Finding Quick Facts

This guide is intended to give you ideas about finding facts or background information from online encyclopedias, dictionaries, factbooks, and other reference material.

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia Britannica: good for quick facts or lengthy discussion of events, people, or places.

Here are three other encyclopedias the Library also subscribes to:

Access Science: a great encyclopedia for science and technology.

American National Biography: for biographical information on Americans who died prior to 1996.

Encyclopaedia of Islam: "The" place to go for scholarly information concerning Islam.

Women's Studies Encyclopedia: information about women from all fields and disciplines of study.

Want More?
The Penn Library has many specialized subject-related dictionaries and encyclopedias. For starters, you could try the Oxford Reference Online, a collection covering all subject areas. You can search them altogether, by subject, or individual titles.

Want Even More?
Use the drop-down search tool at the top of the E-Resources webpage. Select an area of Interest and the "Encyclopedias & Subject Dictionaries" Type.

Dictionaries:

Oxford English Dictionary: Use this to discover how a word has been used historically in English literature.

Webster's Unabridged: Your standard no-nonsense dictionary.

Fact Books:

Facts on File: News archive summaries from 1940-present.

For more news sources, go to E-Resources - News Sources

Statistical Abstract of the United States: Historical statistics of the U.S. from 1878-present (with backfile in progress).

For more statistical sources, go to E-Resources - Data Sets & Statistics (grouped by subject) or the Good Starting Points For Finding Statistics web page

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