Patrons of small libraries are no longer dependent upon old, under funded and often out-of-date reference rooms. The digital revolution provides us with unlimited resources.

The Web is the Magical Reference Room every library has always wanted. We cannot possibly list every wonderful thing that may be useful, but here are a few special sites to try.

Click on the CHILDREN’S ROOM button and then the KIDS LINKS button on the Children’s Room page to find some sites that may interest adults as well as children.

Remember…No matter where you search on the web…get a second opinion! If it is important, do not trust a single source. Responsible journalists will not go to press without two or three corroborating references. Practice good research tradecraft and demand it of the web sites you visit.

Links listed on the Southwest Harbor Public Library Reference Page will take you away from our web site to sites, which are not under our control. Therefore, we are unable to make any representation whatsoever with regard to the content of any sites listed on these pages. The fact that any site is herein listed in no way implies our endorsement of such site.

Click on the following items to go to each section:

We show weather listings before even Basic Research because… everyone wants to know about the weather.

• THE WEATHER IN SOUTHWEST HARBOR, MAINE
• WUNDERGROUND WEATHER

  Type in your zip code or city or state or airport code or country. This site will even forecast the chance of ice pellets in Southwest Harbor.

• NATIONAL WEATHER - INTELLICAST

  U.S. weather, radar, satellite, National forecast, Snowfall forecast, Snow Cover…

• NATIONAL WEATHER – NOAA

  Look at what the gov thinks it is going to do…

• A NOTE ABOUT SEARCHING…

  You may encounter the term "Boolean Logic" as you proceed. Knowing how to use Boolean search syntax is a wonderful thing. For those of you who are interested, we include this link to a PDF file produced at the University of California at Berkeley. It is the best explanation for this useful tool that we have seen.

• GOOGLE – ADVANCED SEARCH FORM

  Put a link to this page on your browser toolbar. Of course it is fun to dash in to Google and take your chances, but, for intelligent searching, use the advanced search every time. Read each search field and think about what it might do. You will never go back to simple searching.

• REFDESK

  Refdesk is the Big Daddy of web search. Conceived and run by a real “Daddy,” Bob Drudge, the father of Matt Drudge. There is nothing political about this site; it is simply a link to…everything!

• THE INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY

  A public service of the University of Michigan, The Internet Public Library attempts to replicate a library reference room "without walls" on the Internet. IPL is similar to using a reference room, with links to many resources by type and/or subject. This is a professional approach to librarianship, overseen by one of our great universities. The site has a simple and well-conceived search mechanism.

• WIKIPEDIA

  This online encyclopedia is a fascinating example of how computers are expanding our knowledge base. It uses the collective intelligence of thousands of people each hour to explain a subject. Available to the public in 40 languages, it is almost always more informative than other encyclopedias.

  This has advantages and disadvantages, as you may have been reading in the newspaper.

  "Because Wikipedia is an ongoing work to which anybody with Internet access can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some important ways. In particular, mature articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while other (often fledgling) articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopaedic content or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed."

  We find Wikipedia to be extraordinarily helpful, but keep their caveat in mind. Be sure to look at Wikipedia’s sister projects at the bottom of the main page.

  To use Wikipedia: Type your search term into the Search box at the left of the page and click the Search button.

• FINDING INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET – A TUTORIAL The University Of California At Berkeley

  This page is the gateway to the best information about online searching we have seen. If you care about searching, spend some time here.

• LIBRARIANS’ INTERNET INDEX

  The Index was originally started by librarians at the Berkeley Public Library and the University of California at Berkeley. Later, the Washington State Library began to help. There are links to everything here, neatly organized and overseen by librarians.

• THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  The largest library in the world - more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts. They started online early so you can access many of their holdings online.

• PUBL LIST

  Search a database of over 150,000 magazines, journals, newsletters and other periodicals. Be sure to click on the ABOUT button for valuable searching information.

• BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

  Biographies of more than "28,000 notable men and women who have shaped our world from ancient times to the present day. The dictionary can be searched by birth years, death years, positions held, professions, literary and artistic works, achievements, and other keywords."

• HOW STUFF WORKS

  Award winning website explains topics on computers, electronics, science, home, entertainment, health, money, travel and people.

• AUBREY R. WATZEK LIBRARY REFERENCE SHELF

  The Watzek Library at Lewis & Clark College is one of the best online library sites in the country. You will find many helpful links on this reference page. Scroll down the page and look!

• DIALOG – OPEN ACCESS

  Dialog is a commercial database for professional searchers. It was one of the gold standards of online research before what we know as the web was born. This huge database, similar to those on MARVEL!, is available, for a fee, on a per-search basis. If you are serious about online research, you might like to try it.

