The Gold Standard

The Book Standard is the one-stop online information center that provides Nielsen BookScan-powered charts, book-market analysis, news, reviews, commentary, job boards, plus extensive database resources: nothing less than the measure of all things book.

Science Oracle

Athenus is the search engine of choice for scientists and engineers seeking resources in science and engineering on the web. The Athenus search engine indexes hundreds of thousands of subject-specific web sites, publications, news and other resources, providing users with the most current, most focused collection of topic-specific material on the Internet

The Nation's Report Card

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Since 1969, assessments have been conducted periodically in reading, mathematics, science, writing, U.S. history, civics, geography, and the arts.

Where The Wild Things Are

The Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature has thousands of listings of award-winning children's literature books. DAWCL has over 5,000 records from 60 awards across six English-speaking countries (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, and Ireland). Click the link Explanation of Awards above to see a list of awards, their countries, and a brief explanation. Besides an author search, it lets users search by reading level as well as a keyword search.

National Snapshot

Each month, the Harper's Index provides a statistical snapshot of the world's economic, political, and cultural climate. The Harper's Index is published to Harpers.org one month after print publication. Archives available back through 1998.

Logos

LOGOS Multiligual Dictionary This freely-accessible database, compiled without any form of public contribution, is growing constantly because it's updated and corrected on line by a network of professional translators. The dictionary currently has 7,580,560 entries in 188 languages.

Talk About It

Excerpts from the BBC's extensive archives of interviews with authors, politicians, playwrights, architects, and other major cultural figures, from 1937 to the present. Among them: Albert Speer, George Bernard Shaw, Bob Marley, Werner Heisenberg, Alfred Hitchcock.

That Is The Question

Public Opinion Poll Question Database - This database allows users to search for specific poll questions by using key words and then narrow by poll and date. Included are over 1000 Louis Harris Polls (going back to 1958) with more than 60,000 questions covering a diverse range of topics, as well as items from the National Network of State Polls, and others.

The Map Room

Map Collections: 1500 - 2004 - Site contains the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 4.5 million maps including 60,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, numerous globes and plastic relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including electronic. The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress holds more than 4.5 million items, of which Map Collections represents only a small fraction, those that have been converted to digital form.

Biology 101

The Biology Project, an interactive online resource for learning biology developed at The University of Arizona. In depth topics include Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Chemicals & Human Health, Developmental Biology, Human Biology, Immunology, Mendelian Genetics and Molecular Biology. The Biology Project is fun and richly illustrated. It has been designed for biology students at the college level, but is useful for high school students, medical students, physicians, science writers, and all types of interested people.

History of Physics

The Center for History of Physics is a division of the American Institute of Physics, The Center for History of Physics is the oldest and best-known institution dedicated to the history of a scientific discipline. It's mission is to preserve and make known the history of modern physics and allied fields including astronomy, geophysics, optics, and the like. Through research the staff builds a sound base for advising scientists and institutions on how they may best safeguard the record of their achievements. Meanwhile the Center maintains its own strategy for documenting physics history world-wide. One part of this strategy is a program of oral history interviewing to save for posterity the recollections of eminent physical scientists. The Center has conducted some 3,000 hours of interviews with over 1,500 individuals. Most of the tapes are transcribed, indexed, and available for use. Still more important has been saving correspondence, notebooks, and other unpublished materials--the "raw data" historians must have. By aiding scientists, their families, and archivists at many institutions around the world, the Center has done much to assure the survival of many unique and priceless collections that might otherwise have been lost forever.

Toxic Herbalist

Poisonous Plants Guide is an online guide on more than 100 poisonous plants. Information on each plant includes common and botanic name; color photograph; description; habitat; animals (including people) affected; toxic principle; gastrointestinal, nervous, integumentory, and other system symptoms; and treatment.

Chocolate Exhibit

Chocolate - This special online-only edition of Exploring takes a closer look at the sweet lure of chocolate. Site examines the fascinating -- and often misreported -- history of chocolate, follow the chocolate-making process, and take an online visit to a chocolate factory. Also explored is the science of chocolate, and find out about the latest research into the possible health effects of its consumption.

The Supremes

The OYEZ Project provides access to more than 2000 hours of Supreme Court audio. All audio in the Court recorded since 1995 is included in the project. Before 1995, the audio collection is selective. The sites aim is to create a complete and authoritative archive of Supreme Court audio covering the entire span from October 1955 through the most recent release.

SCOTUSblog - of course, there's a blog, which provides discussion of recent developments in US Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Dem Bones

The eSkeletons Project website is devoted to the study of human and primate comparative anatomy. It offers a unique set of digitized versions of skeletons in 2-D and 3-D in full color, animations, and much supplemental information. The user can navigate through the various regions of the skeleton and view all orientations of each element along with muscle and joint information. eSkeletons enables you to view the bones of both human and non-human primates ranging from the gorilla to the tiny mouse lemur. All of the large apes are represented as well as other species from different parts of the world. Many of these primates are rare or endangered species.

World Guide

GEsource World Guide has compiled a series of guides for over 270 countries and territories. These include articles, features, demographics, geography data, interactive world maps, satellite photos, scrollable city images and links to resources about each country within the GEsource database. You can even compare data between countries. You may go straight to the entry for a specific country via the dropdown menu, or you can search for articles, satellite images and features by keyword.

Blognalism

Unpartisan.com is a political news and blog aggregator, merging political and national news, discussion, and comments from dozens of news feeds and hundreds of blog feeds all brought together in one unbiased, nonpartisan forum, and does so entirely without a human editor, all using a (somewhat) sophisticated RSS sorting and categorization algorithm. Tracking 4,030 individual blog postings from 868 political news stories.

