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Britannica.com  It seems unlikely that
you’ll ever find an encyclopedia salesman knocking on your door again, now that the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica are
available online for free, along with related articles from dozens of top magazines and links to 125,000 Web sites.
Though the site was overwhelmed with visitors when it launched in October, response times have now improved. It’s
a remarkable research tool, and when you think about it, it’s probably worth the cost of a computer to have such
a resource available.
GuruNet  GuruNet isn’t a site but rather a free
download that leverages the power of the Web to perform instant one-click research on any word you read or type.
Click on the word Ford
and if it’s before the word Motor,
GuruNet gives you a brief company profile, a stock chart of the past year, a chart of the current day’s stock activity,
and links to recent news stories on Ford Motor Co. Click on Ford when it follows Henry and GuruNet retrieves a biographical profile from The Concise Columbia Electronic
Encyclopedia. You can also jump off and search the Web right from GuruNet. Amazing. How did you get along without
it?
InfoSpace.com  You may not know it, but InfoSpace.com
is the power behind many of the directories you find all over the Web. Everything from people finders to yellow
pages to maps is here, so you can bookmark this one site and probably erase ten other reference bookmarks. The
site now offers a Personal Desktop Portal, a small desktop toolbar that gives you easy access to many of the site’s
search features. All in all, a very handy site to have around.
LibrarySpot  LibrarySpot is a sort
of metareference spot, an excellent starting point from which to jump off to the Web’s best reference resources.
It has all sorts of top 100 lists in various categories, feature articles that help you learn how to do various
kinds of research, and links to some of the Web’s best current museum-like exhibitions.
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