Top-Notch Reference Sites for Students

Surfing the Internet every day is sort of like studying to be a "Jeopardy" contestant. You can find all sorts of interesting tidbits, most of which you'll never use unless you happen to be selected to compete.

The real trick to mastering the Internet is to be able to get the facts you want when you need them. Here's a look at some of my favorite reference sites. Just remember to focus, or you'll be awash in a sea of irrelevant data.

RefDesk
Founded by Bob Drudge (father of Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report web site). Think of RefDesk as a giant portal to every reference guide you'd ever need. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases. The Farmer's Almanac, daily newspapers from around the world, the CIA Factbook, the Merck Manual, and that's just a few. RefDesk is as close to a resource of resources that you'll find.

Wikipedia
Unless you've been under that rock, you've probably heard of Wikipedia, the collaboratively written online encyclopedia. But you may not know that Wikipedia has a reference desk where you can get help finding the answers to specific questions. Just remember the Wikipedia grain of salt rule — it's usually accurate until it's not.

AF: Acronym Finder
Nice resource for the sciences, IT, business, government, and other majors that speak in abbreviated tongues. When you've mastered the others you can develop your own.

eHow
This one may not get your papers turned in on time but it'll help you survive the rest of your college dilemmas. How to kiss your date, iron your shirt, fix your car, decorate your dorm, and even ace the exam. Contributions come from the users, so again use that tool between your ears when evaluating.

The Library of Congress
This site can be a bit frustrating because it provides library catalogs and bibliographic information for books and resources held in worldwide libraries, but it's also a front end to the Library's special exhibits. The exhibits are beautiful, but distractions if they're not on topic. A new search engine that's in beta now and turns up voice recordings, still images, and other multimedia as well as text should make searching through the catalog easier.

Academic Info
It's certainly supported by commercial advertising, but Academic Info contains thousands of useful reference materials organized by subject matter and college major.

Infomine
For the more scholarly research, this site, built by university librarians, cites databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and more. It's well organized and easy to search.

Babel Fish
Don't count on this for passing the Spanish exam, but if you're lost in translation Babel Fish can take your text entered in one language and spit it out in another.

The Elements of Style
This one is so mission critical you just might want to keep a hard copy on your shelf.

Bartleby
Anyone studying literature needs this site bookmarked.

Gee, I feel smarter already. Anyone want to add to the list?