Family Values

ReligiousTolerence.org is a large religious web site which promotes religious freedom, tolerance and diversity as positive cultural values. It contains over 2,800 essays and menus. It is different from other religious sites in that they do not promote thier own religious beliefs. The site trys to explain the full range of religious belief in North America, from Asatru to Zoroastrianism, including Christianity, Hinduism, Wicca and others. The site approaches issues trying to describe all viewpoints on controversial religious topics objectively and fairly. They cover everything from abortion access to equal rights and protections for homosexuals and bisexuals, including same-sex marriage, and dozens of other "hot" topics.

Dr. Doolittle

Merch Veterinary Manual, the single most comprehensive electronic reference for animal care information. Includes over 12,000 indexed topics and over 1200 illustrations. Rapidly search by topic, species, specialty, disease, and keyword using advanced search.

Lookouts for Outlooks

World Economic Outlook Reports, these reports, issued twice a year, examine recent world economic developments and future prospects. Includes links to searchable databases aggregating data used for the reports; search or browse by country, scope by market or economy, and more. From the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Kiwiland

The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, through interlinking text and image trails, the Encyclopedia takes you on a journey of discovery. Beginning with the theme of Peoples, it will eventually present a comprehensive guide to New Zealand – its natural environment, history, culture, economics and government.

The Seven Wonders

Although most people know that a list exists of the Seven World Wonders, only few can name them. The list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was originally compiled around the second century BC. The first reference to the idea is found in History of Herodotus as long ago as the 5th century BC. Decades later, Greek historians wrote about the greatest monuments at the time. Callimachus of Cyrene (305BC-240BC), Chief Librarian of the Alexandria Mouseion, wrote "A Collection of Wonders around the World". All we know about the collection is its title, for it was destroyed with the Alexandria Library. The final list of the Seven Wonders was compiled during the Middle Ages. The list comprised the seven most impressive monuments of the Ancient World, some of which barely survived to the Middle Ages. Others did not even co-exist. Today, archaeological evidence reveals some of the mysteries that surrounded the history of the Wonders for centuries. For their builders, the Seven Wonders were a celebration of religion, mythology, art, power, and science. For us, they reflect the ability of humans to change the surrounding landscape by building massive yet beautiful structures, one of which stood the test of time to this very day.

Sky Captain

Air Travel Safety - Is a hub site, this one aggregates aviation safety news, statistics, fact sheets, links to databases and many other key resources. Click on the Recent Fatal Events to get a chronology of recent fatal airline accidents, with brief description and links to other relevant material on the site. To the right of that link, in the center of the page, you'll find links to the site's Most Requested Information," including Fatal Events by Airline , Fatal Events by Aircraft Model , and Fear of Flying Information Resources.

History Web

Best of History Web Sites is an award-winning portal created for history teachers, students, and general history enthusiasts. BOHWS contains annotated links to over 1000 history web sites as well links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more throughout its pages. Best of History Web Sites receives upwards of 98,000 visitors per month.

Then and Now

The Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Sixth Edition. Renowned historian Peter N. Stearns and thirty prominent historians have combined their expertise over the past ten years to perfect this comprehensive chronology of more than 20,000 entries that span the millennia from prehistoric times to the year 2000.

Investment Opportunity

Investopedia is your complete and easy-to-understand educational guide to investing and personal finance. The site has the biggest financial dictionary on the web, hundreds of articles and tutorials, and an investing simulator where where you can practice managing a portfolio without putting your money at risk.

Urban Legand

Snopes.com, a massive collection of urban legends and popular myths, Snopes debunks or validates them with solid research. Users can browse the archive by category or use the search engine. This site also features category on e-mail scams and hoaxes.

Zippidee Doo Dah

Singing Fish, a 2005 Webby Award-winner, Singing Fish is a free service that searches the Web for audio and video files in both streaming and downloadable formats. Results can be played directly by clicking on the appropriate media format or bit rate. Unlike traditional search engines, Singingfish only indexes multimedia formats, including Windows Media, Real, QuickTime, and mp3s. Millions of people use the Singingfish service daily to search through categories spanning music, news, movies, sports, TV and radio, and finance. Quickly track down the day's breaking news, movie trailers or that old standard you were humming in the elevator.

Shy Town

The Encyclopedia of Chicago is a dynamic and unprecedented metropolitan history. Thousands of historical resources-including articles, photos, maps, broadsides and newspapers-related to Chicago's colorful and complex history are at your fingertips.

(Found another amazing Chicago resource, Chicagocrime.org is a non-profit, freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago and mapped on google maps.)

Pill Popping Profusion

The Drugs.com is a vast information resource for over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription medicines sold in the USA. They provide objective, comprehensive, up-to-date drug information in a clear and concise format for health professionals and consumers. The Drugs.com drug-information database is powered by three independent leading medical-information suppliers: Physicians’ Desk Reference, Cerner Multum and Thomson Micromedex. Find drugs by the most popular internet searches; Viagra,Cialis, Levitra, Lipitor, Wellbutrin, Neurontin, Zoloft, Effexor, Paxil, Crestor, Celebrex or Zocor. Or find drugs by medical condition, this feature allows you to find and compare drugs used to treat most medical conditions. The site also publishes the Drugs.com Health Encylopedia, an illustrated encyclopedia with more than 10,000 pages of information on diseases, symptoms, injuries, medical tests and surgical procedures. The Drugs.com Health Encyclopedia contains over 4,000 articles covering over 1,500 medical topics, including photographs and illustrations.