by Mary Byrd

Created on: May 13, 2008

Best online reference sites

There are a number of excellent reference sites you may choose. Which site you use will depend on the information you seek.

For general information, check out Encyclopedia.com, Wikipedia library online encyclopedia and surprisingly Yahoo reference. These three sites give you good reliable information and each has cross references in the texts that are easy to use and informative.

Bartleby, Library Spot, and Martindale center.com are good sites to learn more. While these sites take a couple of steps to reach your final destination, it is well worth the extra effort to explore their data bank, and their resources.

Encyelopedia.com is easy to use, simply type in your topic in the search box and you are taken to a site that features several articles on your topic from reliable resources. This site has a featured topic, and various articles of interest. You also can receive a free trial subscription to e-journals and for a fee receive these journals through your e-mail.

Here is a quick tour to using Wikipedia library. Once you are on their main page, you will find a list of portals. Under the portals are regular features including, Today's Feature, In the News, Did You Know and On This Day articles. Underneath the articles is a help desk, reference desk, and Village pump. It is written in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch and Polish.

Wikipedia is an interactive site with bogs, discussion groups and reader input. I enjoy exploring this site and find the information in the encyclopedia helpful and accurate.

Yahoo reference is easy to use with a few clicks you can have a flood of information at your finger tips. For fun I click onto quotes. You can search by author, topic, or you can type in the subject of your research in the search box and receive the information you need.

And now what you've breathlessly been waiting for, the big boys in the reference search engines world.

LibrarySpot.com is a wonderfully easy to use search engine that forwards you to your desired expert site. There are no annoying flashing advertising or pop-ups. To use the site, click on to the appropriate search engine. It consists of interesting articles, current events articles and a "You Asked for It," Disadvantage there wasn't a search box.

Bartleby.com, however, is probably the best and easiest to use. The site is pleasing to the eyes. At the top of the page is a box which you select your search vehicle and in the box next to it you type in you subject. With the entire reference tool above I typed in Neanderthal man, with Bartleby I selected all references and got references that included the usual, and some in depth reports plus a quotation with Neanderthal man.

Last reference tool is Martindalecenter.com. On this site I found some unusual reference pages and some interesting medical research and health care pages. Unfortunately it doesn't have a search box, and I felt as if I were floundering. But if you have the time and patients it is well worth the work.

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