Research Shortcuts: DICTIONARIES / ENCYCLOPEDIAS / ATLASES

Encyclopedias
(online versions available only to ACC students and staff)

• Encyclopedia Britannica Online - 118,000 articles.  Also has Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus and a world atlas. Most search results have links to relevant web sites and periodical articles.
• Oxford Reference Online - over 100 separate reference sources that can be searched collectively or individually.
• Gale Virtual Reference Library - search over two dozen reference sources at once.

Some Scientific Encyclopedias:


• AccessScience - McGraw-Hill online encyclopedia of science and technology

Free Web Encylopedias (available to anyone)

• Columbia Encyclopedia - over 50,000 short entries.

Dictionaries & Thesauruses 

• Merriam-Webster Online - dictionary and thesaurus
• Yourdictionary.com - American Heritage dictionary.  Also can translate words into and from five European languages.
• Internet Public Library: Dictionaries - links to many types of dictionaries, including slang, rhyming, American Sign Language, etc. 
• Medical Terminology, Dictionaries and ICD - links to several web resources relating to health care and disease. 
• Online Science and Medical Dictionaries - links to many specialized dictionaries in science and medicine.
• SpellCheck.net - A spellchecker plus a handy array of math and language links. Use KitchenMath to convert pints to cups or try Babel Fish to translate Spanish to English.

Foreign Language Dictionaries 

Multiple Languages

• Oxford Reference Online - Modern Languages - available only to ACC students and staff. Spanish, French, German, Italian dictionaries.
• Altavista Translations - translates words or phrases both to and from English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Portuguese. This site will also translate entire web pages if you enter the URL.
• Yourdictionary.com Language Dictionaries - links to over 250 online non-English dictionaries.

French
 

• ARTFL Project: French to English, English to French

Spanish
 

• Dictionary of Spanish - Spanish to English, English to Spanish

Atlases

• Altapedia - both political and physical maps of the world.  Also background and facts about countries.
• Map Resources on the World Wide Web has links to many sites that have atlases and information about maps.

For help with specific aspects of research and writing, use our Study Guides.