• AMAZON – ADVANCED SEARCH FORM

  The Amazon catalog is just like the Books In Print that we all used when we first learned how to use a library. Start with the advanced search form and give yourself more search options. Experienced searchers put a button on their browser toolbar that links to this form.

• AddALL – Book Search & Price Comparison

  "The book search engine that allows you to comparison shop more than 40 online bookstores including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders."

• GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH

  Google, with the help of several major libraries is in the process of digitizing
  every book in these libraries - practically every book in the world! When copy writes are in effect, authors or copy write holders have the option of allowing you to see all of their work, a chapter, or a paragraph, or a fragment. The national argument about this process is loud and complicated, but, to people like the Director of the Harvard Library, this is a wonderful thing. We have tried Google Book Search...and have been amazed. Try it.

• Book TV

  Each weekend, Book TV features 48 hours of nonfiction books from 8am Saturday to 8am Monday. You can see which books will be featured and when. C-Span covers all major, and some minor, book tours and all major appearances by authors at symposiums and book fairs. If you watch Book TV regularly, you will see and hear every major nonfiction author in the country. Tapes of many of the programs are also available here.

• TODAY IN LITERATURE
• NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS – WINNERS FROM 1950 TO THE PRESENT
• CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARDS

  &The most comprehensive guide to English-language children's book awards on the Internet."

• THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  A searchable archive of full text reviews back to 1996. Many of them are free. Others are available for purchase individually for only $3.00 each.

• THE INTERNET BOOK LIST

  This is a non-commercial site dedicated to listing everything about every book, mostly fiction for now. It is a little like the reader reviews on Amazon, but less opinionated and more comprehensive. Steven Jeffery says, “Didn't you ever hear someone mention a book being good, and you wondered what the book was about? And maybe you'd run off and look up the book in a library and sniff it and caress the cover, then sit down and muse about what it's like to read?” Steven tries to give you that experience online.

• ABEBOOKS – Out of Print Books

  Abebooks is a huge collection of independent Out of Print Book dealers who have banded together to sell their wares. This writer has never found a book Abe could not provide. And the best part about it is that it helps small, independent booksellers!

• QBR – THE BLACK BOOK REVIEW ONLINE

  The authors of this site do not wait for the white community to praise or disdain books by or from the Black culture. "African American writers are the windows into our community. They are our heroes and heroines, our heritage, our gifts. Our struggle is to lay claim to the many authors who write for and about us; to give them praise or admonishment; to turn their insights into personal reflection or action." By producing QBR they enrich the entire reading community, black, white and all the colors in between.

• APPLIANCE 411

  Where and how to buy appliances, how to service and repair them, appliance care.

• CONSUMER WORLD

  The last word in consumer aid, warnings, advice – a wonderful public service site.

• HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS DATABASE

  A government site run by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine. Allows you to look up all sorts of household products for ingredients and health and safety information.

• KELLEY BLUE BOOK

  The standard for looking up prices on new and used cars.

• AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY - WITH PRONONCIATION

  Look up the word you want – then click the speaker icon. If your speakers are turned on, you will hear the correct pronunciation.

• DICTIONARY.COM

  One request here will search multiple dictionaries and thesauri. To see which dictionaries are searched, click their ABOUT button.

• WIKTIONARY

  Wiktionary, a sister of Wikipedia, is a collaborative project to produce a free multilingual dictionary in every language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, quotations, synonyms antonyms and translations.

• ONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARY – By Douglas Harper

  And…Search around his web site – to see what one reader is reading and thinking! Some of the links from this page are great fun.

  This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

  The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.

• WORD REFERENCE – FRENCH, ITALIAN and SPANISH DICTIONARY and TRANSLATOR by Michael Kellogg

  This is an easy to use interface which will translate back and forth between English and Spanish, English and French and English and Italian. It will also give you the history and use of English words in detail. A most useful source.

• PHONE DIRECTORY
• AT&T TOLL-FREE INTERNET DIRECTORY
• FINDING E-MAIL ADDRESSES ON THE WEB – A Help Page
• CURRENCY CONVERTOR

  Every conversion you might want from Algerian Dinar to Honduran Lempira!

• CALENDAR ZONE

  "Comprehensive categorized calendar catalog" of every kind of calendar – celestial – daily – event – historic – holiday – religious – software – women…

• THE HISTORY OF CALENDARS

  A scholarly, but friendly approach to calendars and their history. There is information about Chinese, Christian, Indian, Islamic, Jewish and other calendars still in use. Another part of the site covers calendars no longer in use such as ancient, French, Mayan and Roman calendars.

