Resources
From Category: Reference Sites
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.
LibraryThing: Name That Book
LibraryThing is a service that allows members to catalog and search the books they own. Members can also participate in discussion forums, such as Name That Book, which helps you remember the title and author of a book you can describe but can't name.
Food Timeline
Food Timeline is a free open-access archive and research service about culinary history. It is maintained by Lynne Olver, a reference librarian in New Jersey. Fiction writers can use the site to fact-check historically accurate cuisine for their book's setting and time period. Email questions are typically answered within 24 hours. Read a feature about Food Timeline on the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares.
Merriam-Webster Ask the Editor Videos
These lively short videos from dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster discuss the origins of words and resolve common questions of grammar and usage. Is "irregardless" a real word? What is the correct plural of "octopus"? How do you use singular "they" grammatically? Now you will know.
ExpertAccess
ExpertAccess is a membership group offering discounted rates for freelance writers to purchase access to LexisNexis, a premium subscription database of U.S. case law, statutes, and news articles. Writers also receive training in how to use LexisNexis.
Enigma Public
Enigma Public bills itself as the world's broadest collection of public data. Signup is free. Search a wide variety of state, national, and international government data on health, finance, public works, science, population demographics, and more. There are also databases from famous museums, research universities, major corporations and trade associations, and international institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations.
Mystery Writers Forum
This free online forum for mystery writers includes boards for writing advice, the publishing business (agents, conferences, and trends), and crowdsourced research about how crimes are committed and solved. Wondering about courtroom procedure, legal ethics, or how various weapons and poisons work? Ask the forum.
Somewhere in Time
These amusing columns from Vulture.com music critic Dave Holmes are useful for writers researching popular culture of the 1980s and 1990s. They're also a humbling reminder of how quickly our favorite media seems dated. Trend-chasers beware.
Books About Transgender Issues for Teens
Parents, educators, and teenagers will benefit from the New York Public Library's list of recommended YA books about gender identity, last updated in 2015. These fiction and nonfiction books can help schools create a more welcoming and diverse environment.
Conscious Style Guide
A project of Karen Yin, the writer/editor behind the popular "AP vs. Chicago" copyeditors' website, Conscious Style Guide is a simple and accessible community resource for anyone curious or serious about conscious language. In one place, you can access style guides covering terminology for various communities and find links to key articles debating usage. Categories include ability/disability, gender, age, appearance, ethnicity, and more.
Diversity Style Guide
The Diversity Style Guide is a resource to help journalists and other media professionals cover a complex, multicultural world with accuracy, authority, and sensitivity. This guide, a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University, brings together definitions and information from more than two dozen style guides, journalism organizations, and other resources.
Rhyme Desk
Rhyme Desk is an interactive writing tool for poets, songwriters, and copywriters. Type in a word or phrase, then use the search buttons to count syllables, generate exact and slant rhymes, or find synonyms and antonyms. You can also use it to share your writing on Facebook and Twitter.
Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips is a computer-based resource that uses satellite and street view data from Google Maps to visualize the travel routes of characters in hundreds of great books for readers of all ages. Parents and educators can use Google Lit Trips to enliven lessons about geography, history, and foreign cultures.
Historica Canada
Historica Canada (formerly the Historica Dominion Institute) is a national nonprofit that helps Canadians connect with their country's history, culture, civic institutions, and democratic values. The site includes oral histories, aboriginal arts, lesson plans for educators, and the "Heritage Minutes" series of short documentary videos.
Open Culture
Educational media website Open Culture provides this archive of over 500 literary classics available as free e-book downloads for your computer or mobile device. Genres include poetry, literary novels, science fiction, philosophy, and children's stories. There are also links to other free e-book libraries.
Wordnik
Crowd-sourced online dictionary allows readers to supplement existing definitions and suggest new words for inclusion. The site also tracks how words are being used in tags and captions at online photo- and video-sharing sites. Additional fun features include a random word-of-the-day generator and a counter for each word's value in Scrabble points.
Visual Thesaurus
Each word you enter links to other words in a fascinating, shifting web. Great brainstorming tool.
