Resources
From Category: Reference Sites
Invisible Histories
Invisible Histories locates, collects, researches, and creates community-based, educational programming around LGBTQ history in the Deep South. Their site includes oral histories, a guide to making and archiving zines, digitized queer newspapers and photographs, and materials from their past educational exhibits in galleries and universities.
Public Domain Image Archive
The Public Domain Review launched this online database in 2025. It features over 10,000 vintage illustrations and photographs that are in the public domain, from medieval times to the early 20th century. Search by artist, century, style, theme, or keyword. This is a great resource for book designers and collage artists
American Diary Project
The American Diary Project accepts old diaries and journals from ordinary Americans and their descendants, so that their stories will not be lost. The diaries are catalogued and preserved following Library of Congress archiving methods. The American Diary Project is in the process of digitizing their collection, most of which will be free for the public to access. For writers, this archive can be useful in researching the material culture of a period, social attitudes, and speech patterns.
Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute
The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now. Whether you're adding descriptive details to your historical fiction or looking for the exact vibe for your book cover, you and your design team can benefit from CARI's classification of style differences that we usually only recognize intuitively.
Too Much Horror Fiction
Will Errickson is the co-author, with Grady Hendrix, of Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction (Quirk Books, 2017), a popular history of the pulp horror paperback in its heyday. Errickson's blog reviews notable and campy titles from the 1960s-90s, a number of which are being reissued now by Valancourt Books.
Datasets and Dictionaries for Crosswords
George Ho, a cryptic crossword creator and machine-learning specialist, has compiled this list (current as of 2022) of useful online dictionaries, word lists, and databases of notable historical figures. Not just of interest to puzzle fans, these resources can also help writers find synonyms, rhymes, pronunciations, and quotations. Notable links include the Expanded Crossword Name Database, which aims at increasing representation of women, nonbinary people, and other under-represented groups in crossword trivia clues.
WordDB Rhyming Dictionary
WordDB is a free reference site that includes crossword puzzle clues, thesaurus, antonyms, and a Scrabble wordfinder. Their main product is the Rhyming Dictionary, with hundreds of rhymes for over 350,000 words and phrases. Think there's no rhyme for "orange"? Check out their suggestions, based on a variety of accents and syllable pronunciation speeds.
Best Podcasts About the English Language
Educator and translator Heddwen Newton, author of the Substack newsletter English in Progress, curated this list of 55 best podcasts about the history, development, and politics of the English language.
Websites and Blogs About the English Language
At her blog English in Progress, educator and translator Heddwen Newton maintains this list of her favorite websites for word nerds. Links include style blogs, etymology resources, and news sites covering linguistic trends.
Trans Journalists Association Stylebook and Coverage Guide
The Trans Journalists Association has created this free online style guide for editors and journalists who write about transgender people and the stories that affect them. It includes guidance on name and pronoun usage, education about commonly repeated inaccuracies and politically contentious phrasing, and editorial best practices for centering trans voices.
1,001 Novels: A Library of America
Novelist and creative writing professor Susan Straight created this book recommendation list at StoryMaps, organized by the location in America that is the novel's setting or cultural milieu. View the map to find a book for a particular place, or browse her essays about the 11 cultural regions into which the Library is sorted. "The idea for this 'library of America' was born in 2016, when the news and the elections told of a country being irrevocably divided by politics, by ideas of red and blue, by arguments over who is American and who is not. For me, those arguments ignored the vast geography of our stories and novels, the ways people search for belonging, leave home or stay, and how every state is really many places. Those arguments also ignored our common dreams, fears, challenges, hopes and everyday experiences, which unite us, regardless of where we live," she says in this May 2023 Los Angeles Times opinion piece about the project.
Dr. Mardy’s Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations
This alphabetized online compendium of nearly 50,000 quotations on 2,500 topics is the work of Dr. Mardy Grothe, author of literary reference books on metaphors, oxymorons, and other rhetorical devices.
Literature-Map
Literature-Map is a project of Gnod, the Global Network of Discovery. Type in a favorite author's name to generate a cluster of other authors with a similar fan base. The more people like an author and another author, the closer together these two authors will move on the Literature-Map. It's a fun way to find additional books to read in your favorite sub-genre.
Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature
The Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida offers 7,000 children's books to read online or download for free, spanning the 19th century to the 1950s.
Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP)
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities. Browse alphabetically or search for people, places, time periods, and themes.
Literature and History Podcast
Doug Metzger's ambitious podcast introduces listeners to the foundational works of Anglophone literature, explained in historical context, starting with its roots in Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman texts. The website includes songs, quizzes, and a bookstore. Read an article about the podcast at LitHub.