• ZIP PLUS FOUR POSTAL CODES
• THE WORLD CLOCK – TIME ZONES
• LONGITUDE & LATITUDE
• HOW FAR IS IT?

  Do you need to know the distance between Jakarta and Chicago? Or perhaps Bangor and Boston. This site will tell you the distance as the crow flies or in nautical miles and send you to another site for driving directions!

• MAP QUEST

  Maps, of course.

• THE UNITED STATES COPYRIGHT OFFICE

  We get asked for information about how to find out about copyrights all the time. Here you are.

• THE COOK’S THESAURUS

  "…a cooking encyclopedia that covers thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools. Entries include pictures, descriptions, synonyms, pronunciations, and suggested substitutions."

• HISTORIC FOOD

  The last word in the history of elaborate food and desserts – often made in molds.

• ALL RECIPES

  Between this site and the next, you will probably be able to find any recipe you like and, of course, you can simply look in Google, using the advanced search page.

• THE FOOD NETWORK

  If Emeril hasn’t made it, Paula or Mario will. A commercial site, but enormous fun for the food lover.

• CYNDI’S LIST

  Cyndi has kindly put together the most comprehensive free genealogical resource on the web.

• FAMILY HISTORY CENTERS – THE LATTER DAY SAINTS

  The Mormons’ interest in family history benefits anyone doing research on a family.

• THE AMERICAN FAMILY IMMIGRATION HISTORY CENTER – ELLIS ISLAND

  Information on 22 million passengers and ships' crews who entered the U.S. through Ellis Island.

• ROOTS WEB

  This is a very helpful site and it starts out as a free service, but one can quickly enter places where you have to pay.

• THE SOCIAL SECURITY DEATH INDEX

  If you are looking for information about someone who was eligible for Social Security, this site can be a great help.

• THE MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  A marvelous gateway to family research in Maine. Their Research Library is the largest private collection of Maine-related documents and books. The collection records are being entered in MINERVA - the statewide integrated library system created by the Maine Info Net Project, in association with the Maine State Library. The database holds records of books, handwritten, and printed material. At this time, about half of the Maine Historical library holdings are electronically cataloged.

  And it is also profitable to search in INFONET

• THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  Since so many of our ancestors came into the country through Massachusetts, this site may be a great help to you.

• THE TOWN OF SOUTHWEST HARBOR – OFFICIAL TOWN SITE
• HANCOCK COUNTY
• THE STATE OF MAINE
• TAX FORMS – STATE OF MAINE
• THE FEDERAL GATEWAY

  This is the portal to everything the U.S. government does.

• THOMAS

  Legislative information.

• THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

  Check up on your congressmen and WRITE them!

• THE UNITED STATES SENATE

  Check on your senators, WRITE THEM, see how they vote, look up legislation and records, plan a visit to the Senate, or read about its history.

• TAX FORMS – FEDERAL
• FEDERAL FORMS

  The government has a form for everything.

• VOTE SMART – NON-PARTISAN TOOLS FOR THE VOTER

  Who works for you? Who is seeking your vote? Project Vote Smart, a citizen's organization, has developed a Voter's Self-Defense System to provide you with the necessary tools to self-govern effectively: abundant, accurate, unbiased and relevant information. As a national library of factual information, Project Vote Smart covers your candidates and elected officials in five basic categories: biographical information, issue positions, voting records, campaign finances and interest group ratings.

• CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

  The Department of Health and Human Services site.

• MEDLINE PLUS

  The National Library of Medicine site.

• PUB MED

  The National Library of Medicine again – this site includes millions of citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950’s.

• THE MERCK MANUAL ONLINE

  The full-text version of the manual – written for the layperson – understandable medical information.

• BRAMSON CANCER CENTER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

  OncoLink is a good place to start investigating cancer.

• TIDE PREDICTIONS FOR SOUTHWEST HARBOR…AND MORE!

  Our tide table can be found here, along with a picture of our shore, books about Southwest Harbor and, if that were not enough, lists of books about sailing, rowing, fishing, boating and kayaking. What more could a simple man (or woman) want?

• THE TOWN OF SOUTHWEST HARBOR – OFFICIAL TOWN SITE
• SOUTHWEST HARBOR – THE GILLEY FAMILY SITE
• SOUTHWEST HARBOR – THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE SITE

  The Quietside Community Calendar among other things!

• SOUTHWEST HARBOR – GREG HARTFORD SITE.

  Wonderful photographs!

• MAINE RESOURCE GUIDE

  Links to all Maine government sites and much more.

