LibGuides: Reference Books & Databases: Home

STLCC Reference Collection

Reference books come in many formats. They are great places to get broad overviews and background information to start a research project, and to look up facts and historical information.

Finding the right reference book

Use Reference Universe to search the indexes of print and online reference books.

Reference books online (by subscription through STLCC)

These are collections of reference books as e-books:

Credo Reference
Online reference library that provides access to a growing selection of reference books.

Online reference library that provides access to a growing selection of reference books. Includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, books of quotations, and a range of subject-specific titles from art to accountancy and literature to law. Credo Reference generates a network of cross-references that provide an easy-to-follow trail to related information contained anywhere within the library.

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Gale eBooks
Encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources.

Gale eBooks is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.

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Salem Press
Salem Press titles in literature, history, science, and health.

Salem Press titles in literature, history, science, and health. Includes Magill's Literary Annual 1977-current, Masterplots, Magill's Medical Guide, the Great Events and Great Lives from History reference series, and several science encyclopedias.

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Sage Knowledge
Reference books including social science, green issues, and criminal justice.
Sage Knowledge provides an interface to search the following:
- 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook by J. Mitchell Miller (2009)
- Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste: The Social Science of Garbage by Carl A. Zimring & William L. Rathje (2012)
- Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment by David Levinson (2002)
- Green Business: An A-to-Z Guide by Nevin Cohen & Paul Robbins (2011)
- Green Cities: An A-to-Z Guide by Nevin Cohen & Paul Robbins(2011)
- Green Consumerism: An A-to-Z Guide by Juliana Mansvelt & Paul Robbins (2011)
- Green Energy: An A-to-Z Guide by Dustin Mulvaney & Paul Robbins (2011)
- Green Food: An A-to-Z Guide by Dustin Mulvaney & Paul Robbins (2011)
- Green Politics: An A-to-Z Guide by Dustin Mulvaney & Paul Robbins (2011)
- Encyclopedia of Juvenile Justice by Marilyn D. McShane & Frank P. Williams III (2003)
- Encyclopedia of Law & Society: American and Global Perspectives by David S. Clark (2007)
- Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement by Larry E. Sullivan, Marie Simonetti Rosen, Dorthy Moses Schulz & M. R. Haberfeld (2004)
- Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime by Eric Hickey(2003)
- Encyclopedia of Prisons & Correctional Facilities by Mary Bosworth (2005)
- Encyclopedia of Race and Crime by Helen Taylor Greene & Shaun L. Gabbidon (2009)
- The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences by Larry E. Sullivan (2009)
- Encyclopedia of Terrorism, First Edition by Harvey W. Kushner (2003)
- Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime by Lawrence M. Salinger, Ph.D. (2005)
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These are individual (or a few closely related) reference books. Most are fully searchable as databases, some with enhanced with additional resources and features not available in the print version of the book.

AccessScience
Collection of science reference materials including McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, fully searchable.

AccessScience is a collection of science reference materials with full search capabilities of the 10th edition of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology and Research Updates from the McGraw-Hill Yearbooks of Science & Technology. AccessScience also includes access to 110,000+ definitions from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, biographies of scientists, late-breaking science and technology news, and bibliographies containing more than 28,000 literature citations. It provides links to evaluated related learning resources including web sites, study guides, and images. Includes a Q&A section that is updated weekly.
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American History Online
American political, military, social, and cultural history.

American History Online spans political, military, social, and cultural history and features "Learning Centers" that bring forward specially selected entries from many Facts On File titles. It includes biographies; events and topics; more than 2,150 primary source documents; timelines; overview essays outlining time periods; nearly 3,200 images depicting key figures, places, and events; original maps, graphs, and tables; a spotlight providing an in-depth look at a topic such as the Lewis and Clark Expedition or immigration; and an "Editor’s Selection of the Month" highlighting an event tied to each month.

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Encyclopedia of American Social Movements
Covers the history of U.S. social conflicts.

