Reference
The number of reference questions that any public library reference desk can answer
can be extensively expanded with access to the Internet. Even the smallest public
library can have access to American phone directories, information about patents and
the full text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example.
This section is divided into the following subsets:

General Resources

Encyclopaedias

Statistics

Directories

Maps

Biographies

News and Media

What’s On

Quotes

Dictionaries

Other Stuff

Reference Help
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
Entertainment
General Resources
The amount of reference material which is available can be somewhat overwhelming
and there are a number of key websites which have organized the main resources into
structured collections of links for use by reference librarians and members of the
public around the world.
EARLweb
http://www.earl.org.uk/earlweb/index.html
EARLweb is a collection of useful reference resources collected together by EARL designed with the UK public librarian in mind.
Internet Public Library - Ready Reference Collection
http://www.ipl.org/ref/RR/
Large collection of extremely useful online reference resources - designed with the
American librarian in mind though.
Library Spot
http://www.libraryspot.com/
Library Spot is a commercial website which has been designed for librarians - it aims
to “bring the best library and reference sites together with insightful editorial in one
convenient, user-friendly spot.”
Encyclopaedias
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Most of the major encyclopaedias are now available in a CD-ROM format and
increasingly these are also being made available online. Typically the online
encyclopaedia will provide access to a small percentage of its resources for free and
charge a subscription fee for access to the whole resource. However some of these
limited subsets may still be a major addition to a small library which does not have
access to a printed version of a recent encyclopaedia.
Freeserve Encylopaedia
http://www.freeserve.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/index.html
The Freeserve Encyclopaedia, which is based upon the Cambridge Encyclopaedia
Database, has over 35,000 thousand up-to-date articles, thousands of pictures and
hundreds of sounds and animations.
Encarta
http://encarta.msn.com/encartahome.asp
A limited free version of Microsoft’s multimedia encyclopaedia.
Hutchinson Online Encyclopaedia
http://www.bt-ern.co.uk/helicon/
Registering provides free access to a subset of the material available - a subscription
is required for access to the whole encyclopaedia.
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
http://www.britannica.com
The complete text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is available online.
Encyclopaedia Mythica
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http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/
This is an encyclopaedia on mythology, folklore, legends, and more. It contains over
5,100 definitions of gods and goddesses, supernatural beings and legendary creatures
and monsters from all over the world.
Statistics
National Office for Statistics
http://www.ons.gov.uk/
Includes access to Statbase, the UK National Online Statistics Database.
UK Government Statistical Service
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
Includes the UK in figures.
UK Census Gateway
http://census.ac.uk/
Still being developed at the time of writing.
CIA World Fact Book
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
The Data Archive
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/
The Data Archive is a specialist national resource containing the largest collection of
accessible computer-readable data in the social sciences and humanities in the United
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Kingdom.
Directories
UK Yellow Web Directory
http://www.yell.co.uk/
Scoot
http://www.scoot.co.uk/
Searchable directory of UK businesses which can be searched by business type and
location.
Telephone Directories on the Web
http://www.teldir.com/
BT Phonenet UK
http://www.bt.com/phonenetuk/
British Telecom’s white pages freely available on the Internet - business numbers also
included though the search mechanism is not as well designed as it could be.
UK Public Libraries Website Directory
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ac940/weblibs.html
UK Postcodes
http://www.afd.co.uk/pcsearch.htm
People Search - Yahoo’s e-mail directory
http://ukie.people.yahoo.com/
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Maps
Multimap.com
http://uk.multimap.com/
Enter a UK postcode and it brings up a map of that area. - can also be searched using
place name, London streets and grid references.
Maps Website Directory
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/map_sites/map_sites.html
Developed by the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas, Austin this is a
huge collection of links to map resources on the web. It includes links to historical
maps, city maps and weather maps.
Maps.com
http://www.maps.com/
A supplier of digital mapping services to industry, and an operator of map-based
internet destination and e-commerce sites for consumers, business, and education. See