Weird Old Book Finder
This quirky search engine designed by tech writer Clive Thompson browses Google Books to show public-domain books from the 18th century to the 1920s, one at a time, based on your search terms. Rather than a straighforward research tool, it's a vehicle for finding unusual texts and illustrations to spark your imagination. Before using it, read Thompson's blog post about how to get the most out of your search.
The Hive Index
The Hive Index is a directory of 900+ online communities, searchable by keyword. Use it to find writing and publishing discussion boards on social media, or to join groups on a topic that you're writing about.
Comics Experience: Scripts Archive
Comics Experience bills itself as "the world's most effective online comics school". This archive on their site was established by Tim Simmons to give aspiring comics writers a guide to the conventions of the genre. It includes a script template and many examples, including some by notable authors like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison.
MetPublications: Free Art Books Online
MetPublications, the book and catalog shop of New York's famed Metropolitan Museum of Art, has made over 600 books available to read online or download, with full text and illustrations.
BlackFacts
BlackFacts is an online portal for Black history and culture, offering a searchable historical database, video profiles of important figures and events, and a current events newsfeed drawn from over 160 news sources in the UK, US, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Outspoken: Oral History from LGBTQ Pioneers
Outspoken is an online archive of Steven F. Dansky's video interviews with leaders and elders in the queer community. Its goal is to preserve the grassroots history of LGBTQ life and the battle for equal rights following the Stonewall uprising of 1969. Writers will find this useful for historical fiction and nonfiction research.
Artvee
Artvee offers free, downloadable, high-res images of public domain art from museums around the world. Great for book covers.
Elephind
Keyword-search through 200 million articles from over 4,000 newspaper titles at Elephind, a free database. Most publications are from the US and Australia, with some from Mexico and Japan.
Contemporary Irish Literature Resource Network
The Contemporary Irish Literature Resource Network brings together Irish writers and academics to increase critical study of new Irish literature. Their blog features reviews of notable new books.
DeepL Translate
DeepL Translate is an online translation tool (similar to Google Translate) with both free and paid versions. The advanced option lets you translate MS Word and PowerPoint files without ruining the formatting.
Tip of My Tongue
Search this database of dictionaries for that word you can't quite remember. You can input meanings, syllables, sound-alikes, and letters that it should or shouldn't include. This free reference site is created and maintained by writer and software designer. Chirag Mehta
Queer Comics Database
The Queer Comics Database is an online guide to contemporary graphic narratives with LGBTQ content or creators. It is searchable by author name, genre, ethnicity, queer identity, art style, and tone (from "action-packed" to "tranquil"). Find your next good read here.
Kris Spisak’s Writing Tips
Affect or effect? Riffle or rifle? Even experienced authors are tripped up by common words and phrases that are often mistaken for each other. Kris Spisak's blog highlights hundreds of these and explains their etymology to help you remember proper usage.
Book Traces
Book Traces is a project of the University of Virginia. They scan and digitize interesting margin jottings and other objects left inside old books. As libraries de-accession copies of books that are not rare or widely read, pieces of history are being lost. The curators say, "Thousands of old library books bear fascinating traces of the past. Readers wrote in their books, and left pictures, letters, flowers, locks of hair, and other things between their pages. We need your help identifying them in the stacks of academic libraries. Together we can find out more about what books were and how they were used by their original owners, while also proving the value of maintaining rich print collections in our libraries."
US Font Map: The United Fonts of America
This entertaining article at The Statesider shows a map of 222 typographical fonts named after US locations, some with quirky stories behind them. (For instance, Georgia, one of the more common fonts used today, got its name from a tabloid headline that read "Alien Heads Found in Georgia"!)
Digital Transgender Archive
The Digital Transgender Archive is an online compendium of source materials and original documents of transgender history, including oral histories, periodicals, correspondence, and activist pamphlets and posters. Invaluable for researching your historical novel or writing characters outside your personal experience of gender and sexuality.
Writer’s Knowledge Base
Created by Hiveword, the Writer's Knowledge Base search engine indexes over 40,000 online articles on the craft and business of writing. Search by keyword or browse by category.
100 Common Publishing Terms
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest. In this September 2019 post on their website, he defines 100 common publishing terms such as simultaneous submissions, work for hire, log line, and much more. Useful for understanding contest guidelines and publication contracts.
Character Naming Tips and Resources at the Kindlepreneur
Digital marketing blogger Dave Chesson a/k/a the Kindlepreneur shares links to his favorite character name generator websites, as well as advice on picking the right name for your character's age, time period, personality, and book genre.