US Legal Forms
Clearinghouse for over 36,000 legal forms that are free or available for purchase online. Includes state-specific forms. Writers will appreciate the templates for contracts, rights assignments and intellectual property filings.
University of Toronto’s Glossary of Poetic Terms
Brief definitions of poetic forms and literary devices from Acatalectic to Zeugma.
The Reanimation Library
Unique online archive of quirky diagrams and illustrations from outdated reference books, which the library makes available for writers and visual artists to appropriate in their own work (within the bounds of copyright law). Interested in tennis manuals from 1948? How about 'Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit'? For those with an offbeat sense of humor, the possibilities are endless. The library was started in 2002 by Andrew Beccone, contributing editor of the literary journal jubilat.
The Free Dictionary
Comprehensive general-interest and specialized dictionaries (e.g. medical, legal) plus a thesaurus and encyclopedia. Convenient cross-links help you bone up on a subject quickly. Culture and Fine Arts section includes introductions to poetry, literature, theater and the classics.
SharpWriter.Com
Links to dozens of online dictionaries, grammar and style guides, and copyright advice sites are among the most useful features of this website maintained by horror/suspense novelist John T. Cullen.
Poets’ Graves
The final haunts of your favorite poets, with special attention to those buried in England. Search by name or region. Includes short biographies and links to classic poems.
OWL’s Starting Points for Internet Research
Purdue's Online Writing Lab has plucked out some of the more interesting links to research sites on the web. The English and Journalism categories will be of special interest to writers. The Voice of the Shuttle is particularly well regarded for humanities research.
OnlineConversion.com
Conversion calculators for currency, clothing, cooking, computers, and weights and measures of all kinds. A gigabyte, for example, is 1,024 megabytes. The year MCMLXXXXIX is 1999. And in the kitchen, six drops make a pinch.
Online Etymology Dictionary
Find out the origins of thousands of English words. Discovering how different words are interconnected can prompt some creative juxtapositions in your writing.
OneLook Dictionary Search
Search nearly 1,000 online reference works at once. Get definitions, translations, rhymes, synonyms, antonyms, encyclopedia articles and more. Fast and practical. A good place to start any research project.
Morbid Anatomy Library
Located in Brooklyn, this research library and private collection surveys the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture. It makes available a collection of books, photographs, ephemera, and artifacts relating to medical museums, anatomical art, collectors and collecting, cabinets of curiosity, the history of medicine, death and mortality, memorial practice, art and natural history, arcane media, and more. The accompanying website includes links to other resources on these topics. (Photographs on the site may disturb the squeamish.)
Maps of War
Visual history of war, religion, and government. Animated maps show the rise and fall of empires over the centuries.
LibraryThing
On this website, you can catalog your books online and connect to other readers who share your interests.
Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments
Iowa State University maintains this website featuring definitions of over 30 early musical instruments, with illustrations and audio clips. Writers of historical fiction will find this site useful for fact-checking or just creating a mood while they envision their characters' next adventure.
Grammarist
Have you ever used the word "flaunt" when you meant "flout"? Unsure about the difference between "affect" and "effect"? This cleanly laid out reference site provides an alphabetical list of commonly confused word pairs, with explanations of appropriate usage. Other features include a list of idioms with their meaning and history, and basic rules of grammar and spelling.
Glossary Terms at the Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation provides this glossary of poetic terms, with links to examples by outstanding contemporary and classic poets.
Glossary of Poetic Terms
From abcedarian to zeugma, this is one of the best poetry glossaries we've seen. Hosted by Robert Shubinski, it provides definitions, pronunciation guides, examples and cross-references. Browse through poetry's wide array of techniques, styles and themes. A great place to get ideas.
Cyber English’s Glossary of Literary Terms
Maintained by the students in Cyber English.
Bloomsbury’s Writer’s Almanac
Bloomsbury's free online guide for unpublished writers gives wise advice: "An enquiry letter should be business-like. Don't grovel ('it would be an honour to be published by so distinguished a firm'), don't make jokes ('my Mum says it's smashing, but maybe you'll think she's prejudiced'), don't be aggressive ('I have chosen you to publish my book, kindly send me your terms by return')." Also free on the site, links to UK and Irish agents, US agents, and a searchable online database of cultural reference books.
