College of Charleston Libraries Library Rotanda photo

Search icon

Reference

Online reference collection:
box top

Abbreviations & acronyms

Abbreviations and Acronyms of the U.S. Government

AbbreviationZ
The A to Z of acronyms and abbreviations on the Net

Acronym Server

Acronym Finder

Journal Abbreviation Sources

Openly Jake
provides journal abbreviations and indexing info.

^ go to top

Almanacs, factbooks, & etc.

Information Please
integrates the various Information Please Almanacs on sports, entertainment and general knowledge with the Random House Webster's College Dictionary and The Columbia Encyclopedia.

Almanac of Higher Education
NEA Publication

Occupational Outlook Handbook
From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Old Farmer's Almanac
The famous standard.c

^ go to top

Associations

Associations on the Net--Internet Public Library

ASAE and the Center for Association Leadership

^ go to top

Atlases, maps, and gazetteers

Geographic Information Systems Info On the Web
Public documents and maps from Duke University

MapQuest
Maps, driving directions, and more.

Maps on Us
Maps, routes, yellow pages, weather, and more.

The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
From the University of Texas, this collection includes electronic maps, both current and historical.

U.S. Gazetteer
The U.S. Census Bureau allows viewing of Census Tiger maps and 1990 census data for a particular.

Earthmaps.com

Topozone
Topographical maps and more.

Color Landform Atlas of the United States
From Johns Hopkins. Some cool maps.

^ go to top

Automobiles

Edmunds Automobile Buyer's Guide

Kelly Blue Book

N.A.D.A. Guides

Car and Driver

^ go to top

Awards & prizes

Motion Picture Awards

Nobel E-Museum

^ go to top

Books (awards, online, bookstores)

Book Awards

Pulitzer Prizes
official site

Man Booker Prize
offical site

Whitbread Book Awards

Award Winners
Amazon

Literary Awards
Yahoo

Books Online

Project Gutenberg
Internet's oldest producer of free electronic books.

Bibliomania
Included here are fully searchable full-text editions of classic works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and even a few reference titles.

Onine Books Page
from UPenn

Great Books Online
Bartleby

Online Texts
Internet Public Library

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.

A9
Amazon product. Registration required.

Google Print
Read instructions carefully. Beta version. Clunky and complicated but potentially a gold mine.

Read Print
Thousands of free books to read online.

Bookstores

College of Charleston Bookstore
search for titles by course number

Studentmarket
geared to college students

Abebooks
Advanced Book Exchange -- includes textbooks

AAA Booksearch
a search and price comparison service

AddAll
another search and price comparison service

CompareBook.com
"the best book price garanteed"

Bookfinder.com
includes over 70 million new, used, rare, and out of print books in its database

Alibris
good for used and out of print books

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

^ go to top

Calculators

Martindale's Calculators On-Line
Calculators for science, mathematics, and engineering.

Soople
uses google to perform all types of calculations and conversions. Neat tool!

Mileage Calculator
This service uses data from the US Census and a supplementary list of cities around the world to find the latitude and longitude of two places, and then calculates the distance between them (as the crow flies).

Science Made Simple
US customary and metric conversions for measurements such as area, length, weight, and time.

USA-Today Calculators
Calculators for home mortgages, credit cards, Roth IRAs, and more.

^ go to top

Calendars and holidays

Timeanddate.com

U. S. federal holidays

Earth Calendar
Holidays by date, country, and religion plus lunar phases. Searchable.

College of Charleston Academic Calendar

^ go to top

Census/demographic info

U.S. Census Bureau
The official statistics from the US Department of Commerce.

Ameristat
U.S. Popultion data from the Population Reference Bureau

Population Reference Bureau
Provides population dimensions of important social, economic, and political issues.

Historical Census Browser
From the University of Virginia 1790-1960

South Carolina Statistics and Statistical Reports
from SCIway

Population Research Institute
From Penn State lots of links

Population Index on the Web

^ go to top

Colleges and universities

U.S. Universities by State

Almanac of Higher Education
NEA Publication.

American Universities (alpha)

CollegeSource Online
Access to college catalogs from institutions in the US and abroad.

Rank Graduate Programs
Interesting approach. Fine tune your own criteria.

U.S. News College Rankings
Library has print subscription to U.S. News and World Report

U.S. News Graduate Programs Rankings
Library has print subscription to U.S. News and World Report

Peterson's.com: The Education and Career Center
Comprehensive and heavily traveled education resource that includes sections on college search and selection, test preparation, and lifelong learning.

