Virtual Reference

Virtual Reference is a collection of online reference souces organized by subject. It includes dictionaries & thesauruses, encyclopedias and other resources that provide quick answers to your questions. These are Internet resources and are free to all users.

TC3 students and staff are encouraged to use our Ask a Librarian reference services and our online Encyclopedias and Reference Books. An outstanding resource is the Gale Virtual Reference Library consisting of over 250 academic reference encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.

Art & Architecture

Archives of American Art - Smithsonian Institution
Art History Resources on the Web - Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe
Artcyclopedia: Fine Art Search Engine
ArtLibraries - Search 6 million records from 20 specialist art libraries throughout Europe
CLARA: Database of Women Artists - National Museum of Women in the Arts
Finding Art Images Online
Getty Research Institute
Bibliography of the History of Art
Getty Vocabularies
Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online
Cultural Objects Name Authority Online
Getty Union List of Artist Names
Great Buildings Collection
Structurae - International Database of Bridge and Structural Engineering
Timeline of Art History - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Biography

Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress - 1774 to present
Biography.com
Buscabiografias - "10.000 resúmenes biograficos en nuestra base de datos."
Cambridge History of English and American Literature
Catalog of American Portraits - National Portrait Gallery maintains images and data for more than "80,000 portrait records in public and private collections across the United States and abroad".
Congressional Pictorial Directory - "Color photograph of each member of the House of Representatives and the Senate. It also includes information about a Member of Congress' length of service, political party affiliations, and Congressional district."
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
Internet Public Library: Biographies
Library of Congress Authorities
National Inventors Hall of Fame

Books &Publishing

Daily Beast Book Beast - With list of Best Books of 2010
Financial Times - Has a Fiction Round Up
Google Book Search
Man Booker Prize - With
Winner
Shortlist
Long List.
National Book Awards - Has 2010 National Book Awards finalists and winners
New York Times Books
Nobel Prize in Literature
Publisher's Weekly
Pulitzer Prizes - Has 2010 Winners and Finalists
Times Literary Supplement - Has a TLS Books of the Year
Wall Street Journal Books & Ideas

Business

County Business Patterns - U.S. Census Bureau
Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER) - Economic information and data for researchers interested in the U.S. economy. Has Economic Indicators back to 1948.
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
The Small Business Economy: A Report to the President - 2009.
ThomasNet - Companies & products

Colleges and Universities

American Association of Community Colleges
Braintrack College and University Directory - Over 10,000 higher education institutions in 194 countries.
Campus Newspapers
Center for Measuring University Performance - With extensive data on top American Research Universities.
College and University Rankings - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
College Board College Search
College Navigator - "See and compare profiles of nearly 7,000 colleges and universities across the nation." Part of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). See also their NCES School Search
CollegeView College Search
Fafsa - Has a Federal School Code Search
General Education Online - International listing
International Association of Universities - Has a Member Organisations List.
Middle States Commission on Higher Education - With Institution Directory
National Association of Colleges and Employers - See Top Employers for the Class of 2010
National Survey of Student Engagement - This survey of four-year college students database of participating institutions
Princeton Review College Search
Princeton Review College Rankings
Ranking Web of World Universities - Webometrics
SUNY Complete Campus List
U.S. News & World Report College Rankings
Web U.S. Higher Education
Yahoo! Colleges and Universities

Countries

Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment - "This stunning 400-page "Africa: Atlas of our Changing Environment" is a unique and powerful publication which brings to light stories of environmental change at more than 100 locations spread across every country in Africa. There are more than 300 satellite images, 300 ground photographs and 150 maps, along with informative graphs and charts that give a vivid visual portrayal of Africa and its changing environment."
Commonwealth - Has links to Members
Country Background Notes - U.S. Department of State
Country Studies/Area Handbooks
Embassy.org - Foreign Embassies in the United States
Foreign Consular Offices in the United States
GradSchools.com - "Search from over 60,000 master degree, doctorate/doctoral degree, PhD degree and graduate certificate programs."
GeoNames - "Geographical database covers all countries and contains over eight million placenames."
Human Development Reports - United Nations Development Programme. Has Statistics and Country Factsheets
Market Research Library - Locate Country Commercial Guides created by the U.S. Commercial Service
NationMaster.com
Permanent Missions to the United Nations
Portals to the World
United Nations
U.S. Department of States Background Notes
U.S. Embassies, Consulates, and Diplomatic Missions - U.S. Department of State
United States Institute of Peace - Independent, nonpartisan federal institution created and funded by Congress to "prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development and increase conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide."
World Factbook
World Health Organization
World Leaders - Central Intelligence Agency

