Research Resources

I have to add to my post Research for Your Writing. In that post I concentrated on how much and when I (and other authors) research, but I thought that it might good to add a few of the resources I use:

• How Stuff Works
  This site has everything. If you need to be a bit more thorough when you write about the court system, then this site will tell you How Supreme Court Appointments Work. If you're writing about botox then you can find out How Botox Works, or if you want to write intelligibly about satellite TV then go to the Electronics Channel and find outHow Satellite TV Works.


• Columbia Encyclopedia - Sixth Edition
  

  Containing nearly 51,000 entries (marshalling six and one-half million words on a vast range of topics), and with more than 80,000 hypertext cross-references, the current Sixth Edition is among the most complete and up-to-date encyclopedias ever produced.



• And of course - who hasn't heard of - Wikipedia
  The free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. In the English version, started in 2001, they are currently working on 652,524 articles.


• For city and street maps I always go to Mapquest


• infoplease is a great site with an almanac, encyclopedia, dictionary and thesaurus, but I use it mostly for their Atlas or I use World Sites Atlas

And lest we forget Google , Yahoo, Technorati and the likes.

And if all this isn't enough, and also just for fun and to get out of the dungeon, I mean office, every once in a while and see people, then the local library branch and even better the local reference library is a great source you should use often.

Categories: writing, research