^ go to top

Country and state profiles

Background Notes
From the US Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs. Brief information on people, history, government, political conditions, economy, foreign relations, US relations, and travel/business.

BBC News World Service Country Profiles
Full profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries.

InfoNation
A United Nations site containing geographic, economic, demographic, and social indicators data for all 185 U.N. members. Very cool lay-out allows users to build their own data sets.

LEXIS-NEXIS Universe (for cofc community only)
Select "Reference" and then "Country and State Profiles" to find basic demographic, historical, and geographical information.

Library of Congress: Country Studies
presents a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of countries throughout the world and examines the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors.

World Factbook
The CIA's guide to country profiles.

^ go to top

Dictionaries and thesauri

Ask Oxford
Oxford dictionaries and more.

Academic Press Dictionary of Science
130,000 terms from science and technology.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

Bio Tech's Life Science Dictionary
An all-encompassing life sciences resources. Includes an illustrated dictionary, a chemical acronyms database, an interactive biochemistry textbook supplement, information on medicinal botany, and more.

Dictionary of Computing
Cross-references definitions of computing and technology terms.

Foreign Language Dictionaries
Yahoo's list of linksforeign language dictionaries and converters.

Internet Acronym Server
Decode all of those pesky TLA's and more.

MedTerms
Medical Dictionary from MedicineNet.

OneLook Dictionary Search
"7,613,432 words in 1,001 dictionaries indexed"

Online Etymonlogy Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary (for cofc community only)
The complete text of the Oxford English Dictionary's twenty-volume Second Edition and three-volume Additions Series, as well as draft material from the current OED project.

Oxford Reference Online (for cofc community only)
Contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press.

Rogets II: The New Thesaurus
From Bartleby.com, this is the full-text of Roget's.

Slang Dictionaries
Yahoo's list of links to various slang and alternative dictionaries.

Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
Webster's Unabridged is America's premier lexicographical work. This electronic version comprises the text of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published in 1961, and subsequent updates which take account of current usage.

^ go to top

Directories

Zip Code Directory
From the US Postal Service.

Thomas Register of American Manufacturers (Full Text)
Provides information on 155,000 companies, 60,000 product & service classification headings, and 124,000 brand names. Access is free but requires individual registration to search. Updated annually.

U.S. Government Manual
From the National Archives and Records Administration.

^ go to top

E-mail & phone lookup

AT&T Toll-Free Internet Directory
Find a business with a toll-free number by searching on the Business Name.

Infospace
Yellow pages, white pages, e-mail, and classifieds.

SuperPages.com
Search US yellow pages.

Switchboard
People and business directory.

Who Where?
e-mail, white pages, and yellow pages from Lycos.

Yahoo People Search
Telephone and email search.

infobel

411.com

argali
Requires a download but one of the most complete telephone, e-mail, address directories on the net.

^ go to top

Encyclopedias

Answers.Com
Free Internet reference database that includes the Columbia International Encyclopedia.

Access Science (for cofc community only)
Over 8,500 articles from the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology 10th edition; Research Updates from the McGraw-Hill Yearbooks of Science & Technology; 110,000+ definitions from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms and much more.

Britannica Online (for cofc community only)
Latest article database, including articles not in the print edition, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, and the Britannica Book of the Year (1994 - present), with thousands of web links selected by editors.

Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics (for cofc community only)
Covering the fields of astronomy and astrophysics this encyclopedia includes the full text of over 2,750 articles, plus links to the primary literature, and is frequently updated with new material.

Gale Virtual Reference Library (for cofc community only)
Encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. in the fields of Education, History, Law, Multicultural Studies, Religion and Social Science.

Grolier Online (for cofc community only)
Includes the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, and The New Book of Knowledge.

Grove Art Online (for cofc community only)
Online version of the 34-volume Dictionary of Art covering all forms of the visual arts from prehistory to the 1990s. Includes 41,000 articles and 10,000 color images.

Grove's Music and Musicians Online (for cofc community only)
Online version of the New Grove Dictionary of Music. Updated quarterly, it is considered to be the premier authority on music. It now includes New Grove Dictionary of Opera.

Oxford Reference Online (for cofc community only)
Contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press.

Reference Universe (for cofc community only)
A comprehensive index to over 4,500 titles from 395 publishers provides access to widely held print and electronic reference works, including subject encyclopedias and monographs.

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (for cofc community only)

Wikipedia
A free, "open content" encyclopedia.

^ go to top

Grants

SRA's Grants Web
Good site from the non-profit Society of Research Administrators.

Foundation Center's Foundation Finder
Free lookup tool that provides basic facts on more than 70,000 private and community foundations in the U.S.