Dictionaries and Thesauri

Babel Fish - Translate a block of text or a web page
bab.la - Besides translations they provide additional synonyms, sample and context sentences, pronunciation etc. Currently offers 29 dictionaries including 16 English bilingual dictionaries including:
Italian English Dictionary
English Spanish Dictionary
English French Dictionary
Cambridge Dictionaries Online
Dictionary.com
Foreign Word - Translation tool
French-English Dictionary
Google Translate
Hutchinson Dictionary of Difficult Words
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus
Wordnet - Created by the Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University, Wordnet is an "online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. Different relations link the synonym sets."
Wordsmith: A.Word.A.Day
yourDictionary.com - Good source for foreign language dictionaries

Directories

Anywho - With 800 Directory and Reverse LookUp
GuideStar - National database of nonprofit organizations
Langenberg - Person & Email Search
Lycos Yellow Pages
Idealist - 32,000 nonprofit and community organizations in 153 countries
New York State Government Phone Directory
Superpages - Yellow Pages
Switchboard
Yahoo People Search
ZIP Code Look-Up - United States Postal Service

Education

Digest of Education Statistics
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
National Center for Education Statistics
National Library of Education
New York School District Index
New York State Education Department - District data can be found in the Fiscal Profile Reporting System the State Aid Office, New York State Education Department State Aid Database, and the State Aid Projections. For example here are projections for:
Dryden
Lansing
Ithaca
Cortland
Homer
• U. S. Department of Education

Encyclopedias, Almanacs

Note: TC3 students and staff also have access to online Encyclopedias and Reference Books including the Gale Virtual Reference Library, a collection of over 250 academic encyclopedias, and almanacs.

Acronym Finder
Cambridge History of English and American Literature
Canadian Encyclopedia
Catholic Encyclopedia
Columbia Encyclopedia
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Encyclopedia Mythica
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Handbook of Texas Online
Infoplease
New Georgia Encyclopedia
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
Utah History Encyclopedia
Wikipedia - Users should be aware that Wikipedia is a collaborative project to which anyone may contribute and thus the information it contains may be incorrect, biased or intentionally misleading.

Events

Binghamton University Calendar of Events
Cornell University Events Calendar
Ithaca College Events Calendar
SUNY Cortland Campus Events
Syracuse University Events Calendar

Health

AMA Doctor Finder
American Hospital Association
American Hospital Directory
AVERT - HIV and AIDS statistics from around the world
FDA Consumer Updates - U.S. Food and Drug Administration
HealthGrades - Research hospitals, nursing homes and physicians.
Healthy People 2020: The Road Ahead
Healthy Video - NBC Digital Health Network
Hospital Compare - U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides performance information on heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical infection prevention from participating hospitals through the end of 2005
Informed Medical Decisions
MEDLINEplus
Medpedia - "Repository of up-to-date unbiased medical information, contributed and maintained by health experts around the world."
Merck Manual
Merck Manual of Medical Information
Medical Library Association
Archive of the Journal of the Medical Library Association - Vols. 90 to 98; 2002 to 2010
Deciphering MedSpeak
Monitoring the Future
National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2010 - Secondary School Students - Vol. 1 and College Students & Adults Ages 19-50 - Vol. 2
National Center for Health Statistics
National Mental Health Information Center - Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) - Offers a number of online Mental Health Publications
New York State Cancer Registry - Cancer statistics
Nursing Homes in New York State - New York State Department of Health provides information on Selecting a Nursing Home in New York State: A Guide for Consumers and New York State Nursing Home Profile.
Nutrition.gov
OncoLink: A University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center Resource
PubMed - Access to over 12 million MEDLINE citations back to the mid-1960s
PubMed Central - U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.
RxList: The Internet Drug Index

