WISER: Looking things up: reference
sources for questions requiring quick answers
Start from OxLIP: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip
Find reference sources by browsing under Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias and reference works in the Subject
List of OxLIP under All Subjects.
Search strategies
 Use the quick search box for fast results
 Look at the options for browsing and exploring within each resource. Entries may be organised into
themes or you can search specific electronic books.
 Take the time to look at online help if you feel you want to explore more systematically.
We subscribe to a number of reference collections which offer the facility to search across a range of
authoritative sources at once, to search across a selection of sources organised by subject or them, or to search
in an individual work:
CREDO reference is a giant online reference library that
provides you with access to hundreds of reference books from
the world's leading reference publishers, such as Collins,
Penguin and Macmillan. It includes encyclopaedias, English and
bilingual dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations, a
converter of measures (distances, volumes, weights), and a range of subject-specific titles covering everything
from art to accountancy and literature to law (e.g. the Encyclopedia of the European Union, the Newnes
Dictionary of Electronics, the Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music).
KnowUK provides key information on the people, institutions and organisations that
influence, govern and make up the United Kingdom. It draws together heavily-used and
authoritative reference materials, from Who's Who and Debrett's People of Today through The
Municipal Year Book to The Statesman's Year-Book and Whitakers’ Almanack. Find
biographies, official statistics, the purpose and contact details of organisations, basic legal information and
other key current facts here.
175 reference works from Oxford University Press, including
English and translating dictionaries, thesauri, quotations
dictionaries, place-name dictionaries, timelines, maps, plus the
Visual English Dictionary (with descriptive illustrations for each entry), and useful general works such as A
Dictionary of Weights, Measures, and Units and A Dictionary of First Names. There is a full range of Oxford
subject-related dictionaries and guide books covering the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, e.g. A
Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion, The Encyclopedia of Mammals, and A Dictionary of Statistics.
Over 300 Blackwell reference works including Blackwell Companions and
Handbooks, and subject dictionaries and encyclopaedias, covering
business, classics, cultural studies, economics, history, language and
linguistics, literature, philosophy, psychology, religion, and sociology.
Useful for concise overviews of specific topics within these subject areas.
Several science and social science encyclopaedias can be searched
individually or together through Science Direct including encyclopaedias
of Biodiversity, Cancer, Language and Linguistics, Materials,
Mathematical Physics, the International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Treatise
on Geochemistry. Useful for concise overviews of specific topics within these subject areas.
General encyclopaedias available online include the
latest version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Funk and
Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia (via World Almanac on OCLC
First Search), and smaller general encyclopaedias on
KnowUK, CREDO, and Oxford Reference Online. The
online Encyclopaedia Britannica includes timelines, an interactive world atlas, and national and comparative
statistics.
Key individual resources such as the Oxford English Dictionary, Grove Art Online, and World of
Learning can also be found by name in the OxLIP Title list or by looking under the relevant subject or under
Dictionaries, Encyclopedias and Reference works in the OxLIP Subject List.
Biographical resources can be found on OxLIP in the Biographical Resources list under All Subjects.
Current biographical information can be found in general reference resources such as KnowUK. Works you
can search include Who’s Who, the Army List, and Crockford’s Clerical Directory.
Historical biographical information can be found in a range of resources, many of which are specific to a
country or region. These include the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (for the UK) and the
American National Biography. Who Was Who is available via KnowUK.
A key resource providing historical biographical information is the World Biographical Information System,
in which can be found basic biographical details for over five million individuals from all over the world. Fulltext reproductions of the more detailed biographies from which this information is drawn is available for over
fifty countries, including Western Europe, the United States, Russia and Latin America.
For more information go to: http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/libraries/subjects/reference/biography
Statistical resources can be found on OxLIP in the individual subject lists under Social Sciences. Useful
resources include KnowUK, Social Trends, National Statistics and Source OECD. Useful websites to try
include the Social Science Library’s Statistical Data Search www.ssl.ox.ac.uk/data , CIA World Factbook,
Nationmaster.com and the sites of key national and international bodies such as the Office for National
Statistics (UK), UNESCO, World Bank etc. We subscribe, or have access because of our status as a research
organisation, to datasets including those made available through the UK Data Archive, the Economic and
Social Data Service as well as local Oxford datasets from the Social Science Data Library at Nuffield.
Specialist help can be obtained from subject librarians or Mark Janes at the Social Science Library and Jane
Roberts at Nuffield.
Don’t forget, for all quick reference enquiries you can…
Ask an Oxford Librarian! http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/ask
Or contact your subject librarian for specialist assistance
www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians
http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/wiser
MJA and JR, 2nd May 2008