Reference Sources: Reference Databases

Britannica Academic Edition provides full-text access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus. Britannica Academic includes additional relevant content, including websites, a world atlas, photos, articles, and news feeds.

Credo Reference contains content from major reference works, including multi-volume subject encyclopedias, field guides, scholarly handbooks, animation, and countless other award-winning sources. Also included are short reference videos, high-resolution art images, photographs, and maps across all subject areas. Other helpful features include topic pages that offer background information and pathways for further research and mind maps that show the relationship between topics and keywords.

The Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia database provides brief encyclopedic entries covering a large variety of subject areas. General encyclopedias, such as this one, can provide background information to explore a topic, but are not considered appropriate sources in a college level paper.

Gale eBooks provides the full-text of subject-specific reference sources published by Gale. Entire books may be browsed or individual entries discovered using the search interface. All eBooks are searchable in the Library Catalog and Discovery Search.

This subscription expired 10/31/2020. See also Oxford English Dictionary or Credo Reference.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of words in the English language - past and present - from across the English-speaking world. It traces the usage of words through quotations from traditional print sources, online publications, and established web sources. The current online version of the OED is derived from the printed second edition of 1989, which is in turn based on the original edition published 1884-1928.

Reference Shelf is a collection of eBooks published by Salem Press, covering topics in literature, history, science, health, and careers.