Political Science Resources
Reference Tools
Frames Index |
No-Frames Version
Last updated on November 13,
2006
- Information Please
Almanac (U Mich Only)
- Miscellaneous facts and lists
- Searchable by keyword or by title
- Old Farmer's
Almanac
- Weather predictions by week and region for the coming year
- Sunrise/moonrise tables
- Days of first and last frost
- Bibliography of gardening publications
- Animal
Group Terminology (Kids Info Please Almanac)
- Animals and just their group names (e.g. colony, sloth)
- Animal
Names (Christchurch Public Library, NZ)
- Animal group names (e.g. herd, gaggle); animal name for young; male
and female names
- Associations on the Net (Internet
Public Library)
- Annotated links to over 300 associations on the Internet
- Arranged by broad subjects (arts, business, law, politics, health,
labor, social sciences)
- Associations
Unlimited (UMich Only)
- Gale Directory of 140,000 U.S. national, regional, state and
local associations
- Provides contact information, membership, objectives and
publications
- Directory
of Social Sciences - Institutions, Specialists,
Periodicals (UNESCO)
- Directory searchable by country, keyword, type of institution, ISSN
number, and personal name
- Data includes identification, e-mail addresses and web sites as
applicable
- Congressional
Gold Medals (Univ. of South Florida)
- Chronological list, 1776 to present, compiled from Congressional reports
and the Congressional Research Service
- Includes links to biographies for 18th and early 19th Century
recipients
- Congressional Medal of
Honor (Army)
- Recipients of Congressional Medal of Honor by service branch and war
beginning with the U.S. Civil War
- Includes statistics and names of recipients with citations
- Nobel
Prizes
- List of Nobel prize winners in all categories since 1901
- Searchable by name, year and prize
- Archived press releases
- Academic
Universe/LEXIS Web (UMich Only)
- Biographies appear under Biographical
Information, Country Profiles, and
General News Topics
- Biographical Information interprets
lastname/firstname as two separate words rather than a phrase and may
retrieve some incorrect information
- General News Topics permits searching the
name as a phrase
- Biography
and
Geneaological Master Index (UMich Only)
- Over 10 million biographies appearing in 1000 printed biographical dictionaries
- Coverage is 1980 to the present
- Biography People
Finder
- See also biographies for current individual government agencies on
their respective web pages
- Contemporary Authors (U Mich Only)
- Biographies and bibliographies of 90,000 writers
- Lives, The
Biography Resource
- Annotated guide to over 1000 biographical reference tools on the web
- Arranged by subject: individuals, African-Americans, women, Holocaust
survivors, professions
- Search engine
- Political
Graveyard
- Cemeteries in which over 100,000 federal, state and local politicians
are
buried
- Arranged by name of person, office, birth and death years
- Cemeteries arranged alphabetically and by state/county
- Brief political biography of politician with links to fuller
biographies as available
- Cemetery lists provide biographies of politicians with some links to
the Tiger Map Server
- Extensive section on political families although relationships also
shown under the name search
- Quest
for Equality (World Book)
- Biographies of women pioneers arranged by subject field and links to
women's history web sites
- Remainder is focused on women's movements at the K-12 level
- Time_100:
Choosing the Century's Most Influential People
- Biographies of 100 people in arts, entertainment, politics,
and science
- Time line throughout the century
- Wilson
Biographies (UMich Only)
- Full text biographies of 38,000 historical and current figures.
