Desk Set

Ready Reference for the Digital Librarian

Specialized Encyclopedias:

Access Science (n.d.) Retrieved from http://accessscience.com/index.aspx.
This is a membership based site from McGraw-Hill. You are able to access and search the site without a membership. However, you can only see full articles with a membership. This is a pretty comprehensive encyclopedia for the science field and has a lot of great articles. Topics range through military science, food science, chemistry, mathematics and so forth.

Auerbach, S. (Ed.) (1999). Encyclopedia of multiculturalism (Vols. 1-6) . New York: NY: Cavendish.
This encyclopedia aims to collect the information that has been left out of previous encyclopedias. However today, many current publications include this information and there is not much here that cannot be found elsewhere.

Encyclopedia Smithsonian (2011). Retrieved from http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia
This encyclopedia is run by the Smithsonian. You can search by keyword or you can choose on of the four subjects tabs on the main page and explore. Many topics and articles include a timeline, featured book and activities that go along with it. Very useful for teachers, parents and students.

How stuff works (2011). Retrieved from http://www.howstuffworks.com/
This is a site run by discovery education. Lots of media on the site. Many topics have videos that go along with them illustrating the topic. On the home page you will find the most popular and commented topics from the site. On the top bar you will see a search by subject guide. There is also a search bar where you can search by key term.

Pendergast, S., & Pendergast T. (1999). St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture (Vols. 1-5). New York, NY: Cengage, Gale.
This encyclopedia focuses on American popular culture, examining the post- World War II era in over 2700 alphabetical essays in the following broad categories: film, music, print culture, social life, sports, television and radio, and art and performance. It contains both descriptive essays (75-150 words) and more in-depth essays (up to 3000 words).

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/
This is a specialized site where you can search regarding people and terms relevant in the philosophy field. One nice feature of the site is the table of contents page. You can browse the table of contents or you can search using the search bar for a specific term or key word.

World Book Kids. (n.d.) Retrieved October 12, 2011 from http://www.worldbookonline.com/training/kids/index.htm
World Book Kids is a subscription-based resource for the earliest researchers. Many public libraries carry it; this is useful for information professionals in public libraries who receive reference questions from elementary students doing school projects. World Book Kids is a teaching/training tool as well as a research source. Its design is clean and intuitive and the facts contained within are reputable. The site renames subjects for its audience: biography becomes "Important People" and geography becomes "Compare Places", for example. Science projects appropriate for this cohort are also presented. World Book Kids is a safe site for general surfing and contains video, images, and games.