Monstropedia – I admit this one might have limited appeal but I just had to include it because of my lifelong interest in the subject. As of this writing they offer 1,873 articles about…monsters!
Museum of Hoaxes – Covers hoaxes from the middle ages to the present. This site offers a hoax museum search engine and extensive archives.
National Archives – The record keeper for the United States holds “approximately 9 billion pages of textual records; 7.2 million maps, charts, and architectural drawings; more than 20 million still photographs; billions of machine-readable data sets; and more than 365,000 reels of film and 110,000 videotapes.”
Netronline – The public records online directory they offer is a portal to tax assessors and recorders offices for all 50 states.
Nolo – They offer an extensive selection of free legal information, a legal encyclopedia and a lawyer directory.
Online Conversion – Convert anything from acceleration to pressure to weight, and about anything else you can think of.
Pop Cult – A somewhat obscure but fun site that is cataloging “quality” pop culture. Go click around; I know you’ll find something interesting.
The Straight Dope – One could argue that this is not exactly a reference site, but Cecil Adams has answered so many strange questions since 1973 that it had to make the cut.
Snopes – A dictionary of urban legends and “common fallacies, misinformation, old wives' tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip, and similar items.”
Wikipedia – While they had a few credibility problems early on Wikipedia has done much to clean up the site. Because of their extensive link love you can’t research just one subject while there.
Related Reading:
Best Free Reference Sites, Part Two
Best Free Reference Sites, Part One
Thank you for all the great posts from last year! I look forward to reading your blog, because they are always full of information that I can put to use. Thank you again, and God bless you in 2010.
ReplyDelete