- Searchable by subject, name, profession, birthday, place of origin,
gender, and ethnicity
- Global Books
in
Print (UMich Only)
- Index to in-print, forthcoming, and out-of-print books from 44,000
North American publishers
- Searchable by author, title, keyword, language, publisher, date, and
ISBN number
- Hyperhistory Online
- Broad chronologies of people and historical events, 1000 B.C. to present
- Detailed history of events by decade and year since 1791, subdivided into politics, culture, science and religion
- Use orange Events button on lefhand frame to activate time
period given in righthand frame
- Information Please
Millennium
- Chronology of a worldwide scope for 1000-1999
- Detailed information for the 20th century includes annual list of key
worldwide and U.S. events, economics, music, sports, movies, deaths, and
popular culture trends
- Web
Chronology Project (North Park University)
- Detailed chronologies of political events arranged by region or
subject (e.g. various religions)
- Selected links to summaries of the event
- Summaries provide bibliographic references for further research
- CityTownInfo
- Detailed entries for 20,000 U.S. cities provide everything from area
codes, time zones, latitude and longitude to ancestry of the population
- Compares population, income, housing and crime to the state
- Includes political contributions, lists of high schools, travel
highlights, mortgage rates
- Separate section for many of the cities with their most popular
professions and corresponding annual salary ranges
- College and
University Rankings (UIUC)
- Analytical guide to web sites with college rankings
- Includes undergraduate, graduate, law, business, and international
institutions
- Describes the controversy over various ranking systems with web links
to articles
- College
Rankings (US News and World Report)
- Ranks colleges nationally, by region, and state; friendliness to
international students; diversity
- Search for best college by geography, religion, major, co-ed,
selectivity and cost
- Includes graduate
school rankings for over 30 detailed disciplines
- College
View
- Search 3500 colleges and universities by name or a combination of
preferences (state, characteristics of student body, size of city, etc.)
- Statistics for schools includes student body, minority representation
of
faculty, tuition, and SAT scores
- GradSchools.Com
- Index to graduate schools by discipline or name
- Provides links to admissions requirements and web sites
- Digital Registry
Search
- Experimental catalog of web sites chosen by University of Michigan
Library subject specialists
- Searchable by type, discipline, and keyword
- Gale Directory of
Data Bases (U Mich Only)
- Directory of publicly-available CD-ROMS, magnetic tapes, and other electronic
materials
- Searches.Com
- Search the web using Alta Vista, Excite, Galaxy, HotBot, Lycos, Web
Crawler, and Yahoo all at once
- Searches may include all words, any words, or a phrase
- American
Heritage Dictionary (UMich Only)
- Searchable and browsable
- Separate section for the names of colleges and universities
- Dictionary
of Philosophical Terms and Names (Kemerling)
- Definitions and biographies of philosophers from ancient times to the
present
- Extensively interlinked
- Dictionary
of Phrase and Fable
- Full text of Brewer's 1894 version
- Searchable or browsable
- EurodicAutom
(European Union)
- Translates word or abbreviation from one chosen language to another
- Includes Western European languages
- Can filter by subject field
- Glossary of
Political Economy Terms (Auburn University)
- Substantial definitions of political and economic terms
- Often includes links to related terms
- Glossary of
Statistical Terms (Rice University)
- Extensive description of statistical terms with numerous hyperlinked
cross references
- Part of the HyperStat Online textbook
- Insurance
Glossary of Terms
- Definitions for the consumer on 100 health, life, auto, and hazard
insurance terms
- Definitions are hyperlinked
- Merriam-Webster
On-Line Dictionary
- Searchable English dictionary providing pronunciation, definitions and
hot links to related words
- Includes a searchable thesaurus
- No browing capability
- Money
Words
- User-friendly dictionary to business, finance, and real estate
terms
- On-Line
Dictionaries (Bucknell)
- Links to numerous foreign and English language dictionaries
- Includes Afrikaans to Zulu
- Quick lookup of English words
- Online
Dictionaries and Translators
- Matrix of foreign and bilingual dictionaries on the Internet
- You can also browse all of the dictionaries related to that
language
- Oxford English Dictionary (U Mich Only
- Origin of English words with examples
- Searchable and browsable
- Phobia
List
- Extensive list of phobias by name with brief definition
- Second list of phobias by item feared with corresponding name
- Background FAQs
- Web of
On-Line-Grammars (Bucknell)
- Links to more than 20 on-line grammars
- Includes Western European languages as well as Akkadian, Bengali,
Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Latin
- Codes of Ethics Online
Project (Ill.Inst.of Tech)
- Text of over 850 ethics codes from societies, corporations,
government agencies and academic institutions around the world
- Searchable by keyword
- E-How
- Short, simple advice on how to do common personal or household tasks
- Categories include automotive, personal, electronics, business,
health, sports, travel
- Examples: how to change oil, avoid age spots, choose a zip drive,
decline an invitation
- Searchable versions of English language literature and poetry
- Some products are restricted to University of Michigan users
- Religious texts (Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon) are unrestricted
access
- Career
Information (UMich - BusAd Library)
- Links to web sites of corporations recruiting at the University of
Michigan
- United States and international web sites and newspapers with job
postings
- Chronicle of Higher Education
- Weekly newspaper on higher education issues
- Numerous reports, statistics, and analysis
- Extensive section of academic job postings
- Indexed since 1983 in Education
Abstracts (UMich Only)
- Full text without job openings in Academic Universe, Sept.
