General Reference Center

Ready Reference
Dictionaries
& Encyclopedias
News Sources
Newspapers, Magazines, TV
Biographies/Quotations
Speeches/Statistics

Current Hot Topics & Issues

Bin Laden documents

American Youth - Monitoring the Future - ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults.
Charter School Study - study conducted by Stanford University on the effectiveness of charter schools.
Child Soldiers: Armed and Innocent - Marine Corp report on the use of children as soldiers and implications for U.S.(.pdf)
Citizens Against Government Waste - focuses on pork-barrel projects.
Cloning Human Beings - Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
Debate Central - resources related to this year's National Forensic League high school debate topic.
Don't Ask Don't Tell Final Report
Focus the Nation -
Free Expression Policy Project - think tank on artistic and intellectual freedom.
Hate Crime Resources - the latest in hate crime statistics and facts.
Global Warming Impact on U.S. - Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" report published in 2009.
IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Iraqi Prison Abuse Report.

NATO's Official Home Page - latest news on Kosovo and other NATO activities.
"The National Security Agency: Issues for Congress" (.pdf)
Prisoner Abuse Documents - Bush Administration documents on interrogation.

Violence in the Media - a review of practices in marketing violence to children in movies, music, games, etc. (.pdf)
Entertainment Industry & Violence - An examination of the entertainment industry's effort to curb children's exposure to violent content. Hearing before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

WikiLeaks

WMD Around the World - information about all countries possessing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear and other special weapons capabilities.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission - Papers and studies provided to the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, authorized by the United Nations.

Ready Reference

Alibris - over 60 million used, new, and out-of-print books, movies and music!
Amazon
- world's biggest bookstore.
Barnes & Noble - bookstore
Bookfinder - ultimate resource for book shoppers.
FunBrain - Interactive Educational Games for all grade levels and subject areas.
Google Book Search - full text of thousands of books out of copyright or with permission granted by the publisher or rights holder.
Great Books Online - covers standard Reference, Verse, Fiction and Nonfiction books.
Homework Central - academic branches of study http://www.homeworkcentral.com/indexhc.html
Kids Click - search by subject, titles and descriptions for age specific quality resources.
Library Thing - world's largest Book Club. Find people with similar tastes.
Newstrawler - search for articles from the archives of online journals, magazines, national & international newspapers, web references and web based news sources. (a subscription is required for some articles).
Rare Books - search engine for locating used and rare books.
NYPL Digital Gallery - search more than 275,000 historical images and photographs for downloading.

Almanacs

Information Please Home Page
The Farmers Almanac
Today in History - search the archive by date or subject to discover events in history that occurred on that day.

Atlases & Maps

    Country Studies - on-line versions of books previously published in hard copy by the U.S. Department of the Army as part of the Country Studies/Area Handbook Series.
    Google Maps
    MapMaker
    - create maps of the U.S. by climate, environmental aspects, history, transportation, boundaries, agriculture, biology and water.
    MapQuest
    National Atlas of the United States
    - color map layers depicting state boundaries, federal lands, parkways, rivers, volcanoes, seismic events, urban areas, roads, railroads and airports.
    World Gazetteer - provides data on the current population of cities, towns and regions all over the globe.
    World Map Connection - physical, state and political maps, maps of places in the news and other geographic information.
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Dictionaries

Directories & Indexes
    Glossarist - comprehensive directory with over 4,500 glossaries including arts and culture, animation, cartoons, architecture, film, dance, fine arts and five other categories.
    The Ultimate Information Directory
    Unbound Bible - online searchable database with 24 versions of the Bible.
Encyclopedias
    Bartleby - includes: the Columbia Encyclopedia, American Heritage Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, Simpson's Contemporary Quotations and the American Heritage Book of English.
    Columbia Encyclopedia - over 51,000 entries, 17,000 biographies, hypertext cross references, maps, speeches.
    Encyclopedia Britannica (password required)
    Museum of Hoaxes - includes a chronology of numerous hoaxes from the year 750 to the present.
    Virtual Encyclopedia
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News Sources

Newspapers
Accessible Archives - newspapers from the early 18th and 19th centuries. Includes eyewitness accounts of historical events.
Chronicling America - 170 newspapers from 1880-1922 for the following states: Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington.
Historical Newspapers -
A to Z list list of historical U.S. newspapers that are available online at no cost.
ProQuest Newsstand - Covers 1867-1908 and the Morning Tribune from 1909-1922.

News Literacy Project - national educational program that is mobilizing seasoned journalists to help middle school and high school students sort fact from fiction in the digital age.
Newspaper Links - quick links to newspaper websites around the world.
Online Newspapers - indexes 10,000 newspapers from around the world
Boston Globe
Christian Science Monitor
Chicago Tribune
The London Times
The New York Times
Rosemount Patch
This Week - Dakota County Tribune
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Washington Post - Timespace
Winona Newspaper Project - archive of three Winona newspapers from the late 19th century and 20th century. (Winona Argus, Winona Daily and Winona Republican Herald)

Podcast Library

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Quotations and Biographical Sources

Speeches Statistics Trivia
    Trivial Pursuit - a selection of over 4,800 questions for answering via the web.
    Scavenger Hunts - Internet education scavenger hunts for various grade levels.

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