Embassy of the Free Mind: Online Catalogue
The Ritman Library in Amsterdam, also known as the Embassy of the Free Mind, is the world's largest library of occult books, with some 25,000 texts on topics such as Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Theosophy, alchemy, mysticism, Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Anthroposophy, Catharism, Freemasonry, Manichaeism, Judaica, the Grail, Esotericism, and comparative religion. They are in the process of digitizing their collection, a free online archive that will eventually make the contents of the library accessible to all. Partially funded by author Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), the archive is seeking more sponsors and volunteers to complete the project.
Online Etymology Dictionary
Etymology is the study of word origins and how vocabulary has changed over the centuries. This free reference site gathers data from several accepted etymology guides to create a searchable database. Blog entries on the site cover topics such as the development of modern English spelling, principles of etymology, and how to spot fake word derivations.
Historical Restaurant Menus at the NYPL
The New York Public Library's website features this growing archive of 17,000+ restaurant menus from the 1850s through today. A good resource for historical fiction writers to discover notable restaurants from their book's era and what the characters might have eaten.
WordTips Guide to Grammar and Punctuation
WordTips features several free resources to help with writing skills, anagrams and word puzzles, and Scrabble vocabulary. This page gives an overview of grammar and punctuation rules, plus links to many other sites with more detail on these topics. Clear, simple presentation makes it a suitable resource for middle- and high-school students.
Wordsworth
Created by Marissa Skudlarek, Wordsworth is a free online search tool that helps writers of historical fiction use period-appropriate language. You can compare a passage from your story to a corpus of fiction from the decade you're writing about, or look up whether a specific phrase is found in fiction from that decade. Wordsworth's database of comparison texts currently features (mostly British) classics written from 1801-1923. More texts after this date will be added when their US copyright expires.
Rare Children’s Books Digital Archive at the Library of Congress
To celebrate the centennial of Children's Book Week in 2019, the US Library of Congress has made available a free digital collection of 100+ out-of-print, public-domain children's books from before 1924. These historically significant works include examples of the work of American illustrators such as W.W. Denslow, Peter Newell, and Howard Pyle, as well as works by renowned English illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway.
Radical Copyeditor
The Radical Copyeditor is a blog and editing service that keeps writers up-to-date on respectful ways to write about marginalized communities. Tips include recognizing biased reporting, a style guide for referring to transgender and nonbinary people, and unpacking the politics behind buzzwords like "alt-right" and "politically correct".
The Web of Language
The Web of Language is Dennis Baron's blog focusing on newsworthy issues in grammar, language usage, and technology. Topics include the history of gender-neutral pronouns, America's politically motivated bans on using foreign languages, what makes a brand name a racial slur, and the interpretation of hate-crimes statutes.
University of Arizona Poetry Center
The website of the University of Arizona Poetry Center features reference materials such as a digitized collection of writers' portrait photos, a blog with articles and interviews about poetry and education, and a basic guide to the poetry publication process.
Daily Writing Tips
A monthly membership fee of $10 buys an e-newsletter subscription and access to the Daily Writing Tips archive with hundreds of articles on grammar, style, word usage, and spelling. Articles are grouped by broad category (e.g. Vocabulary or Business Writing) but not easily searchable by topic.
Onym
Onym's reference site collects resources to help you generate catchy and appropriate names for fictional characters, places, or products. In addition to the usual dictionaries, thesaurus, and baby name lists, Onym includes profession-specific glossaries (e.g. legal, nautical, and mathematical terms), historic slang, world mythology, and random word generators. (However, political sensitivity and avoiding cultural appropriation are up to you.)
Guide to Finding Your Published Poems at the Library of Congress
Have you had a poem published in an amateur or "vanity" poetry anthology, which you would like to find again? The Library of Congress website gives you tips and links to start tracking down your poem in various reference archives, as well as advice for avoiding contest scams.
OneLook Dictionary Search
OneLook is a search engine that aggregates word definitions from over 1,000 dictionaries. There is also a reverse dictionary search function, in which you can enter keywords to describe a concept, and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept.
Narrative Magazine Directory of Writers’ Resources
Narrative Magazine, a well-regarded online journal, offers this free-to-access directory of links to literary conferences, books and articles with advice about writing, and degree programs in writing and publishing.
UCLA Children’s Book Collection
The UCLA Children's Book Collection online archive offers free downloads of over 1,800 digital titles, from classics like Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to lesser-known public domain works from the 19th century and earlier.