1997+
- Found in its own separate file under General News
Topics
- Academe This
Week carries today's news and last week's (not current
week's) jobs without subscription
- Paper copies of the Chronicle are maintained in the
Serials Room (LB 2300 .C56) until Serials receives the microfilm
version (FILM X974)
- Employment
Opportunities and Job Resources on the Internet (Riley)
- Links to job postings with an extensive list of academic sources
- Resumes and recruiters
- Healthcare
Employment Links (Pam Pohly)
- Brief annotations to on-line job sources in hospitals and health care
- Guides to related associations and travel
- International Job
Vacancies
- Hundreds of want ads for jobs with international intergovernmental agencies,
primarily from the UN group
- Arranged by agency, country, and type of job
- Provides complete description and application deadline
- Minorities
Job-Bank
- Available professional jobs searchable by keyword and location or
browsable by title or employer
- May submit resume or post a new job online
- Description of various minority communities in the United States
- Occupational
Information Network (Dept. of Labor)
- Pilot program to redefine job descriptions in terms of worker and
occupational characteristics
- Expected to replace the Dictionary of Occupational Titles
- Includes numerous links to job resources
- What Color
is Your Parachute?
- Annotated web resources and on-line job-hunt advice
- Job listings, resumes, career counseling, making contacts, and
job-hunting research
- MIRLYN is the
University of Michigan on-line catalog
- MCAT includes books and periodicals within the
library system
- INDEXES provides access to numerous periodical
articles
- REMOTE links to catalogs of libraries within
Michigan and the Big Ten Schools
- Subjects, authors, and URLs are hot-linked
- British Library
- Most holdings listed in the catalog date back to 1975
- Includes serials beginning 1700 A.D.
- Gabriel's Gateway to
European Libraries
- Web searching for the national libraries of Finland, Germany,
Netherlands and United Kingdom
- Catalogs may be search individually or together
- Libraries
On-Line
- Lists of national, public, school, medical, academic and law
libraries
- Library
Catalogs (Michigan Electronic Library)
- Links to library catalogs around the world
- Special focus on Michigan public, academic and special libraries
- Library of
Congress Information System (LOCIS)
- Search books, serials, music, and sound recordings
- Word search, browse search, or command search
- Also includes federal legislation since 1973 and the Catalog of
Copyright Entries since 1978
- See main page for hours of operation
- OCLC
First Search (UMich Only)
- Index to books and periodicals located in most libraries
throughout the United States
- Numerous periodical data bases, some of which duplicate
MIRLYN
- Selected full text of articles; first choose subject discipline and
then the file FASTDOC
- Unique feature is Dissertation Abstracts and the
full text of the New York Times for the past 90 days
- Thomas
Regional
- Search for manufacturing suppliers by product or company name and one
of 19 regions
- Provides contact information
- Guest use or free password
- ArcData
Online
- Web Browser
is a free on-line mapping program while ArcExplorer
is a free downloadable mapping program that can be used with Windows 95
or Windows NT
- Web Browser maps show streets, schools, airports, cemeteries,
railroads, and other geographic features
- Both provide automated mapping capabilities for data though the maps
cannot necessarily be customized
- The map "shapefiles" can be combined with statistical data, including
limited Census variables, scientific mapping, and individual streets
- Columbia
Gazetteer of the World
- Dictionary of places and place names, including cities, bridges,
maritime or geological features, states, provinces
- Each entry provides detailed information on the place, its history,
and current economy as appropriate
- Search by place name, type of place or keyword
- Earthlights
(NASA)
- NASA satellite imagery of the earth at night
- Can see light concentrations around the world
- Environmental
Maps
(HUD)
- State, county and census tract maps showing public housing
and
environmental risks
- Either zoom in on place or search it
- Choose layers indicating various types of air, water, or
solid waste
pollution with public housing projects or brownfields
(indicated by symbols)
- You can use colors to indicate percentages of 1990 census
data (race, education, income, age of housing, housing value
or rent)
- Geodata
