General Reference Sites

Librarian's Internet Index  —  www.lii.org
A good place to find general information, such as sites on diseases, links to newspaper sites, and even mega-search engines.

Internet Public Library  —  www.ipl.org
Home of excellent resources for children and teens, such as the link to science experiments or the "POTUS" database with information on the Presidents of the United States. Online reference help is also available through this site.

Refdesk.com  —  www.refdesk.com
Offers a wide variety of quick reference information online, from phone numbers to almanacs, CIA fact Sheet information on countries to dictionaries.

CA.gov  —  ca.gov
The website for the state of California.

USA.gov  —  www.usa.gov
The official web portal for the U.S. government.

Merriam-Webster Online  —  www.merriam-webster.com
An online dictionary and thesaurus.

Encarta  —  encarta.msn.com/artcenter_/browse.html
An online encyclopedia.

California Libraries Catalog  —  calcat.org
A catalog that lets you search many California library catalogs all at once.

Virtual Reference Shelf  —  www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/virtualref.html
The Library of Congress has put together a collection of links to online resources.

Public.Resource.Org  —  public.resource.org
This site is trying to make government information more accessible. There is good information here, but the site is not easy to navigate. However, you may find stuff here that you can't find elsewhere. The site has such things as safety codes, Supreme Court cases from the 1800s, and government videos.

WEConnect  —  www.weconnect.net
This is a one-stop site for seeing which California financial programs and services you may be eligible for.

Green Info Online  —  www.greeninfoonline.com
This is an index of nearly 300,000 articles on environmental concerns from Ebscohost, and it has the full text for some articles.

Agricultural Thesaurus and Glossary  —  http://agclass.nal.usda.gov/agt/agt.shtml
Many agricultural words are defined here in both English and Spanish.

Evaluating Web Pages  —  www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
Not sure if a website is a good source of information? This site will tell you how to evaluate it.

How Stuff Works  —  www.howstuffworks.com
Want to know how something works? Try here.