Online Resources

Fairlee Public Library's selection of useful online resources for public library patrons. Your comments and suggestions regarding the design, content, and organization of these links are welcome. e-mail us.

E-mail
The Web offers many opportunities to establish a free e-mail account. The price you pay for this free account can include account size limits, banner advertising, and SPAM (unsolicited e-mail advertisements). Nevertheless, it is a great way to stay in contact with family and friends. These free email accounts can be accessed from any computer that connects to the Internet. This list is not comprehensive, and we cannot recommend one over another.

E-mail Account Helps

• Choosing the right type of free email service
• DMA's e-Mail Preference Service - Go here to enter your e-mail addresses and reduce junk e-mail.
• Mail2Web - Check your email from the Web. Enter your email address and ISP password, and read and delete mail on the web. Trouble with email downloads from your ISP connection? Go here, delete messages that may be causing a blockage.
• UXN Spam Combat - Anti-Spam? There are lots of resources here to help you in your battle.

Click on the links below to create your own e-mail account or check your current account:

• AOL
• Hotmail
• Juno
• Mail.Com
• My Own E-Mail
• Yahoo Mail

E-cards

• 123Greetings.com - Free Electronic Greeting Cards, Halloween Ecards
• Blue Mountain - The World's Favorite eCards
• Celebwelove.com - Greetings, ecards, birthday greetings, egreetings, love, birthday, greeting cards, postcards, cards, E-cards, friendship
• Greeting-cards.com
• REGARDS.COM - FREE Electronic greeting cards - Holiday Cards - Greeting Cards
• Yahoo! Greetings

Employment (See Job Hunting)

Encyclopedias & Almanacs

• The 50 States of the U.S. - Concise information about our 50 states.
• AccessScience@McGraw-Hill
• Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
• Encyclopedia Britannica - Search engine, encyclopedia, full-text magazines, and book reviews... all rolled into one Web site.
• Encyclopedia.com - Provides more than 17,000 short articles from the Concise Columbia Electronic Encylopedia, Third Edition.
• Encyclopedia Proteus
• Encyclopedia Smithsonian - Information about a variety of topics, from Smithsonian Institution sources
• Information Please Almanac - The well-known Information Please almanac at your fingertips, with quick access to facts and figures relating to World, U.S., History and Government, Biography, Sports, Entertainment, Business and Finance, Society and Culture, Health and Science, and Weather and Climate matters. A good quick reference, but don't look for much depth or a sophisticated use of the technology (cross-links, etc.) Also includes a dictionary and encyclopedia.
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Librarians Index to the Internet...Almanacs
• Librarian's Index to the Internet...Topical Encyclopedias
• Musical Heritage Network Instrument Encyclopedia - Search for the instrument of your choice or browse through the collection by the Sachs-Hornbostel classification scheme or by geographical origin.
• Old Farmer's Almanac

Entertainment (see also Leisure)

• AMG (All-Music Guide and All-Movie Guide) - Comprehensive database of music and film
• All Movie Guide
• Better Homes & Gardens
• CultureFinder
• Ethnomusicology
• Greatest Films
• Home & Garden Television
• Internet Broadway Database
• Internet Movie Database - Check out what flicks are out & get reviews
• Music Resources
• PBS Online
• Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Ticketmaster

Ethnicity / Multicultural Information

African American culture

• African American Web Connection (AAWC) - An excellent starting point. The site is crisp, clean, very logically arranged, and features links to many art and art-related sites. The product of a "Web hobbyist and Certified Computer Professional," the AAWC is "dedicated to providing a Web gateway to Afrocentric resources suitable for the entire family." It succeeds quite admirably.
• African American Web Ring - One of many "Web rings" forming on the Internet, this one has collected over 1,000 sites related to African American culture including art, dance, history, and personal pages.
• Afro-American Studies on the Web - Created and maintained at the University of Wisconsin, this is a visually aesthetic site with high-caliber, scholarly links in seven categories including electronic texts/historical texts. A link to the W.E.B. DuBois Virtual University is also provided.
• ALA Recommended Links
• Georgetown University: Race & Ethnicity-African-American - Part of their American Studies Web pages, this is an alphabetical listing of a nice variety of sites not often linked elsewhere.
• Soul Search: The Search Engine for the World's People of Color - This is a search engine for accessing information contained in the African American Web Ring.
• Rutgers University: African-American Studies - This site focuses on library collections and more pure bibliographical links than information links. Also provided are specialized links, including Black Church Fires Resource Guide, Black Health Net, and Negro Baseball Leagues Online Archives.
• The Universal Black Pages - This is a frequently hotlinked site. Originally created and developed by the Georgia Tech Black Graduate Students Association, its purpose is "to have a complete and comprehensive listing of African-diaspora related Web pages at a central site." Their effort is a modest beginning.
• University of California, Santa Barbara: Black Studies - This is a very manageable site with access to a range of data-types. The site has 16 broad categories and is especially strong in news media, historical texts, and documents.

East Asian

• ALA Recommended Links
• East Asia WWW Virtual Library - Edited by Fabrizo Pregadio of the Universita di Venezia. This most comprehensive and constantly updated site is an excellent place to begin for users conducting research on East Asian countries and regions. The site covers China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and Tibet.