- Index of federal GIS databases combining mapping and statistical data
- Data categories range from atmosphere and energy to the environment,
geology, water resources, and transportation networks
- Extensive annotations, metadata, and links to primary web sites
- Geographic
Names Information System (USGS)
- Search geographic names by name or by feature type (parks, schools,
streams etc.) county, latitude, population size
- Output provides the name, latitude and longitude, map
- Examples: identify names of all parks in Washtenaw County, all
schools in Wayne County, or all cities in U.S. with the name of
Portland and over 50,000 population
- Alternative Server at
Yale
- Historical
Maps on the Web (UMich)
- Annotated guide to historical maps
- General section followed by geographic region with a special section
on city maps
- Map-Related
Web Sites (Univ.Texas)
- Extensive links to city, state, and national maps from around the world
- Historical and weather maps
- Cartographic Reference section includes gazetteers, distance tables,
and time zone maps
- See Demographics for
Census-related maps
- MapQuest
- Search any location in the United States by street address, name of
business, or zip code
- Resulting map includes latitude, longitude, geographic center, and a
variety of customized variables (shopping, education, banking, parks,
etc.)
- Maps on Us
- Identify precise location of a street address in the United States
and a route between places
- May also identify location of businesses included in its yellow pages
section within a certain radius of your geographic location
- Mining
Company
- CIA, National Geographic, and University of Texas maps arranged by
country
- Latitude and longitude lookup for major world cities
- National Atlas of the
United States (USGS)
- Determine geographic location by zooming in on map of the U.S.
- Layers for lands, roads, parks, railroads, cities, volcanoes, and
other geographic features can be downloaded and superimposed
- Multimedia requiring Shockwave and Internet Explorer 4.0 or Netscape
Communicator 4.0
- Terraserver
(Microsoft)
- U.S. and Russian satellite images of the earth that can be zoomed to
show individual houses
- Choose area of the earth and continue to zoom in
- Navigation aids on the boxed image include moving the direction of
the map, alternating to a street map of the area covered, and
obtaining geographic coordinates
- Maps may also be searched by place
- Topographic
Map Symbols (USGS)
- Clearly illustrated booklet on reading land, water, building, and
railroad symbols on USGS topographic maps
- United
Nations Cartographic Section
- General political maps by region of the world
- Detailed maps on UN peacekeeping missions with pull-down menus
describing the mission and all UN deployments
- Physicians' GenRX
(UMich Only)
- Search prescription medicines by name, treatment, supplier
- Provides ingredients, drug interactions, cautions,
price
- Search
Name Files
- 1990 Census data on names collected
- Search by lastname or male/female firstname to determine frequency
and rank among all names in its class
- Does not provide information about individuals
- Ulrich's
International Periodicals Directory (UMich Only)
- Lists 150,000 periodicals and 8000 newspapers
- Browsable by title, subject and publisher
- Searchable by title, publisher, description and ISSN
- Information includes title, link to publisher, advertising rates,
circulation, formats including web, and e-mail address if applicable
- Lists abstracting services which index the journal
- Speech
and Transcript Center (George Washington University)
- Web links to speeches by U.S. federal, state and local
officials; foreign governments, businesses, and international
organizations; television transcripts
- Federal
Tax Forms
- Tax forms, instructions, and publications
available in PDF (Adobe Acrobat), PCL, PostScript, and SGML format
- Many reproducible tax forms also available
at the Graduate Library's Documents Center
- State Tax
Forms (LSU)
- Clearly-arranged links to tax forms in several
states
- Area Codes
- Ameritech Yellow
Pages
- Search 10 million U.S. businesses by name, state, city, phone number
or subject
- Provides map of business location
- Go Global
- Telephone dialing codes for various countries as well as time
differentials
- Hotline
Telephone Numbers (Webshaker)
- Lists 800 telephone numbers for personal situations, such as
AIDS, child abuse, depression, gambling, suicide
- Describes services available from the agencies
- Reference
USA (UMich Only)
- Directory of 12 million businesses and 120 households in the U.S.
