Online Reference Resources: Encyclopedias

As more of us spend more time answering reference questions with online resources, I thought it would be useful to do a series of articles on various kinds of reference resources that can be found online. This week and next, it's encyclopedias.

I hope that you librarians out there will bookmark these articles and use them as quick reference tools at work. But I also hope that these articles will be equally useful to students and other Web searchers.

While none of these comes close to my all-time favourite encyclopedia the World Book, here are a few of the best, free online encyclopedias that I've seen. I've organized them into broad subject categories and provided a brief description of each.

General

Infoplease
Infoplease is actually much more than just an encyclopedia -- it's also a dictionary, atlas, and almanac. For instance, a search in 'all infoplease' (this is the default option at the search screen) for "Wayne Gretzky" retrieves several almanac entries, some feature articles, and an entry on him from the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition (it even retrieves the Gordie Howe entry as well). This is an excellent, comprehensive resource. See also their helpful kids site, Fact Monster.

How Stuff Works
This site is especially useful for kids but it's great for all of us. I like it for its ease of use, comprehensiveness, and use of simple, clear language. To give you an idea of the type of information available at How Stuff Works, here are a few of the most-accessed articles and Question of the Day segments at the time of this writing: How DSL Works; How Osama bin Laden Works; How Christmas Works; How Coffee Makers Work; How Do Mood Rings Work?; How Do Kosher Foods Work?.

Encyclopedia.com
Easy to use, and a good source for quick, short articles on many different topics. Like Infoplease, Encyclopedia.com draws its content from the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth ed. but I mention it here simply because it presents a different interface and an easy to remember url that patrons (and we librarians) are likely to appreciate. It also provides links to articles from Electric Library for which a fee is charged.

Encarta
Encarta content is surprisingly good -- I say surprisingly because it's just not an encyclopedia I tend to use (I've never been a great fan of the CD product). But when I checked it out for the purpose of writing this article I discovered that it's really quite comprehesive and useful. For example, the "Wayne Gretzky" article is quite lengthy and detailed and includes the following sections: Introduction, Early Years, The Edmonton Dynasty, After Edmonton. I also like that the person who wrote the article is listed at the end (in the case of this Wayne article the author is Mike Loftus, B.A., Boston Bruins and NHL beat writer, The Patriot Ledger) and a note about how to cite the article is also provided. Don't overlook this one.

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