This Virtual Reference Shelf page provides links to quality reference sources freely available on the Web.
- Abbreviations.com
- Acronyma
- AF: Acronym Finder
- GovSpeak (government acronyms and abbreviations)
- Farmers Almanac.com
- Infoplease.com
- Old Farmer's Almanac
- U.S. Census Bureau, State and County QuickFacts
- World Factbook (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency)
- American Council of Learned Societies (links to directory of Constituent Societies)
- Associations on the Net (directory from Internet Public Library)
- Foundation Center (directory of foundations)
- Scholarly Societies Project (information about scholarly societies – University of Waterloo Library)
- Oscar.com (Academy Awards)
- Grammy.com (Grammy Awards)
- Medal of Honor Citations (U.S. Army Center for Military History)
- Nobel Prizes
- Pulitzer Prizes
- Biographical Dictionary
- Biography.com
- WIC Biography Index (Women's International Center)
- American Memory (Library of Congress)
- Bartleby.com (great books online)
- ClassicReader.com: Read Search, and Annotate the Classics
- Google Books
- Internet Archive: Texts
- LibriVox (free audio books)
- Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
- Project Gutenberg
- Top
- Currency Converter
- Currency Encyclopedia
- Martindale's Calculators On-Line Center (collected links to calculators of any kind)
- Math.com (basic calculator)
- Time Service Department, Department of the Navy (information from US Naval Observatory)
- Earth Calendar (a book of days for holidays and celebrations around the world)
- The Official U.S. Time (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
- Perpetual Calendar
- Timeticker (shows current time, by time zone)
- Dictionaries
- General Encyclopedias
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Encyclopedia.com (articles from Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition)
- World Book Online
- Thesauri, etc.
- Bartleby.com ... Roget's International Thesaurus (Third Edition, 1995, Houghton Mifflin)
- Web Thesaurus Compendium (links to thesauri and classification schemes, collected by a consultant for hire)
- Other Specialized Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
- Encyclopedia Mythica: An encyclopedia on mythology, folklore, and legend
- LexiCool: Directory of Bilingual and Multilingual Dictionaries
- ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science
- Symbols.com (online dictionary-like look up for graphic symbols)
- Top
- Area Codes, Zip Codes, etc.
- The Area Decoder (look up for telephone area codes, national and international)
- United States Postal Service, Zip Code Look-Up and Address Information (includes zip+4 look-up)
- Federal Government
see also WSU Subject Librarian's Government Information page- Federal Citizen Information Center (National Contact Center for government related issues)
- Finding Military Personnel
- Finding People, Businesses, etc.
- AT&T, AnyWho Online Directory: Finding People, Places and Businesses (includes toll free, reverse telephone lookup)
- SearchBug (includes reverse telephone and address lookup)
- Switchboard.com (Yellow Pages)
- Infobel.com (includes international telephone directories)
- Search Systems (collected links to free searchable public records databases)
- Verizon, SuperPages.com (Yellow Pages)
- Yahoo! People Search (White Pages)
- Family Search (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
- Genealogy.com (basic genealogy glossary, with some how-to information)
- Gengateway.com
- Library of Congress, Other Internet Sources on Local History and Genealogy
- Atlapedia Online (full color physical maps, etc.)
- Google Maps
- MapQuest (with driving directions)
- nationalatlas.gov (project of U.S. Geological Survey)
- NationalGeographic.com, Maps and Geography
- USGS, Maps of the United States (U.S. Geological Survey)
- UT Library Online, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (University of Texas at Austin)
- World Fact Book (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency)
- Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (detailed descriptions of over 2,000 Federal assistance programs)
- Foundation Center
- Grants and Related Resources (Michigan State University Libraries)
- Grants.gov (find and apply for federal grants)
- National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals)
- Find Articles (free archive of full-text articles from recent issues of periodicals--includes many scholarly journals)
- Free Online Full-text Articles (Highwire Press/Stanford University)
- Blue Skyways: A Service of the State Library of Kansas (links to communities, libraries, government & education)
- Kansas (fast facts from 50states.com)
- Kansas (quick facts from infoplease)
- Kansas Data (Institute for Policy & Social Research, University of Kansas)
- Kansas.gov (Official State website, with links to State agencies, a telephone directory, and information on current bills)
- Kansas State Agencies (StateInformation.com--unofficial state agency portal)
- Kansas Statistical Abstract (state, county, and city-level data for Kansas)
- Kansas Symbols
- State Library of Kansas: Ask a Librarian Reference Service
- Dictionary.com (after finding a term, click on the speaker icon for audio pronunciation)
- VOA: Voice of America
- Familiar Quotations, compiled by John Bartlett (Tenth Edition, 1919, from Bartleby.com)
- Quotations Archive (searchable database of general purpose quotations)
- Quotations Page (oldest quotation site on the Web)
- Wikiquote (a free quote compendium that anyone can edit)
- American FactFinder (U.S. Census Bureau)
- Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor)
- County and City Databook (U.S. Census Bureau)
- Explore GovDocs: Statistics (University of Michigan, Government Documents Center)
- FedStats: The gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. Federal agencies
- Historical Census Browser (University of Virginia Library)
- International Database (IDB) (U.S. Census Bureau--offers a variety of worldwide demographic indicators)
- Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Census Bureau)