Homework Help & other academic pursuits

GENERAL LIBRARIES

• Internet Research Guide for High Scool & College Students. Just what the title suggests.

• The Internet Public Library. A copious collection of on-line texts, newspapers, magazines. Stuff for students of ALL ages.

• The One-Stop Reference Desk. This one has everything including maps, phone books, currency converters, even a LANGUAGE TRANSLATOR.

• Free Internet Encyclopedia. For those of you without Brittanica or Encarta. 

• Encyclopedia Brittannica. For those of you who want the real thing. ;-)

• The WWW Virtual Library. Staggeringly comprehensive. Pick a subject...ANY subject. From Stanford University (reasonably competent source :-)

• CARRIE. From the University of Kansas comes this FULL TEXT electronic library. 

• Project Bartleby Archive. Columbia U. has produced this full-text archive with stuff ranging from Barlett's Quotations to the poetry of Yeats and a whole lot more.

• The Library of Congress. That big place in Washington has a big place on the web. It's fun to browse these aisles.

• Assignment Editor.com. A page of links to every newpaper, magazine or current events source anywhere.

• Project Gutenberg. Auspicious name for an ambitious project. Everything from light literature to heavy literature to reference... and everything indexed!

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MUSEUMS

• THE Smithsonian. They call this America's Treasure House of Learning. It's really America's attic.

• The Museum of Bad Art Time for a break from all that pompous, indefinable, weird stuff that makes you squint and gives you a headache, but that somebody somewhere claims is the apex of our culture. This is my kind of museum.

• The Artchive. Mark Harden has put together a fascinating collection of art, criticism, and links.

• Sistene Chapel Tour. Yes, Virginia, even God has His place on the internet. A marvelous tour with close-up views of the most famous chapel on Earth. (It helps if you can speak Latin.)

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ENGLISH & COMPOSITION

• ResearchPaper.com. This free commercial site is the place to go for ideas for papers. It even includes a chat area.

• Writers Web. A complete handbook writen and maintained by the students and faculty of the University of Richmond.

• A Style Sheet for Citing Internet Resources. If you're going to use this technology as a resource.... learn to cite it correctly.

• Research & Writing. Another offering from the Internet Public Library gives tips on how to write a first-rate research paper.

• OWL (Online Writing Resources) Handouts. Purdue has a great collection of handouts on all manner of English topics (punctuation, grammar, style, etc.)

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SCIENCE, MATH & MEDICINE  E=mc?

• NatureServe. They call this place an "On-Line Encyclopedia of Life". Pretty grandiose for what is really a great resource for all things living in North America... fifty thousand plants, animals and ecologic communities of the United States and Canada..

• J-Track. This is, in my estimation, one of the absolute coolest sites on the internet. Your computer can give you a 3-D visual representation of where more than 500 satellites and space objects are right now. These include Shuttle, Space Station, and Hubble telescopes.You need a reasonably capable computer and some moderate intelligence to figure out how to use this site. Be sure to use the menu bar at the top. Trust me. It's way cool ~dude.

• The New York Times Science Page That giant publishing conglomerate located in that giant mega-peopled metropolis DOES offer what is arguably the best up-to-the-minute coverage of current news from the realm of Science.

• Scientific American , a quite well respected journal among those who count in this field, ALSO offers a rather concise Science News page for excellent coverage of breaking headlines in the field.

• The Nine Planets. A multimedia tour of the Solar System including information on not just planets but all the moons as well. Also mythology.

• NASA Homepage. As long as we're on the subject of space, there are several great sites out there. This is one of the best.

• Human Spaceflight Central.  This site has news, pictures schedules and all sorts of stuff on current, past and future shuttle missions. In addition, THIS is the place to go for Space Station news.

• Space Pics. From the Ames research Center we get their picture archive. If you need a shot of a planet or spacecraft, this is the place.

• Microsoft Terraserver. If you'd like to see satellite photos of virtually any spot on the surface of this planet, check this out. 

