Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library

Encyclopedias

General Encyclopedias

Bartleby.com...Great Books Online: This wide-ranging site combines the best of both contemporary and classic reference works into the most comprehensive public reference library ever published on the web. Includes: Encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, quotations, gazetteer, e-books and much more.
Encarta: This site, from the Microsoft Network, offers a concise version of the Encarta encyclopedia, a dictionary and an atlas. From this location you can also sign up for a subscription to the Deluxe version of the Encarta product.
Encyclopedia Britannica: Long known as perhaps the world's best general encyclopedia, in addition to the look-up features you would expect, it also includes: Britannica's Internet Guide, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, a guide to the world's nations, people, and places, the Year in Review, and notable articles from past editions. This encyclopedia is available for a free 14-day trial. Ongoing costs are currently $50.00/year or $5.00/month.
Free Internet Encyclopedia: This site covers a wide range of subject areas. It was created by and is maintained by Cliff Davis and Margaret Adamson Fincannon (who has an MLS degree!).

Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopeida: Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by contributors from all around the world. The site is a WikiWiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit any article right now by clicking on the "edit this page" link that appears in every Wikipedia article except for a few protected pages. This project was started on January 15, 2001 and there are 228932 articles in English that are being worked on with many more articles being written in other languages. Every day hundreds of contributors from around the world make thousands of edits and create lots of new articles.

World Book Online: This well-known, student-oriented encyclopedia is available for a free 30-day trial. Ongoing costs are currently $49.95/year or $9.95/month. To view the encyclopedia for a free 30-day trial, you must register with a username and an e-mail address.

Specialized Encyclopedias

Artcyclopedia...The Fine Art Search Engine: The Artcyclopedia is primarily an index to where paintings, sculptures and other great works of fine art can be viewed online, at hundreds of art museum sites and image archives worldwide.
Encyclopedia Mythica: This site includes over 6000 articles on mythology, legends, folklore, and the occult.
Encyclopedia of Psychology: The Encyclopedia of Psychology is intended to facilitate browsing in any area of psychology. There are two paths envisioned for this purpose: 1. Original information generated by respected researchers and practitioners in various fields of psychology. 2. A hierarchical database of links to websites providing information about scientific psychology.
Home Improvement Encyclopedia: This handy site, provided by Better Homes and Gardens, provides many step by step instructions on fixing common household items in plumbing, wiring, carpentry, decks, and masonry & concrete. It even offers some clever animated lessons, if you have the Macromedia Flash viewer.
Household Cyclopedia of General Information: Originally published in 1881, this wonderful book was designed for frontier families who had to do it all with not much help from experts. Matthew Spong has taken on the massive project of scanning and linking the "10,000 receipts in all of the useful and domestic arts." Want to know how to bud trees, amputate a leg, prepare your beehives for winter, make Lucifers (matches), make black paint from various natural materials (peach pit black is dull) - this is the book for you. Great fun to browse.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A searchable database of basic philosophy information and definitions. Visitors to the site can search by keyword, click on a letter to browse subjects in the collection, or read a small library of philosophy texts in HTML format.
Nolo's Legal Encyclopedia: Nolo Press publishes a range of legal self-help guides. This web site offers a legal encyclopedia, a dictionary and many other ways to research legal information questions for the lay person.
Symbols.com: An online encyclopedia of symbols.