Research Areas: General Reference

Online access to a variety of reference works from Salem Press. These are essentially the website versions of the same Salem Press volumes we have in the library. Topics include history, science, health, and careers. A good starting point for elementary and high school research projects.

This site offers resources in Spanish, with separate interfaces for grades K-5 and 6-8.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from Dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language.

You can access many Boston Public Library online resources with a free eCard. eCards are available to anyone who lives, resides part-time to attend school, owns property, or works in Massachusetts.

AtoZdatabases is a reference and marketing database that includes 30 million business profiles, 220 million residents, 1.1 Million Healthcare Professionals, and much more. It is ideal for sales leads, mailing lists, market research, employment opportunities, and tracking down hard to find phone numbers and addresses.

This treasure trove for researchers contains back issues of over 800 scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. The website also contains tutorials and help pages to orient new users.

A tool that lets you search many of our databases at once.

Credo Reference covers every major subject, with easy access to trusted content from over 70 of the world’s leading academic publishers. This aggregate database includes 538 hundred highly-regarded reference titles, and seamless linking to other valuable and trusted information sources to speed your research.

Britannica Online School Edition lets you choose your level, with content geared to Elementary, Middle School, High School, and a PreSchool Learning Zone. Each level includes dictionary and thesaurus, atlases, timelines, and other features at the appropriate grade level.

Britannica Online Public Library Edition is a powerful resource. In addition to the famous encyclopedia, Britannica Online also includes a dictionary and thesaurus, atlases, timelines, and other features.

Academic OneFile is a comprehensive periodical resource of full-text peer-reviewed content for over 10,000 manually indexed journals and reference works covering all subjects. It also includes the full-text of The New York Times back to 1995 and NPR, CNN & CBC transcripts and podcasts.