Secondary Reference Sites
for your Essay Research

Essay research falls into two main categories: primary research and secondary research. The distinction between them is fairly simple: Primary research is original work done with your particular study objectives in mind. Secondary research is the use of previously existing resources to meet your research goals Though much of this book focuses on primary research, it’s important to point out that a lot of time and money can be saved if you first do a bit of poking around to see what other work has already been done in your area of interest. There’s little sense in reinventing the wheel, and we highly recommend that you leverage existing sources of research information before committing to more time-consuming and expensive methods.

Secondary research has many uses, and can come in many forms. In some cases, it might be the only way to cost-effectively obtain certain types of data. We find secondary research especially useful in informing our study development process by identifying issues that impact the industry and marketplace of clients for who we are conducting primary research projects.Your online resource for secondary reference sources on the net from Almanacs, Electronic Encyclopedias from Britannica, Quick Facts and More.

Check out the quick tabs below to jump the your favourite section of the list.

[Almanacs] [Biographies] [Dictionaries] [Electronic Texts] [Encyclopedias] [Institutions] [Quotations] [Ready Reference - Quick Facts] [Telephone Books, Postal Codes, Email Addresses and Yellow Pages] [Weather] [Mega Reference Sites] [Online Help]

Almanacs

CIA World Fact book: Useful basic information by individual country. Also links to a listing of the Chiefs of State and Cabinet members of foreign governments.
Information Please Home Page: A one-stop reference site which offers facts and statistics on all subjects. The site integrates the various Information Please Almanacs on general knowledge, sports and entertainment, with the Random House Webster's College Dictionary and The Columbia Encyclopedia (5th edition) into a single reference source.
The Old Farmer's Almanac: Web version of this useful standard.

Biographies

Nobel Prize Internet Archive: List of current and past prize winners, with links to Internet information on the Nobel laureates.

Dictionaries

Research Haven's Dictionary List: Some of the best Dictionaries and Thesaurus's online.
Dictionary.com: Aims to be the "definitive guide to reference material on the Internet". Includes many features such as Roget's Thesaurus, Bartlett's Quotations, Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Strunk's Elements of Style, and the New Hackers Dictionary, among others.
OneLook Dictionaries: Search 105 dictionaries under broad subject categories such as science dictionaries, medical dictionaries, business dictionaries, as well as general dictionaries.
Travlang's Translating Dictionaries: Online translating dictionaries between English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Esperanto, and others.
WWWebster Dictionary: Access to Webster's thesaurus/dictionary services on the Internet.

Electronic Texts

Alex: A Catalog of Electronic Texts on the Internet: The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.
The Bible: Search the different full-text versions of the Bible.
The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia: Electronic texts in English, French, German, Latin, Japanese, Chinese and Cyrillic.
Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts: Alphabetical access from Amleth, Prince of Denmark to Yggdrasil.
Internet Library of Early Journals: A digital library project of 18th and 19th century journals including Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Gentleman's Magazine, Notes and Queries, and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
The Oxford Text Archive: The Oxford Text Archive holds several thousand electronic texts and linguistic corpora, in a variety of languages. Its holdings include electronic editions of works by individual authors, standard reference works such as the Bible and mono-/bilingual dictionaries, and a range of language corpora. Texts can be searched by title, author, or full-text, and can be limited by genre, period, language, or file format.
Project Gutenberg Homepage: The 'Mother of all e-text archives' from Michael Hart. Texts are in Plain Vanilla ASCII and all are in the Public Domain. Selections are considered either light literature such as Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan; heavy literature such as Shakespeare or Paradise Lost; or Reference such as Roget's Thesaurus, dictionaries, etc.

Encyclopedias

MSN Encarta: Encarta Online specializes in connecting information-seekers with relevant, high-quality knowledge. Whether it's a school report or simply a personal interest to be explored, Encarta opens the door to comprehensive information.
Britannica Online: An excellent source for information that covers not only what's in the encyclopedia, but also provides links for related web sites.
Country Reports: Country information from around the world. A resource for business, tourists, students and teachers. The Internet's best source of country data!
Encyclopedia.com from Electric Library: Access to over 17,000 short articles from the Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Third Edition.
The Encyclopedia Mythica: An encyclopedia of mythology, folklore, and legend.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Can search the entire encyclopedia or the alphabetical listings.

Institutions

U101 College Search: Links to Learning: U101 is a compilation of links to college and university sites around North America. It's our goal to have the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of North American college links on the web. U101 has rounded up links to almost 4000 college and university web sites in the United States and Canada.

Canadian Heritage Information Network: Information gateway to museums, galleries, and heritage in Canada and around the world. Links to Museums and Galleries, Virtual Exhibitions, National Inventories, and Professional Resources.
Canadian University Homepages: Canadian universities on the Web.
College and University Homepages worldwide: An alphabetical and geographical index, including a list of the top 15 university homepages.
Colleges and Universities Worldwide Directory: Listings are under geographical areas
TeleCampus (from TeleEducation, N.B.): TeleCampus online course database lists more than 7,000 online courses from educational institutions and private organizations in over 15 countries, with about 18% from Canada.
Museums: WWW Virtual Library: A useful index of museums, listed under country/continent.
Scholarly Societies Project: Information from, and, about, scholarly societies and associations.

Quotations

Research Haven's Quotations List: Great Online quotation online..
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A searchable index to the 9th edition (1901) of this work.
The Quotations Page: A catalog of Quotation resources on the Internet, to search or browse.

Ready Reference - Quick Facts

Acronyms and abbreviations list: An index of over 10,000 acronyms and their extensions.
Calculators On-line Center: Over 4,300 calculators from Martindale's The Reference Desk for every calculation and conversion needed.
The Calendar and Clock Page: Very comprehensive list of calendar sites.
Calendar Zone: A variety of celestial, cultural, religious, and historical calendars.
Currency exchange rates: Convert any currency, any amount, any day.
Measure 4 Measure: Sites that do the work for you: A collection of sites that estimate, evaluate, calculate, translate, etc. Sites are organized under the categories of science/math, health, finance, and everything else.

Telephone Books, Postal Codes, Email Addresses and Yellow Pages

Canada411: Search for phone numbers and addresses in Canada.
Canada - Postal Code Lookup: Search for Postal Codes from Canada Post.
Canada Yellow Pages: Search by business type, name, and location. Also links to other Yellow Pages sites.
555-1212: Search white pages, yellow pages and blue pages, for U.S., Canada, and worldwide.
Whowhere - Phone numbers and addresses: Search for U.S. phone numbers but also links to international phone directories.
AT&T Directories: This page also links to white pages through AnyWho Directory Service to find telephone no.s, e-mail, URL, fax no.s etc.

Weather

Environmenta Canada Weather Office: Environment Canada's newest weather site provides weather warnings, current conditions, 5 day forecasts, and satellite images for cities in Canada and around the world.

Mega Reference Sites

Cyberstacks (sm): CyberStacksis a centralized, integrated, and unified collection of significant Internet resources categorized using the Library of Congress classification scheme. A brief summary is provided for each resource.
The Internet Public Library: The Ready Reference collection from the University of Michigan's Internet Public Library.
My Virtual Reference Desk: A collection of electronic ready-reference tools. (courtesy B. Drudge)
WWW Virtual Reference Pages: Over 2,500 of the most popular information reference locations and tools on the Web.

Online Help
Ask an ExpertDirectory of links to experts in many fields, organized by categories.

Ask Jeeves: You can ask your search questions using natural language in this search site.

Secondary Reference Sites for your Essay Research