- For households, searchable by last name, city, state, and
phone number
- For businesses, by company name, county and state with additional
searches by type of business
- White Pages
(Yahoo)
- Search 90 million people by name, address, phone number, e-mail
address or web page
- White
Pages.Com
- Search name of person for address and phone; search by phone
number
- Covers entire United States but may be limited by state or
city
- A+ Research and
Writing (Internet Public Library)
- Step-by-step guide to writing a term paper
- Includes tips such as setting deadlines, number of words per page,
role of brainstorming
- Instructions on researching both in the library and on the Internet
- Library
Research Guide (UMich)
- Guide to analyzing class assignment, research, evaluating materials,
writing the paper, and citing sources
- Description with links to web sources and printed materials in the
University of Michigan Undergraduate Library
- Go Global
- Enter time and city to receive list of corresponding times in 30
other cities
- World Time
- Current local time, sunrise, sunset, and holidays within the next month
- Access via a map or choosing individual countries
- World Time
Server
- Determine current time for any country in the world
- Choose future event in one location and determine the time it will
occur in a second location
- Airport Codes of
the World
- Codes arranged alphabetically and identify airport
- Fodors Travel
Guides
- Mini-guides to 110 cities around the world
- Hotels, restaurants, and sights
- Can make online reservations
- Geographia
- Illustrated travel guide to Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America
- History and art of the country; travel tips
- Does not suggest hotels or provide reservations
- Go Global
- Calculate distances and compare time between major world cities
- National holidays for the current month
- Voltage and power converter requirements in various countries
- Telephone dialing codes
- Internet
Airlines Addresses List
- List of commercial airlines arranged by continent
- Provides links to airline web site, e-mail address, and frequent
flyer information
- Lonely
Planet
- Travel guides to most countries with history, activities, and travel
advice
- Maps of the National Historic and Military Parks, Memorials, and Battlefields
- Examples include Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the Johnstown PA flood
- Maps of the US National Parks and Monuments
- Arranged alphabetically
- Some maps over 1 MB
- Passport
Services (State Department)
- How to apply for a passport and renew it
- Passport application form
- PetsWelcome
- Motels, hotels, campgrounds, and amusement parks that accept pets
- Searchable by place or by route
- Also includes nearby kennels
- Covers U.S., Canada, and France
- Rand
McNally Travel Tools: Construction
- Lists road construction projects and their start/completion dates for
the U.S. and Canada
- Search by state/province, type of road, and road number (e.g.
Michigan, Interstate 94)
- Recreation.Gov (Army
Corps of Engineers)
- Index to recreational opportunities on federal lands (e.g. parks,
forests)
- Search by state and type of activity (hiking,, horseback riding) or
amenity (restaurant, pets allowed)
- Lists names, locations, and contact information with sample photos of
the area and links to maps
- Travel Health
Online
- Likely diseases and vaccinations arranged by country
- Measures to handle common health and crime problems (e.g. safe
drinking water, not wearing expensive jewelry
- Travel health providers
- Travel Tips
(Transportation Security Administration)
- How to pack luggage for screening beginning January 1, 2003
- What to wear to the airport
- Travel
Warnings and Consular Sheets (State Department)
- Information for individual foreign countries on passport and visa
requirements
- Crime, terrorism, and health warnings as applicable
- TravelWeb
- Provides on-line reservations at major hotel chains and airlines
- Vaccinations
(CDC)
- Vaccinations for foreign travel, arranged by destination
- Visa
Requirements
- Foreign visa requirements for U.S. citizens
- Includes fees, material needed for application, and consular address
- See also Maps
- Aport
- Translates Russian language web sites and their immediate links into
English
- Reverse process to translate English language web sites into Russian
- Translations are not perfect but will provide a sense of the
subject
- Babelfish
(AltaVista)
- Translate a page or URL
- Two-way translations between English and French, German, Spanish,
Portuguese or Italian
- Free Translation
- Paste a paragraph to the box
- Translate Spanish, French, and German to English
- Translate English to Spanish, Portugese, French, German, Italian, and
Norwegian
- Tarjim
- Translates English to Arabic and Arabic to English
- Stumpers (Dominican
University)
- Listserv for answering difficult reference
questions
- Searchable archive of answers
- Totally
Trivia
- Genuine trivia about people, pets, history, the environment,
entertainment, etc.