This Encyclopedia contains sixteen thematic sections. Each section, edited by an expert in the field, begins with an introductory text and includes a series of in-depth articles on specific movements, campaigns, organizations, and ideologies. The articles in each section are arranged by chronology or topic. Individual articles also include sidebar features on notable individuals and historic documents; illustrations; and a bibliography of recommended readings.

The online version of this work includes a word-search engine, a Topic Finder to explore the various articles and sidebars in each general category, a Browse feature to review an alphabetical list of articles, and a Master Bibliography.

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Annual Review of Sociology
Covers significant developments in the field of sociology.

Annual Review of Sociology covers the significant developments in the field of sociology. Topics covered in the journal include major theoretical and methodological developments as well as current research in the major subfields. Review chapters typically cover social processes, institutions and culture, organizations, political and economic sociology, stratification, demography, urban sociology, social policy, historical sociology, and major developments in sociology in other regions of the world.

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College Source Online
College catalogs including 2-year, 4-year, graduate, and professional schools.

Features over 22,669 College Catalogs in complete cover-to-cover, original page format representing 2-year, 4-year, graduate, professional and international schools.

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Columbia Gazetteer
Encyclopedia of geographical places and features.

The Columbia Gazetteer of the World includes information on demography; physical geography; political boundaries; industry, trade, and service activities; agriculture; cultural, historical, and archeological points of interest; transportation lines; longitude, latitude, and elevations; distance to relevant places; pronunciations; official local government place-names and changed or variant names and spellings. Article length varies from a brief notation on a small village to an essay on a country or region. The Gazetteer includes every incorporated place and county in the United States, along with several thousand unincorporated places, special-purpose sites, and physical features. There are a total of 40,000 entries for the United States. Historically noteworthy locations, such as archeological and biblical sites and ancient cities, towns, trade routes, and geographic features, supplement the coverage of the modern world.

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Columbia Granger's World of Poetry
Index to poetry including 250,000 poems in full text.

First published in 1904, Granger's has been the definitive source in English for locating a poem in anthologies on library shelves. The online version includes full text of 250,000 poems, biographies of poets, and a series of key Columbia poetry titles: The Classic Hundred Poems -- a fully annotated anthology of the one hundred poems that, in the Granger's database, are most frequently anthologized; The Top 500 Poems -- an annotated anthology of the 500 poems that, in the Granger's database, are most frequently anthologized; The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies, editions 8-12 -- an index to poetry in anthologies; The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Collected and Selected Works, editions 1-2 -- an index to poems in the other main type of poetry book found on library shelves; and The Columbia Granger's Index to African-American Poetry -- an index to 65 volumes of the best poetry by African Americans.

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CultureGrams Online
Cultural information for countries, states, and provinces.

Cultural information for over 200 countries is included in the World Edition. U.S. States and Canadian provinces are also covered. In addition to the country/state/province reports, the database includes a photo gallery with thousands of images, downloadable slideshows, downloadable and streaming videos, interviews with native children and adults from countries around the world, five recipes for each country, short biographies of five to ten famous people for each country, maps and flags, sound files providing national anthems and country name pronunciation, state bird sound files, and more. The database is keyword searchable.

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Ferguson's Career Guidance Center
Provides industry and job profiles, advice on career skills, and thousands of resource entries.

Ferguson's Career Guidance Center career research database is broken down into three main sections: Job and Industry Profiles, Job-Hunting and Workplace Skills, and Career and Industry Resources. The material is drawn from a range of sources and is extensively indexed.

The Job and Industry Profiles section includes industry profiles organized by the U.S. Department of Education's Career Clusters and thousands of articles on specific jobs. The Job-Hunting and Workplace Skills section gives guidance on the essentials of getting a job and keeping it -- establishing a career path, honing interview skills, writing resumes, and more. The Career and Industry Resources section includes searchable, browsable resource entries divided into convenient categories on fellowships, organizations, internships, scholarships, and awards.

Other sections of interest include School Searches (four comprehensive, current databases, provided by Peterson's Nelnet, LLC, covering undergraduate, graduate, nursing, and vocational and technical schools in the U.S. and Canada), where users can search for schools by type, region, areas of study, and a variety of other characteristics; Career Interest Assessment (a test that ranks users' work interest areas and suggests related occupations and industries); and Links to Outside Jobs (access to current, live job postings).