also http://www.mapquest.com for a similar service.
Biographies
World Biographical Index - Internet Edition
http://www.saur-wbi.de/
Gallery of Achievement
http://www.achievement.org/galleryachieve.html
A limited number, but useful nonetheless, of biographies of famous people of the
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twentieth century.
Biographical Dictionary
http://www.s9.com/biography/index.html
Over 27,000 people are listed in this resource.
Lives - the Biography Resource
http://members.home.net/klanxner/lives/index.html
Huge collection of links to biography resources on the web.
News and Media
UK TV Channels
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
A very content rich website which contains tons of useful information - the pages
from BBC Education are particularly impressive.
ITV
http://www.itv.co.uk
Channel 4
http://www.channel4.com/
Channel 5
http://www.channel5.co.uk/
Teletext
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http://www.teletext.co.uk/
This site delivers the teletext service over the web instead of the TV.
Media UK Internet Directory
http://www.mediauk.com/directory/
A useful directory of UK Internet media resources - includes magazines, radio and
television.
News
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Extensive and continually updated news website. It has a searchable archive which is
building up into an extremely useful resource. One of the best sites available on the
web.
CNN
http://europe.cnn.com/
Global news available for free online at CNN - mainly US focus though.
ITN
http://www.itn.co.uk/
The Press Association
http://www.pa.press.net/
The Press Association website gives only limited information about each story but
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does provide access to Newsfinder, a search tool which searches over 100 relevant
UK news sites for stories on similar topics.
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/news/
NewsNow
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/
Provides one access point to all the news stories from most of the major online news
providers. A fast and convenient way to find out what’s going on.
UK National Newspapers
Most of the national newspapers now have websites. These sites may be an extension
of their printed version which is continually updated during the day or may be only a
limited copy of the print version. Most of the papers are free to access but require you
to register before you can use them.
The Times
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/
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The Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/
Sporting Life
http://www.sporting-life.com/
The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Only the IT section is available online at the time of writing.
The Express
http://express.lineone.net/
The Scotsman
http://www.scotsman.com/
Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/
The Observer
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/observer/
Belfast Telegraph
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
UK Local Papers
News Directory: UK
http://www.ecola.com/news/press/eu/uk/
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A directory of UK newspapers including many local papers - an excellent resource for
finding out what’s happening local all around the UK. Local newspaper sites often
provide access to job listings, property sales and local entertainment and education
information.
International Newspapers
The Internet allows easy access to newspapers around the world for very little cost.
Most newspapers are free to use although some like the New York Times require you
to register before you can use them. Like UK newspaper sites some are simply online
versions of the print paper whilst others provide additional services and are
continually updated through out the day. The American Journalism Review (AJR) is
an extremely useful web directory of newspapers around the world.
ARJ Newslink
http://ajr.newslink.org/news.html
All Newspapers.com
http://www.allnewspapers.com/
A commercial web directory of newspapers around the world that also includes links
to news agencies, magazines, television and radio stations.
What’s On
Film Finder
http://www.yell.co.uk/yell/ff/home.html
A database of what films are showing where in the UK.
BBC Programme Alert
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/alert/index.shtml
The BBC’s searchable directory of what’s coming up on TV and Radio. If you
register you can receive free weekly e-mails about what programmes are on which
will be of interest to you.
Event Selector
http://www.eventselector.co.uk/
Events Selector is a free to use database of events around the UK. Material for the
database is supplied by Press Association Listings.
Quotes
The Internet Movie Database Quote Search
http://us.imdb.com/Search/quotes
A database of famous quotation from recent films.
Barlett Familiar Quotations (1901 Edition)
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/
The classic reference text freely available online but limited by the fact that it uses the
1901 edition.
Quoteland
http://www.quoteland.com/
General site about quotes.
Dictionaries
