Reference materials

General

• Information please American service which allows you to search a collection of almanacs, encyclopedias and dictionaries, categories include world, US, living, society, science and technology, people and entertainment.
• My virtual reference desk A very comprehensive American site, which is divided into various sections such as news services, quick reference/research, search engines, weather sites etc.
• Martindale's, The Reference Desk Another American site that has many reference resources including numerous subject and language dictionaries and encyclopaedias, science tables and databases etc.
• Your dictionary.com Collection of resources including dictionaries, thesauri, synonym finders, quotations, lexicography, pronounciation and rhyming dictionaries, multi-lingual and specialist dictionaries and a currency convertor.

Dictionaries

• Foreignword.com: the language site 265 dictionaries are available for searching. Word and text translators.
• Foreign language dictionaries A collection of online dictionaries covering 15 languages.
• Phrase and Fable Brewer's dictionary of phrase and fable online.
• WWWebster Dictionary Online dictionary and thesaurus from Merriam-Webster.

Thesauri

• Roget's thesaurus Classic thesaurus.

Encyclopedias

• Britannica.com The Encyclopedia Britannica. At present the Library does not have a subscription to the service, so articles cannot be viewed in full text.
• CIA World Factbook Compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency in the USA. Offers basic factual information on several hundred nations worldwide. Each entry includes social, economic, military, and demographic data. Information is updated annually.

Biographies

• Biographical dictionary Contains 21,000 very brief entries and can be searched by names, date or keyword.

Quotations

• Familiar quotations
• The Quotations Page, includes a search facility and author index.