- Browsable and searchable
- Gems include: about 1/3 of pet owners leave messages for them on an
answering machine, Ed Peterson is the investor of the Egg McMuffin,
Kemo Sabe means "soggy shrub" in Navajo
- Urban
Legends
- Lists urban legends by broad subject category (e.g. holidays, food
and drink, etc)
- Provides a history of the legend and the truth behind it
- Argus
Clearinghouse
- Annotated guide to Internet search engines and virtual libraries
- Annotations and ratings on subjects from the arts and business to
government and the social sciences
- Direct
Search
- Quality web links arranged by subject
- Includes foreign, federal, state and local governments
- Subjects include military, agriculture, etc
- InfoMine
(UC-Riverside)
- Annotated list of scholarly reference tools
- Acronyms, calendars, grants, travel, library directories
- LibrarySpot
- Selected links to the best reference tools (acronyms, dictionaries,
calculators, quotations)
- Meta-indexes to libraries and library catalogs by type
- Reference tools, associations, and listservs for librarians
- Michigan
Electronic Library
- Extensive lists of dictionaries, awards, and factfinders
- Samples include David Letterman's Top 10 and How to Plan a Wedding
- Oriented toward public libraries
- My Virtual
Reference Desk
- Hundreds of reference tools, including quick facts,
encyclopedias, government
- Lottery, sports, weather
- New links feature
- NetFIRST (UMich Only)
- Index to web sites produced by OCLC
- Provides web links and annotations
- Social Science
Information Gateway
- Annotated guide to the best web sites in the social sciences
- Focus on the US, UK and Europe
- Searchable and browsable
- Clip Art
Searcher
- Search HotBot, Lycos, Filez, and 1-Click by keyword and type for web
page clip art
- Developing
a Course Web Page (UMich)
- Planning, tools, selecting links, and graphics
- How to Create
Your Own Homepage (UMich)
- University of Michigan step-by-step instructions
- Begins with obtaining and uniqname and IFS space to
registering your web site on the X500 directory
- Links to basic HTML guides
- HTML
Goodies
- Tutorials on HTML, frames, Javascript, colors, link buttons, and
image maps
- Over 450 Javascripts
- Free icons and other images
- Web Reference
(Athenia)
- Extensive links to web page design for expert and beginner
- Has search engine for rapid identification of design problem
- News and conference announcements
- All the
Web
- Clear and easy to use search engine which can define searches to
include phrases, all the words or any of the words used
- Advanced searches include filter by language, title, URL, text, and
domain
- Calculate
Me
- Convert
Me
- Converts metric and British, nautical and astronomic measurements
- Includes energy, cooking, weight, distance, time, and speed
measurements
- Converts metric and British measurements, including distance, power,
temperature, area
- Dictionary of
Units
- Approach by title (e.g. angstrom) or type of unit (length, mass, density)
- Includes U.S. and metric
- Elements of
Style (Strunk)
- Full text of classic 1918 guide to English composition
- Includes grammar, composition, usage, misused and misspelled words
- Indispensible Writing
Resources
- Annotated guide to the best reference materials, style guides, and
writing guides
- Includes writing in several subject fields and types of
writing
- Writer's
Handbook (U.Wisc.)
- Guidelines on academic writing, literature, reviews,
scientific writing, and letters
- Grammar, style, and citations
- Look up zip code by delivery address
- From U.S. Postal Service
Quick Jumps:
Grace York, Political Science Librarian
Christina Campbell, Documents Assistant, June 2000
University of Michigan Library
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/psref.html
Since February 25, 1996 this page has been accessed 
Acronyms