definitions of 325 terms relevant to children’s
literature
Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames (2nd Floor-Ref- CT 108 .D45x 2003)
Purpose: Aims to identify and explain origins of a wide range of nicknames applied to
individual historic figures, politicians, sports people, actors, entertainers, etc.
Publisher/ Authority: Oxford University Press
Coverage/ Scope: Wide range of important and prominent individuals
Pseudonyms and Nicknames Dictionary (2nd floor- Ref- CT 120.0P8)
Purpose: Identifies the original names behind the pseudonyms, stage names, nicknames,
and other types of acquired names
Whitney Collins
Scotty Brooks
Abbie Keel
LM 520 – Dictionary Scope
March 6, 2012
Publisher/ Authority: Gale Research Company
Coverage/ Scope: covers 55,000 original names and 80,000 assumed names
How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms (6th floor Ref- PE
1449 .H548 2002)
Purpose: To provide definitions for euphemisms
Publisher/ Authority: Oxford University Press
Coverage/ Scope: Many past and present euphemisms used in the English language
Ologies and isms: a Dictionary of Word Beginnings and Endings (6th floor Ref -PE
1175 .Q46 2002)
Purpose: a reference that illustrates the numerous ways that each example is used in
everyday speech and writing and unlocks the meaning of these building blocks that make
up so much of our modern medical and technical vocabulary.
Publisher/ Authority: Oxford University Press
Coverage/ Scope: language enthusiasts, crossword and word game lovers, and students
(collegian and secondary)
Straight from the Fridge, Dad: a Dictionary of Hipster Slang (6th floor Ref- PE 3727
.B43 D43 2001)
Purpose: a reference source that offers words, phrases, and sentences derived from early
20th-century jazz musicians, crime figures, etc., as represented in such sources as film,
pulp novels, blues, and country songs dating from the early 20th century through the mid1960s.
Publisher/ Authority: Broadway
Coverage/ Scope: collections serving writers, historians, hipsters, and anyone who enjoys
language.
The new Dickson Baseball Dictionary: a Cyclopedic Reference to More than 7,000
Words, Names, Phrases, and Slang Expressions that Define the Game, its Heritage,
Culture, and Variations (5th Floor Ref- GV 862.3 .D53 1999)
Purpose: 7,000+ baseball terms and expressions, names and events--in a wide-ranging
reference
Publisher/ Authority: Bt Bound
Whitney Collins
Scotty Brooks
Abbie Keel
LM 520 – Dictionary Scope
March 6, 2012
Coverage/ Scope: sports enthusiasts, etymologists, public libraries, college libraries, and
secondary schools
Characters in Children’s Literature (5th floor Ref- LB 1573 .J648x 1997)
Purpose: a reference that explores the many approaches to an understanding of character-as an extension of the author's life, as a creation of reader response, as metaphor, as
psychological allegory--and gives examples of characters from both classic and
contemporary children's literature.
Publisher/ Authority: Scarecrow Press
Coverage/ Scope: public libraries, school libraries, writers, and literary critique
The Thinker’s Thesaurus: Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words (6th floor RefPE 1591 .M464 2005)
Purpose: a reference that provides more than elementary synonyms found in a standard
thesaurus will find exceptional and thoughtful alternatives in this advanced thesaurus.
Publisher/ Authority: Marion Street Press, Inc.
Coverage/ Scope: writers, students, lecturers, public libraries, secondary schools, and
college libraries
Right, Wrong, and Risky: a Dictionary of Today’s American English Usage (6th floor
Ref- PE 2835 .D38 2006)
Purpose: a reference that provides simple, direct answers to questions about word choice,
spelling, grammar, and punctuation; in straightforward alphabetical order.
Publisher/ Authority: W. W. Norton
Coverage/ Scope: writers, educators, students, public libraries, secondary schools, and
college libraries
Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (6th floor Ref- PE 2927. G7 M66 2004)
Purpose: Presents the speech ways of the mountains of East Tennessee and Western
North Carolina, especially the central part of that regions known as the Great Smoky
Mountains.
Publisher/Authority: University of Tennessee Press
Coverage/Scope: Presents full range of regionally significant language of the TennesseeNorth Carolina border by identifying and illustrating words, phrases, and meanings from
the past two centuries
Scholastic Children’s Dictionary (6th floor Ref- PE 1628.5 .S3 2002)
Whitney Collins
Scotty Brooks
Abbie Keel
LM 520 – Dictionary Scope
March 6, 2012
Purpose: A reference book that gives all kinds of information about words. This is
basically a guidebook to the English language
Publisher/ Authority: Scholastic Reference
Coverage/ Scope: This reference book gives a variety of information covering everything
from a word’s pronunciation or origin to pictures and synonym boxes, parts of speech,
main entry words, guide words, etc. This book is geared towards children because it is
presented in an easy to read format and is full of color and pictures.
Acronym finder AF -Access electronically through the library catalog- click on
Internet Link: Connect to Acronym Finder
Purpose: Acronym Finder is a trusted ready reference resource at thousands of schools,
libraries, and government websites. Yahoo reports over 1 million links to Acronym
Finder, more than all other similar websites combined. By any measure, it is an
"authority" website, trusted by schools, libraries, universities, governments, the defense
industry, and translators and interpreters worldwide.
Publisher/ Authority: Acronym Finder 1988-2009
Coverage/ Scope: With more than 750,000 human-edited definitions, Acronym Finder is
the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and
initialisms. Acronym Finder contains more than 4 million acronyms and abbreviations.
You can also search for more than 850,000 US and Canadian postal codes.
Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Abbreviations (6th floor Ref- PE1670. G8)
Purpose: provides the meaning of foreign expressions to what people hear or need
Publisher/ Authority: H.W. Wilson Company – New York
Coverage/ Scope: includes more than 750 abbreviations and phrases and provides the
languages with the definition
Harvard Dictionary of Music (6th floor Ref- ML 100 .A64 2003)
Purpose: It aims to serve as a convenient reference work for laymen, students,
performers, composers, scholars and teachers.
Publisher/ Authority: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Coverage/ Scope: This dictionary includes a handful of articles based on earlier
dictionaries, non-Western and popular music and of musical instruments of all cultures.
Dictionary for Library and Information Science (2nd floor Ref- Z 1006 .R45 2004)
Purpose: This dictionary is a helpful resource to librarians and information specialists in
their work using descriptive entries with examples provided in boldface when appropriate
Whitney Collins
Scotty Brooks
Abbie Keel
LM 520 – Dictionary Scope
March 6, 2012
Publisher/ Authority: Libraries Unlimited
Coverage/ Scope: includes terminology of the various specializations within library
science and information studies and also the vocabulary of publishing, printing, and
telecommunications
All the Words On Stage: a Complete Pronunciation Dictionary for the Plays of William
Shakespeare (7th floor Ref- PR 3081 .S27 2002)
Purpose: This book is a pronunciation dictionary for actors and directors, as well as,
teachers and students to understand Shakespeare’s language.
Publisher/ Authority: Smith and Kraus, Inc
Coverage/ Scope: It includes a dictionary of Shakespearean words, play titles and
abbreviations, a key to pronunciation, a Latin dictionary, accents, dialects, and foreign
language.