Media Center Aide - Charlene Wolter-Harris
Media Center Aide - Liz Galbo

• Gale In Context

• EBSCO

• SHARE

• Digital Library Of Illinois

• Purdue Online Writing Lab

• Allerton Public Library

• The News-Gazette - Your Source for News and Advertising in East Central Illinois

• Journal-Republican - Your source for news and advertising in East Central Illinois

• Herald and Review - The No. 1 source for local news, photo, blogs and video from Decatur, Macon County and Central Illinois.

• Illinois Homepage - Central Illinois' News Leader

• Google - Simple, powerful and straightforward, Google provides relevant hits. Easy to use buttons allow you to search for images, newsgroups, or to use Google as a directory!

• Ask - Ask lets you search the web by typing a simple question in plain English

• Yahoo! - Entries are selected by people and arranged by subjects. It is a good place to start a search.

• Yippy! - Brainstorm topic ideas using result clusters. Uncover buried sites by choosing a related cluster. Drill down into a cluster of results.

• Dogpile - Dogpile allows you to see each search engine's results separately in a useful list for comparison. Click the search engine icons by "Best of Breed."

• Surfwax - For SERIOUS deep digging.

The lists in these tables are by no means exhaustive. They do represent a general consensus on what the helpful sh4earch tools are. If you are interested in finding out more about Internet search tools, check out the following links:

• UC Berkeley Library's Top Recommended Search Tools (Be sure to scroll to the bottom of its page for links to their tables of recommended engines and directories),

• The Internet Public Library's Web Searching Page

Sometimes you need a map, a biography, a definition or a quick fact on a particular topic. You can begin your search by trying any one of these recommended reference sites.

• Purdue University Library Reference Page

• Internet Public Library Ready Reference

• High School Ace (scroll down the page for its "Reference Resources & Tools")

• Refdesk

• Virtual Reference Desk

• University of Illinois Library Online Reference Page

Want more? Click on this link to the Librarian's Index to the Internet page on reference resources for a descriptive listing of other great sites.

• 000-Generalities

  • Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Ed.

  • Guinness Book of World Records

• 100-Philosophy & Psychology

  • EServer - Core philosophy texts from The English Server

  • Allpsych.com - Psychology Texts

• 200-Religion

  • The Unbound Bible - Various online versions of the Bible.

• 300-Social Sciences

  • Statistical Abstract of the United States

• 400-Language

  • Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus

  • yourDictionary.com - Multiple language and subject dictionaries at one site.

• 500-Natural Sciences & Math

  • BioTech's Life Science Dictionary

  • Audubon Field Guides

• 600-Technology (Applied Sciences)

  • The Merck Manual of Medical Information

  • ADAM Health Encyclopedia

  • MEDLINEplus Health Information

  • U.S. Agriculture Statisitics

• 700-The Arts--Fine & Decorative

  • Art, Design, and Visual Thinking

• 800-Literature & Rhetoric

  • Project Gutenberg - Fine literature--full texts.

  • Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th Ed.

  • Bibliomania - Literature and Study Guides

  • EServer - Fiction, classic texts, philosophy, etc. from the English Server at the University of Washington

• 900-Geography and History

  • The Holocaust Chronicle

  • Country Studies from the US State Department

  • World Fact Book/Country Studies from the CIA

  • World Flags