GrantsNet
Searchable database of funding opportunities for training in the sciences and undergraduat science education.

^ go to top

Hoaxes/urban legends

Urban legends Reference Page
Snopes.com

Truth of Fiction.com

^ go to top

Measurements

OnlineConversions.com
Convert just about anything to anything else.

^ go to top

Medicine & health

Health Information
From the National Institute of Health

HealthWeb
Gateway site supported by the National Library of Medicine.

Health Finder
Developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services together with other Federal agencies.

Merck Manual -- Second Home Edition
Online version of classic reference source.

Medline Plus
Free version of premier medical database from the National Library of Medicine.

American Medical Association Physician Select
Check to see if a Physician is an AMA member.

American Board of Medical Specialists
Check for certification (free registration req.)

Medline Plus Medical Dictionary

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Mayo Clinic

MedicineNet
Online, healthcare media publishing company.

MedTerms
Medical Dictionary from MedicineNet.

SafeMedication.Com
Sponsored by the The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

National Library of Medicine

^ go to top

Movies

Charleston City Paper
Click on "Screen" to get reviews, locations, phone numbers, and show times.

Yahoo! Movies
Search by city or zip code for theaters and show times.

Internet Movie Database

CofC Film Studies Subject Guide

^ go to top

Museums

Museums Pages
Links from the Virtual Library.

Google Directory -- Museums

Smithsonian

^ go to top

Myths and legends

Bullfinch's Mythology
Online version of classic text.

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts

Encyclopedia Mythica
An Encyclopedia on Mythology, Folklore, and Legend. Contains over 5700 definitions of gods and goddesses, supernatural beings, and legendary creatures and monsters from all over the world.

Mythology and Folklore
High quality links from Galileo.

^ go to top

News sources

newspapers

The Chicago Tribune
The Christian Science Monitor
The Guardian (London)
The Los Angeles Times
The New York Times (free registration req.)
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC free registration req.)
The San Francisco Chronicle
The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
The Times (London)
The Washington Post

newswires and news services

NewsLink
Arranged by region.

Internet Public Library -- Newspapers

Google -- News
Beta site allows users to search and browse 4,500 news sources updated continuously.

The Drudge Report
Links to sites for newswire and news services, newspapers, and syndicated columnists.

LEXIS-NEXIS Universe (for cofc community only)
Click on "news" in the left hand navigation bar to search the full text of thousands of newspapers all over the world.

alternative news

Bandelier
Alternative Press Index
AlterNet
Left/Right News Sources
MediaChannel.Org
Open Democracy
TomPaine.Com

^ go to top

Patents and trademarks

United States Patent and Trademark Office

European Patent Office

^ go to top

Public opinion

Gallup Poll

PollingReport.com
"An independant, non-partisan resource on trends in American public opninion."

Pew Research Center
"For the people and the press."

Zogby International

^ go to top

Quotation and poetry sources

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
From Bartleby.com, this is the full-text of Bartlett's ninth edition.

Movie Quotes
From Internet Movie Database

Oxford English Dictionary (for cofc community only)

Internet Public Library -- Quotations

^ go to top

Speeches

HistoryChannel.com -- speeches
Listen to classic speeches archived on this site.

Douglass Archives of American Public Address

Gifts of Speech
Women's speeches from around the world.

^ go to top

Symbols

Symbols.com

Dictionary of Symbolism

^ go to top

Tests

Educational Testing Service (offers AP, SAT, etc.)

GRE (Graduate Record Exam)

LSAT (Law School Admission Council)

MCAT(Medical College Admission Test)

GMAT(Graduate Management Admission Test)

TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)

PRAXIS: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers

CPA Exam (Certified Public Accountant)

^ go to top

Writing resources

American Psychological Association Style
APA Style gives information about writing, formatting, and citing. Information about electronic resources is included.

Ask Oxford
Answers language usage and definition questions.

Chicago Manual of Style Form Guide
From the Ohio State University libraries.

The Elements of Style
E.B. White and William Strunk, Jr.'s classic work on good writing style.

Guide to AP Style
From Dr. Michael S. Sweeney at Utah State University, this page gives quick information about the Associated Press Stylebook.

Modern Language Association
These guidelines on MLA documentation style are the only ones available on the Internet that are authorized by the Modern Language Association of America.

College of Charleston Writing Lab
Free, one-to-one help with all parts of the writing process.

^ go to top

Phone: (843)953.5530 | Fax: (843)953.8019
College of Charleston Libraries | 205 Calhoun Street
Mailing Address: 66 George Street, Charleston, South Carolina, 29424