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Reference Sources:

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, Etc.

Popular starting points

Encyclopedias:

Britannica Online: an academic, general encyclopedia
More encyclopedias

Dictionaries and a Thesaurus:

Oxford English Dictionary: English language spelling, pronunciation, etymology and more ...
Roget's Thesaurus: for synonyms and antonyms
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary: the American English dictionary
More dictionaries

Online collections of reference sources

Blackwell Reference Online: Includes over 400 full-text reference works in the humanities and social sciences.
Credo Reference: 100 online subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and more
Gale Virtual Reference: online encyclopedias mostly for the humanities and social sciences. Includes several huge, multi-volume sets ...
Oxford Reference Online: 175+ dictionaries and encyclopedias for subject areas and languages

Why use these?

Scenario: you're assigned a paper topic that you know nothing about, and Wikipedia hasn't helped or you're forbidden to use it) ... What do you do? Find a subject encyclopedia!

Reference sources (encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.) provide summary and factual information. Use them to:

find basic concepts and viewpoints of topic
see historical context and relationships to other topics
identify and define specialized terms used to discuss the topics
find or verify data, facts, formulas, etc.