Jobs

America's Job Bank
America's Career InfoNet
Best College Majors for a Career - Wall Street Journal
Brainfuse JobNow Live Assistance - JobNow is made possible through a federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) award funded through the
New York State Education Department/New York State Library.
Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey (NCS) - "Provides comprehensive measures of occupational wages; employment cost trends, and benefit incidence and detailed plan provisions. Detailed occupational earnings are available for metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, broad geographic regions, and on a national basis."
Cornell University Office of Human Resources
Cortland County Personnel/Civil Service
Dictionary of Occupational Titles
Employment in New York State Newsletter - New York State Department of Labor
EssentialNYJobs.com - Job listings from Central New York employers
Indeed.com - Job search engine
JobWeb - "Career and job-search advice for new college graduates. A service of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)."
Monster.com
National Association of Colleges and Employers - See Top Employers for the Class of 2010
New York Job Source
New York State Department of Civil Service
New York State Department of Labor - They publish Employment in New York State
Occupational Outlook Handbook - U.S. Department of Labor
Project ION - Central Upstate New York region's summer internship program
SUNY Cortland Employment Opportunities
SUNY Employment
Tompkins Cortland Community College JobConnect
Tompkins County Civil Service
Tompkins Cortland Community College Job Opportunities
Transitions Abroad

Libraries

CUNY Campus Libraries
CUNY Online Catalog
Directory of New York State Library Systems and Members
Hathi Trust Digital Library
IFLA's National Libraries of the World - List compiled by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Library of Congress Classification Outline
Library of Congress Online Catalog
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Libweb: Library Servers via WWW - "Currently lists over 7900 pages from libraries in 146 countries."
Lib-web-cats - Directory of libraries worldwide
Open Worldcat - Over 1 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. Has a Registry listing 100,000 institutions.
Repositories of Primary Sources - "Listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar."
SUNY Libraries
SUNY Library Catalogs
Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)

Magazines and Journals

Alternative Press Index Directory of Periodicals
BioMed Central - Open access journals
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)`
FindArticles
Free Medical Journals
HighWire Press - "Largest repository of high impact, peer-reviewed content, with 1053 journals and 4,327,666 full text articles from over 130 scholarly publishers." (June 2007)
NewsLink: Magazines
PubMed - National Library of Medicine database includes over 15 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950s.
PubMed Central - U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

Maps & Geography

Geographic Names Information System - U.S. Geological Survey. With Query Form
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names - Over 1.3 million place names
Google Maps
MapQuest
National Map - Provides "public access to high-quality, geospatial data." With Viewer.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
EarthExplorer - Digital aerial photos.
Princeton GIS Center
Tiger Mapping Service - U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Census Bureau Maps and Cartographic Products
U.S. Gazetteer
Visible Earth - NASA provides satellite images of New York State including the upstate region.
World Mapper

Movies

Academy Awards Database
Internet Movie Database
Movie Review Query Engine
New York Times: Movies - You can "browse or search 28,000 New York Times movie reviews. Included in the free review archive are all films reviewed since 1960."
Roger Ebert
Rotten Tomatoes

Music

Critical Metrics - Created by Joey Anuff and Will Kreth, this music discovery site "keeps track of recommendations and playlists across all media so you can easily find, try, and buy the best new music." Reviews are gathered from such sources as the Village Voice, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Salon, NPR, Spin and Pitchfork.

News & Newspapers

Major Online News Sources
ABYZ News Links
Campus Newspapers
Canadian Newspaper Association - Find a Canadian Daily Newspaper
Google News archive search
Internet Public Library Online Newspapers
Mondo Times Worldwide Media Guide
Newslink
NewsVoyager
OnlineNewspapers

Politics

FactCheck - "Nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases."
Open Secrets "Nonpartisan guide to money's influence on U.S. elections and public policy."

