general reference online resources

Almanacs Biography Colleges & Universities Dictionaries & Thesauri Directories Encyclopedias General Reference Geographical/ International Information Government Information News Scholarship, Financial Aid and Grants Statistical Sources Writing Guides/Citation Formats

ALMANACS

Information Please contains quick facts on a wide range of topics

CIA World Factbook

BIOGRAPHY (see also Encyclopedias)

A&E’s Biography contains biographies of notable people

Artists’ biographies often with examples of their work, from ArtNet

Biographies from the Information Please Almanac

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Peterson's Education Portal Search for colleges and graduate programs

Students.gov is hosted by the US government and has links to college finders, getting student aid, and more

DICTIONARIES AND THESAURI

Dictionary.com has a dictionary, a thesaurus as well as links to other reference sources

MedlinePlus’s Medical dictionary made available by the National Library of Medicine

Miriam-Webster’s Online dictionary also includes a thesaurus

Roget’s Thesaurus II (Third Edition) is a classic thesaurus available through Bartleby

DIRECTORIES

AnyWho Directory to locate people or businesses

E-mail Directories on the Web is a Metasite of E-mail directories with links

ENCYCLOPEDIAS

ENCARTA Online Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia Britannica Online MEDAILLE ONLY


Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems MEDAILLE ONLY


International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences To access, click on the link and then click on "Social Science." MEDAILLE ONLY

GEOGRAPHICAL AND INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION

Canadian Atlas

U.S. State Department Background Notes

World Factbook maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency

GENERAL REFERENCE SITES

Internet Public Library has a wide reach of subjects and resources

Librarians’ Internet Index contains good quality links

Virtual Reference Shelf selected web resources compiled by the Library of Congress

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION

National

• FirstSearch The U.S. Government’s official web portal

• GPO Access The U.S. Government Printing Office’s page for official information from all three branches of the Federal Government..

New York State

• NY State website is a starting point for finding information about NY State agencies

Buffalo & Western New York

• City of Buffalo’s official website

• Regional Knowledge Network is a storehouse for information about Western New York and Southern Ontario.

NEWS

Reuters News covers a wide variety of topics

World News Network has links to current stories sorted by subject

SCHOLARSHIP, FINANCIAL AID and GRANT INFORMATION

Department of Education page on financial aid, includes a link to the FASFA

FinAid is a comprehensive page of financial aid sites, including articles, calculators, resources and links

STATISTICAL SOURCES

General

• Statistical Resources on the Web maintained by the University of Michigan has an excellent collection of links to online statistics on many different subjects

Federal

• FedStats has federal statistics from all government agencies, including the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Historical U.S. Census Data browser maintained by the University of Virginia Library, U.S. Census information 1790 - 1970, by states and counties.

New York State

• New York State Statistical yearbook, updated yearly

Erie County

• Erie County Quick Facts from the Census bureau

WRITING GUIDES & CITATION FORMATS

Writing Guides

• Purdue’s OWL website gives information on academic writing from the beginning of the process to the end.
• Thompson Gale’s guide to writing a term paper

Citations (see Medaille’s “Citing Information” page)

• Citation Style Guide from the Seattle Central Community College
• Avoiding Plagarism from the Perdue Online Writing Lab