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There are a vast number of dictionaries available online ranging from your standard
dictionary to ones specialising in specific topics such as medicine, business and
computing. A very useful search tool is the One Look Dictionaries which searches
across 560 online dictionaries in one go. These dictionaries are also arranged in
subject lists as well. Medical dictionaries are listed in the Health section of this
chapter.
One Look Dictionaries
http://www.onelook.com/
WWWebster Dictionary
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
The WWWebster Dictionary is based on Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary,
Tenth Edition and is freely available.
Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894 edition)
http://www.bibliomania.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/index.html
Symbol Dictionary
http://www.symbols.com/index.html
Contains more than 2,500 different symbols which can be searched for or browsed.
The Rap Dictionary
http://www.rapdict.org/
Rap song terminology explained!
Nolo.com Law Dictionary
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http://www.nolo.com/dictionary/wordindex.cfm
Legal terms explained in simple language - covers American law though.
The Semantic Rhyming Dictionary
http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/dougb/rhyme-doc.html
Roget’s Thesaurus (1852 Edition)
http://www.thesaurus.com/
Other stuff
Patent Office
http://www.patent.gov.uk/
Acronym Finder
http://www.acronymfinder.com/
Over 100,000 acronyms explained here - including UKOLN!
Homesight
http://www.homesight.co.uk/index.html
By entering a postcode you can find out about the schools, amenities and council tax
of any area of the country.
A very useful resource is the increasing number of websites created by independent
bookshops specialising in out of print and rare books. These sites consist of a union
catalogue of the holdings of a large number of bookshops. This enables out of print
and rare books to be quickly tracked down. Books can be easily purchased with a
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credit card and they are delivered through the post. An easy way to track down a
nostalgic birthday gift of a 1960s pop-up Babar book or a hard to find reader request.
Most of these sites and the bookshops that contribute to them are in America. This
raises the delivery charges of each item to UK users but doesn’t decrease the speed of
the service.
Abebooks.com - the World’s Network of Independent Booksellers (so they say)
http://www.abebooks.com/
Bibliofind
http://www.bibliofind.com/
Booksearch Biglink
http://www.booksearch.com/
Bookfinder
http://www.bookfinder.com/
Yahoo’s listing of UK Out of Print Booksellers
http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/United_Kingdom/
Business_and_Economy/Companies/Books/Shopping_and_Services/Booksellers/
Antique__Rare__and_Used/
Reference Help
There are a number of online newsgroups or services provided by librarians to help
either other librarians or members of the public to answer those impossible reference
queries. These services depend on the cooperation of reference librarians who field
queries by e-mail.
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Ask A Librarian
http://www.earl.org.uk/ask/index.html
Ask A Librarian is managed by EARL - the UK public library consortium. A number
of reference libraries around the UK take in turns to answer reference queries which
are submitted through the main page of the site.
Stumpers Mailing List
http://www.cuis.edu/~stumpers/
A mailing list for reference librarians around the world who help each other out with
those hard to answer reference questions.
Ask An Expert
http://www.askanexpert.com/
A collection of links to experts in a large number of fields who are willing to answer
questions online.
Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
Deja.com hosts and provides access to over 40,000 discussion forums. The archives
of these forums are searchable through the main deja.com site and consequently
provide access to a vast repository of what can be very specialised knowledge.
Entertainment Reference
There are a considerable number of useful online databases about film and music.
These databases are free to use though they are commercial sites and might be trying
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to sell you videos and CDs at the same time.
Internet Movie Database
http://uk.imdb.com/
The biggest and the best of the movie reference tools.
All Music
http://www.allmusic.com/
Information can be searched for by song name, album name, artist, style and label.
Has a sister site called All Classical which contains only data on classical music
which can be searched by performer or composer.
Ultimate Bandlist
http://www.ubl.com/
Huge web directory of pop music resources. Simply searching on the name of a group
will provide a collection of web resources dedicated solely to that group.
Nom de Guerre - The Real People’s Real Name Resource of Pseudonyms and Aliases
http://www.walshnet.com/walshnet/punster/realname.htm
International Lyrics Server
http://www.lyrics.ch/index.htm
Database of lyrics from mainly pop music.
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