Links - online encyclopedia and reference resources
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Wikimedia Foundation Projects
- Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation describes itself as "an international nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content.... [which] operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world..."
- Wikipedia Wikipedia is probably the best known of the projects which are co-ordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation and is a collaboratively written encyclopedia. Articles witten for and appearing on Wikipedia are required to meet a set of standards which place emphasis on the quoting of references and neutrality.
- WikiBooks Wikibooks is a collection of open content textbooks. This site is a wiki, meaning that anyone can edit any book module.
- Wiktionary As with other Wikimedia Foundation projects, the Wiktionary is written collaboratively. It aims to be multilingual and provides a growing number of dictionary and thesaurus entries for words.
- Wikiquote Wikiquote is an online compendium of quotations from notable people and creative works which includes links to Wikipedia entries for further information.
The Digital Universe Foundation
- The Digital Universe Foundation The Digital Universe Foundation have an ambitious aim of creating a comprehensive and accurate source of information about the world around us and aspects of it.
- Digital Universe The Digital Universe site contains a number of portals (which are more defined sites within the main site). These include the Earth Portal, Recycling Portal, Solar System Portal, Arctic Portal and several others.
- Encyclopedoa of Earth The Encyclopedia of Earth, is descibed as "an expanding compendium of expertly written articles dealing with all aspects of life and environment on our home planet."
other online reference resources
- About.com The About.com website features a vast number of articles covering a wide range of subjects. Although the website is American, many of the articles have universal relevence.
- ARKive The ARKive website was created to provide a unique record of the world’s biodiversity through film clips, photographs and audio recordings.
- BSL Dictionsary Online Stories in the Air have produced the BSL Dictionary Online, which offers an introductory dictionary for learning British Sign Language in addition to literacy and numeracy games, and other resources.
- Encyclopeadia Britanica (online edition) The Encyclopeadia Britanica (online edition) includes a great deal of content which is available for free, and even more whic is available through paid subscription.
- Encyclopedia Mythica .
- everything2 Everything2 sees itself as a community of individuals linked by their use of the interent and a shared desire to read each others writing, thoughts, opinions and articles on a wide variety of topics.
- Gazetteer for Scotland .
- h2g2 h2g2 is an online encyclopedia which aims to offer entries covering life, the universe and everything. The entries are written by h2g2's readers and the whole thing is heavily inspired by the fictional Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy from Douglas Adams' books.
- How Stuff Works As the website's name may well suggest, How Stuff Works focusses upon explanations of how (and why) a wide variety of objects and concepts work.
- MSN Encarta .
- Probert Encyclopaedia .
- The British Library The British Library website contains access to the British Libararies extensive catalogues listing printed works. In addition there are also a range of interesting sections including digital copies of classic books which allow you to turn the virtual pages as you read, a number of online exhibitions, learning and informational resources, and much, much more.
- Toonopedia The Toonopedia website contains information about a vast number of different cartoon and comic strip characters.
- Uncyclopedia Uncyclopedia describes itself as a "content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" and is a parody of Wikipedia (including several sub domains which are parodies of other Wikimedia projects).
- Wikinfo In some ways Wikinfo is very similar to Wikipedia, however where Wikipedia requires articles to be written from a neutral standpoint Wikinfo places more emphasis upon the opinions of authors. These differences in emphasis don't automatically make either Wikinfo or Wikipedia better, or worse than each other. It can sometimes be useful to read articles on both Wikinfo and Wikipedia to gain a better overall perspective.