• Bill Nye, the Science Guy. O.K., so it ain't the most sophisticated place to hang out... but if you REALLY need to know how something works......

• Math is FUN!. From John Handley High School in Winchester, Virginia comes a page with puzzles, tricks, brain teasers, songs, and all sorts of cool math stuff.

• Chemicool Periodic Table. MIT has put this well done periodic table on a beta site. It may have trouble loading. Good stuff when it works, though.

• The Merck Manual. This site has all you'll ever require about medical care for yourself and your family. The have categorized every ailment know to humankind, it seems.  Dr, it hurts when I cough?

• Gray's Anatomy. Once you've decided what ails ya by checking out the site above, you can come here and find a picture of that offending organ as posted by the good folks at Bartleby. This is the definitive text on human anatomy and the on-line version contains 1,247 engravings and 13,000 indexed entries.

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HISTORY

• A Hypertext on American History. Curiously, this excellent resouce on American history from colonial times to the present is hosted by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Go figure. The site includes hundreds of links to pages that descibe the American experience in tremendous detail.

• American Memory. The Library of Congress presents this "Historical Collection for the National Digital Library. Fascinating stuff.

• Middle Ages. From the same Annenberg source as the link above comes what it was really like to actually live in medieval times. Neat stuff including what you wore, how you built your house, who ran the show, what your religion was and even what your garbage consisted of. (Not much here about slaying dragons, though.)  And I thought "Middle Age" was me turning 40?

• Africans in America. PBS and WGBH in Boston presents an outstanding narrative site based on the award-winning TV series. Have you got a project due on African-American history or do you just want to know more about it? This is the place.

• Renaissance. Ever wanted to know ANYTHING about the Renaissance? Art, history, politics, culture... it's all here thanks to the Annenberg CPB Project.  Wish I had this in 10th Grade Social.

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GOVERNMENT & POLITICS  (talk about irony)

• FedWorld. From the U.S. Department of Commerce we get a one-stop-shop that lists the web addy of every government report you ever REALLY had to have for your very own. Also good stuff on where to locate just about any federal government webpage. (They also include the U.S. Federal job announcement search here.)

• Government Information Sharing Project. From Oregon State University we've got some useful stuff compiled from government stats. Some may not be as current as you'd expect, but it's nonetheless enlightening. 

• Thomas. Everything you could possibly want to know about how your congress works and what they're doing RIGHT NOW (like you'd want to know THAT.) From the text of every piece of legislation (and it's current status) to the email address of all your favorite representatives in D.C. This place has it all. 

• Mother Jones. Some may call it irreverent, some may call it blasphemous, some may call it crude... I like it. (But then I'm still living in the sixties.) MOJO Wire... Daily News and Resources for the Skeptical Citizen.

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ECONOMICS

• Exchange rates and economic statistics. The Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis (of all places), has an excellent site to relate current and past economic news to use for that next report you've got due on global monetary systems.

• CEO Express. If you're going to play the market or are just looking for economics news and/or research, this is a good place to start.  And a good place to learn about ENRON.

• National Budget Simulation. From UC Berkeley comes the National Budget Simulation game. Try your hand at beating those dorks in D.C. at the budgeting morass. Long game or short... your choice. A great learning experience and a hoot to boot.

• Quicken. Yeah, they may try to be selling you some software, but there's a lot of good free information here about investing and about the way money works.

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YOUNGER KIDS STUFF (or those of us who are kids at heart)

• The Yuckiest Site on the Internet. Just what it sounds like... Parents may be a bit appalled but kids seem to like it and after all, homework is really boring.   Do you get the feeling that Nickelodeon has something to do with this site?

• NASA for KIDS. Our kids' futures will be determined by what we learn outside this silly planet. This site explains and entertains with younger minds in mind. There's also good stuff here for teachers.

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SPECIAL Thanks to the South Florida Council for the Above Information.