• MAINE TODAY

  News from all over the state.

• MAINE FOLKLIFE CENTER

  The nation's leading collection of folklore, oral history, traditional music, and photographs of Maine and Eastern Canada.

• THE MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  For an interest in the history of our state. See their link in GENEALOGY
  for family research in Maine.

• THE MAINE MEMORY NETWORK

  Hosted by the Maine Historical Society, this site is a good beginning link to the study of Maine’s history. There are many things to look at here, some of which come from our own collection. Be sure to try this:

  Click on EXHIBITS and then click on ALL OF THE SITE’S EXHIBITS
  to browse this fascinating collection.

  The new Maine History Online Project at this site will bring together thematic stories of Maine’s history using resources from all over the state. Staff from the Maine Memory Network has already been to Hancock County to search
  for pieces of their stories. Watch for this exciting project to unfold.

• BigCharts

  Big Charts gives you access to interactive charts, quotes, reports and indicators on stocks, mutual funds and market indexes.

• BONDS ONLINE

  Income investor tools!

• CEO EXPRESS

  "Connecting busy executives to information that matters." And it does, with links to all types of business sites, including magazines, newspapers, financial info, etc.

• eVENTUREING

  Information for small business owners, divided into 3 sections: Starting your Business, Growing your Business, and Supporting Entrepreneurship.

• SMART MONEY

  The Wall Street Journal Magazine of personal business.

• THOMAS REGISTER

  "The most comprehensive resource for industrial information, products, services, CAD drawings, and more…" Here it is – online. One of the oldest and best business research sources in the world.

• THE INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE - IMDB

  EVERYthing about every movie! This is site to start with if you are interested in movies.

• AMAZON’S MOVIE DATABASE

  After you have looked in IMDB, go here to see the reviews of other movie lovers.

• ALL MUSIC

  Reviews and ratings of recordings for every musical interest – biographies of the artists and lists of recordings.

• BAGADUCE MUSIC LENDING LIBRARY

  This wonderful library in Blue Hill, Maine "lends printed musical scores and sheet music to individuals and organizations. You can search our catalog online or personally browse it on site! Our music is organized in four broad categories: choral, keyboard, instrumental, and vocal." The collection contains over 200,000 musical scores!

• HISTORIC AMERICAN SHEET MUSIC

  The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University holds a significant collection of 19th and early 20th century American sheet music. The Historic American Sheet Music Project provides access to digital images of 3042 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.

• LEO’S LYRICS

  Lyrics for more than 120,000 songs – for those moments when you can’t quite remember!

• GOOGLE NEWS

  Many people use this excellent news site as their home page.

• CNN NEWS

  Always good pictures here and up-to-the-minute news. They also offer paid subscription service, Pipeline that will stream as many as four live stories to you at once, if you think that is helpful.

• THE NEW YORK TIMES

  Less pictures, but the whole structure of The New York Times at your disposal.

• THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVE

  You can now access articles in The New York Times from 1851 to the present. Some of it is free and some usage requires registering and paying a small fee,
  but it works and it can be wonderful! Try it and see whether the possibilities are valuable enough to subscribe.

• THE WASHINGTON POST

  Because mother said it is always good to read more than one paper…

• NEWS LIBRARY

  This site makes it easy to search over 821 newspapers and newswires around the country by location or topic.

• THE LONDON TIMES
• THE BBC WORLD NEWS
• THE GUARDIAN

  Many people consider this paper, the old Manchester Guardian, as the best in the world.

• LE MONDE
• COMMENTARY TODAY

  Neither liberal or conservative – or rather both. "Opinions from America’s greatest commentators updated daily…" All nicely labeled, "On the Left" or "On the Right." There are also links to many great newspapers.

• C-SPAN

  Excellent capital news.

• THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS
• THE ELLSWORTH AMERICAN
• THE ISLANDER
• THE BAR HARBOR TIMES

• WEBOPEDIA

  "The only online dictionary and search engine you need for computer and Internet technology definitions."

• C/NET

  Safe, expert and unbiased information about everything to do with computers and technology.

• DOWNLOAD.COM

  A very good resource for finding useful programs and utilities to download from the web.

• PAPERTOYS.COM

  Technology comes in all shapes and sizes. Here the shapes are templates for making marvelous paper toys. Perhaps you absolutely must have a model of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, or a London taxi, or the Eiffel Tour. It is all here. Grab a child or grandchild and investigate this site. It might be a good way to introduce them to healthy, or at least harmless, online activities.

• TUCOWS

  Another comprehensive source for inexpensive shareware and freeware. The reviews are helpful.

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