Quotations

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)
Familiar Quotations with Parallel Passages from Various Writer
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

Recipes

All Recipes - Over 25,000 recipes
RecipeSource - Over 70,000 recipes

Statistics

American FactFinder - "Access to significantly detailed data sets related to population, housing, economics, industry, and geographic data." (Choice Reviews)
American Statistical Association
Bureau of Labor Statistics Handbook of Methods
Bureau of Labor Statistics News Service
Census 2000 Data for the State of New York
Criminal Justice Statistics for New York State
Data.gov - "Descriptions of the Federal datasets, information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets."
Digest of Education Statistics
Economic Indicators - Prepared for the Joint Economic Committee by the Council of Economic Advisers. "Provides economic information on prices, wages, production, business activity, purchasing power, credit, money and Federal finance."
FBI Uniform Crime Reports
Fatal Analysis Reporting System (FARS) Encyclopedia - National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
FedStats
Fire in New York - Annual statistical report based on fire, accident, and burn injury reports from paid and volunteer departments provided by the New York State Department of State Office of Fire Prevention and Control.
Health, United States - National Center for Health Statistics
Issues in Labor Statistics - U.S. Department of Labor
Mental Health, United States, 2004 - Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Monthly Labor Review - U.S. Department of Labor
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
New York State Department of Labor - Workforce Industry Data
New York State Statistical Yearbook
OFFSTATS: Official Statistics on the Web
Penn World Table - "Provides purchasing power parity and national income accounts converted to international prices for 188 countries for some or all of the years 1950-2004."
Social Science Data on the Internet
Social Security Programs Throughout the World - Data for Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and The Americas
State and County Quick Facts
Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey: State and Metro Area Employment, Hours, & Earnings Bureau of Labor Statistics.
State of the World's Children - UNICEF
Statemaster - "Statistical database which allows you to research and compare a multitude of different data on US states."
Statistical Abstract of the United States
UNESCO Institute for Statistics
United Nations Statistics Division
United States Bureau of Justice Statistics
United States Census Bureau - The site is searchable and provides an index.
WHO Statistical Information System
World Economic and Social Survey - United Nations
Yearbook of Immigration Statistics
Youth Indicators, 2005 Trends in the Well-Being of American Youth

Time, Calendars, Holidays

Official U.S. Time - Provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and its military counterpart, the U. S. Naval Observatory (USNO).
Virtual Perpetual Calendars
U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock Time
U.S. Naval Observatory Data Services - Sunrise, sunset, moon phases, eclipses etc.
World Clock

Weather

National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) - "World's largest archive of climate data."
National Weather Service Eastern Region Headquarters - With Binghamton office.
USGS Real-Time Water Data - Provides a Water Watch: Locations above flood stage and Real-Time Data for New York: Streamflow and has data on river water levels including:
Beaverkill at Cooks Falls NY
Chemung River at Chemung NY
Chenango River near Chenango Forks NY
Delaware River at Callicoon NY
Delaware River, East Branch, at Fish's Eddy NY
Delaware River, East Branch, at Harvard NY
Delaware River, West Branch, at Hancock NY
Delaware River, West Branch, at Hale Eddy NY
Fall Creek near Ithaca NY
Mohawk River at Cohoes NY
Mohawk River near Little Falls NY
Otselic River at Cincinnatus NY
Susquehanna River near Waverly NY
Susquehanna River at Vestal NY
Tioughnioga River at Cortland NY
TC3 Weather Cam
Weather Channel

Other Ready Reference Collections

Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
Intute - Database created by network of UK universities contains 116847 records.
Librarians' Internet Index - Merged with Internet Public Library.
Martindale's The Reference Desk
Refdesk.com
Scout Report - With Archives
Virtual Reference Desk - Library of Congress

Last update: Monday, January 09, 2012