Encyclopedias and dictionaries |
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- Britannica on line is free for everybody now! The access to all 32 volumes and 44 million words was open on October 20-th, 1999, and the web site was immediately jammed by millions of hits on the first day. Type a word or phrase in the box and hit Start search.
- Electric Library's Free Encyclopedia , also known as Encyclopedia.com - a part of the Electric Library which is a research service on the Internet. The articles are short but are claimed to be linked to millions articles and pictures from the Electric Library as well as to other web sites. Electric Library is definitely a better searcher than its Free Encyclopedia version. However, the Electric Library is not free, though you may have a 30 day free trial. As to the Free Encyclopedia - use it any time from this page:
- Hypertext Webster Gateway. Go there by doing your first search from this page:
- Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus. In addition to normal search, you will have an option to perform a "floating" search, when the typed word is a part of another word, or "approximate" search which is good if you are not sure about the spelling. Make sure to visit the Explanation of Fields link in order to fully understand the result of your search which returns in 15 possible fields, including definition, cross references, synonyms and pronunciation.
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Merriam-Webster OnLine - also called WWWebster. You can either use WWWebster Dictionary or WWWebster Thesaurus. There is also a link to a nice sub-site, Merriam-Webster's Word Central, for kids.
- Roget's Thesaurus - Peter Mark Roget, 18.01.1779-12.09.1869, English physician and philologist. His Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1852) is a comprehensive classification of synonyms or verbal equivalents. Here is the Internet version of this dictionary. Peter Roget is also remembered for the invention of a "log-log" slide rule (1814) for calculating the roots and powers of numbers.
- Funk & Wagnalls - the famouse family of dictionaries noted for their emphasis on ease of use and current usage. The first Funk & Wagnalls dictionary was A Standard Dictionary of the English Language edited by Isaac Funk (1893).
- Distinguished Women of Past and Present - Danuta Bois, the hostess of the site, describes it as " ...biographies of women who contributed to our culture in many different ways. There are writers, educators, scientists, heads of state, politicians, civil rights crusaders, artists, entertainers, and others. Some were alive hundreds of years ago and some are living today". The number of links to the relates sites is remarkable.
- FeMiNa - searchable directory of links to women related sites.
- AstroWeb: Astronomy/Astrophysics on the Internet - an excellent site to ask any question on astronomy and astrophysics. A search results in a number of links directed to various web sites. And what is important - it is a reasonable number of links, not thousands or hundreds, even if you ask something like "Mars" or "Sun". Much better than traditional search engines. Try it now:
- Whatis.com is a search site for computer and the Internet related terms. Very handy! From the site, you can subscribe for daily delivery via e-mail of a new IT term. What is IT, by the way? Check it out, use this search box:
- Netmeg Internet - The Jargon Dictionary - a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what is described there is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate. A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in Appendix A, Hacker Folklore. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly directed to Appendix B, A Portrait of J. Random Hacker. Appendix C, the Bibliography, lists some non-technical works which have either influenced or described the hacker culture.
- The Encyclopaedia of the Celts - a very impressive work by Knud Mariboe bsed on quotations from literature, myth, legend, fiction and history. It is under development and only the A-G and Z letters and the Biography and Bibliography sectiona are available. The remaining sections may be converted to HTML at a later date. If you can't wait, see Knud Mariboe's Homepage for information about obtaining the entire text.
- Inren's World Online - a collection of data on 185 nations of the world. You are cordially invited to to present your nation to the world, just send them an e-mail.
- Internet Movie Database - everybody knows what that is! Whatever question you might have about a movie, you can find virtually everything in the dadbase. There is a number of search boxes on the site which you can use to find a movie, an actor, a crew member, or even a movie character. One of those search forms, for looking for movie by title, is right here. Type the title (don't be afraid to misspell, the searcher is clever enough to figure it out correctly!), select between TV and movies and start the search:
- The Tolkien Encyclopaedia - Literary and Philosophical Studies of the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
- Monty Python Encyclopaedia - all about them.
- Babel Fish at AltaVista on-line translator from English to French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish; from those languages, plus Russian, to English; between German and French. It is a softare supported service, so the result returns immediately. The program can understand and translate the whole sentences and even whole web pages.