Features include videos covering jobs, industries, and career development skills; advice from nationally renowned author and career expert Sue Morem for recent graduates, job seekers, and people advancing in the workplace; "My Life" interviews with professionals; Career Opportunities News; persistent record links, and dynamic citations in MLA and Chicago Manual of Style formats.

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Gale Directory Library
Full text of Encyclopedia of Associations, International and U.S. versions.

Gale Directory Library provides full-text, searchable access to Encyclopedia of Associations: International Organizations and Encyclopedia of Associations: National Organizations of the US. Users can also sort and export data from the directories.

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Historical Statistics of the United States
The standard source for the quantitative facts of American history.

Expanded and revised edition of the standard source for the quantitative facts of American history. Topics range from migration and health to crime and the Confederate States of America. Each is placed in historical context by a recognized expert in the field. The resource is fully cross-referenced and indexed and permits users to graph individual tables and create customized tables and spreadsheets reflecting their own particular areas of interest. Users can download tables in Excel or CSV; download entire groups of tables as a zip file; create custom tables; or merge columns from multiple tables to create custom tables, which can also be downloaded, printed, or graphed. Provides advanced searching of the tables, their documentation, and essays and full citation downloading in RIS, text, or CSV format.

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North American Theatre Online
Covers all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre.

North American Theatre Online is a reference work covering all aspects of the Canadian and American Theatre. It includes major reference materials, together with records for plays, biographies, theatres, productions, and production companies. The collection also includes images, playbills, postcards, scrapbooks and other resources.

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Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature
Documents and interprets the books read by children throughout the world.

Written by an international roster of more than 300 authors, the Encyclopedia documents and interprets the books read by children throughout the world. With a global perspective that pays attention to significant international trends and the multicultural expansion of the field, it includes brief biographies of every major author and illustrator. Also included are feature essays on all genres of children's literature, individual works, and prominent trends and themes, as well as general essays on the traditions of children's literature in many countries throughout the world.

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Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
Covers events, inventions, and social movements affecting the way Americans view, prepare, and consume food and drink.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America covers the events, inventions, and social movements in American history that have affected the way Americans view, prepare, and consume food and drink. A collaboration of nearly 200 contributors from academia, industry, and the culinary world, the articles treat regions, people, ingredients, companies, advertising, historical eras, holidays and festivals, and political, scientific, and economic currents pertinent to American cuisine. The general conceptual categories of the work are: History, Geography, Ethnic and Cultural Cuisines, Food Staples, Cooked and Processed Foods, Beverages, Food and Culture, Holidays, Education and Food Writing, Cookbooks and Manuscripts, Food Corporations, Politics, Policies, and Issues, Science and Health, and Biographies.

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Oxford English Dictionary
The authoritative dictionary of the evolution of the English language.

The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. It also offers the best in etymological analysis and in listing of variant spellings, and it shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

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Plunkett Research, LTD
Includes industry research, contacts & business development data.

Business research database that provides industry statistics, trends and in-depth analysis of top companies, including industry research, contacts, and business development data. Covers industry sectors such as health care, financial services, retailing, entertainment, energy and information technology.

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Social Issues in America
Introduction to U.S. societal issues.

Addresses current American societal issues, providing an introduction to the basic concepts, terminology, historical background, competing points of view, statistics, and research materials associated with each one.

The online version of this work provides a word-search engine to identify all references to a specific subject throughout the work; a Topic Finder to explore the diversity of issues associated with broad social categories (Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Education, the Environment, Family, and the like); a Browse feature to review an alphabetical master list of issues; and "see-also" references at the end of every article that provide hyperlink connections to related entries.

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Statistical Abstract of the United States
Summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.

Published by Proquest and built to find and retrieve statistical content, the Statistical Abstract includes tables on thousands of different topics regarding the on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. It provides access to statistical information produced by U.S. Federal agencies, states, private organizations, and major intergovernmental organizations.

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