Foreign language, literature, and culture

• ALA Recommended Links
• Ethnologue - This site catalogs more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries, organizing languages according to language families. It includes a bibliography, list of abbreviations, maps, and a ranking of the top 100 languages by population.
• EuroDicAutom - This site allows users to select words or phrases to translate to or from more than one dozen languages. Search filters make it possible to limit searches for terms in specialized vocabularies, such as botany/zoology, law, and statistics.
• Human Languages Page - An index of language-learning resources arranged by topic. Many entries are annotated, and entries that have been added within the last 30 days are indicated by a special icon.
• Word Online General Dictionaries - Links to online dictionaries for a variety of languages appear here. In addition to resources for two dozen Indo-European languages, dictionaries for such languages as Thai, Indonesian, Basque, and Mandinka are also available.

Indigenous nations

• Aboriginal Canada Portal - The Aboriginal Canada Portal is a single gateway to online resources, contacts, and information for and about aboriginal peoples. The site provides links to national aboriginal organizations, federal government departments with aboriginal mandates, and all provincial governments and organizations with aboriginal responsibilities. It is organized by broad subject area, such as economic development, claims and treaties, health, policy, research, and statistics. Access to aboriginal associations and communities is arranged by province, and there are more than 7,500 links to aboriginal businesses, organizations, bands, groups, news and people. Well-organized and easy to use, it is an essential site for anyone beginning research on Canadian aboriginal people.
• ALA Recommended Links
• APFT-Avenir des Peuples des Forets Tropicales - Funded by the European Commission, this organization researches human ecology of rainforest peoples and indigenous knowledge. Primarily focused on Africa and Pacific-area countries, the site provides maps, publications, legal aspects, and bibliographies.
• The Arctic Council - Six international indigenous peoples organizations work with representatives from Canada, Denmark (Greenland, Faeroe Islands), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States to preserve the Arctic environment and way of life. This site provides information about members, projects, key issues, newsletters, and events.
• Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies - This extensive Web site of resources includes bibliographies, publications, and information about Native Title research, indigenous languages, and links to many more Web sites.
• The Bureau of Indian Affairs - Based within the U.S. Department of the Interior, this agency's mission is "to fulfill trust responsibilities and promote self-determination" of American indigenous peoples."
• Canada's Digital Collections-First Peoples - Under the subject heading "First Peoples," this site provides links to resources in museums, schools, historical societies, and First Nations cultural centers. Materials include images, descriptions of Aboriginal games, museum collections, art images, sound clips, and transcribed interviews with elders.
• Center for World Indigenous Studies - This site represents one aspect of the center's mandate to foster understanding "through the publication and distribution of literature written and voiced by leading contributors from Fourth World Nations." The site contains information about educational programs and courses, a bookstore, archives, and an electronic library of documents searchable by geographical region with additional international documents.
• Cultural Survival - This nongovernmental organization has a goal of "promoting the rights, voices, and visions of indigenous peoples." Information is organized according to region or by topic; each subsection features related articles from its own two publications, profiles of specific NGOs in that region, news briefs, links, and other documents.
• IPACC-The Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee - This site presents a network of indigenous peoples' organizations in Africa, as well as publications, statements, speeches, a photo gallery, news/events, and an excellent introductory document "Who is Indigenous in Africa?"
• James Henare Maori Research Centre - Based at the University of Auckland, this academic site provides information, publications, reports, and links regarding Maori peoples.
• Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) - Affiliated with the University of Texas-Austin, this site supports LANIC's mission "to facilitate access to Internet-based information to, from, or on Latin America." Information is organized by topic as well as by region and country.
• National Museum of the American Indian
• Native American Resources - This Web site, created by librarian Lisa Mitten, is an essential site for any researcher of Native American issues. This site provides access to Web sites of native organizations, business, media, music and culture, tribal colleges, and native studies programs. The site also links to quality resources about native communities.

Latin America

• ALA Recommended Links
• Guide to Brazilian Internet - Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and a pioneer in the development of digital information in that region. This site includes links useful to social scientists, historians, and librarians.
• Latin American Internet Resources - This site has links to hundreds of Web sites of Latin American publications, government agencies, and economic data.
• Religion in Latin America - This site provides information resources that combine animated discussion with contemporary research.
• UT-LANIC - This site, maintained by the Latin American Network Information Center at the University of Texas-Austin, is a veritable library of links to sites related to Latin America. It includes the Web sites of government institutions, statistical data, bibliographies, and informative articles. Searches can be made by country or by subject.
• Women in Latin America - This site is dedicated to the promotion of networking and dialogue on issues related to women and culture in Latin America.

Refugees

• ALA Recommended Links
• Human Rights Web - A broad range of sources can be found at this Web site, such as "sites containing information and materials about refugees and aid agencies, human rights treaties, declarations, and other instruments, United Nations documents, foreign law, country information, and international law documents."
• The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Migration and Ethnic Relations - A compendium of a wide range of migration and ethnic Web sites. To easily find refugee-related sites, type "refugee" in search box.

Russian

• ALA Recommended Links
• REESWeb-Russian and East European Studies - Part of the World-Wide Web Virtual Library, this site covers electronic resources on the CIS, the Russian Federation, the former Soviet Union, and related geographical areas.
• Russian and East European Network Information Center (REENIC) - REENIC is a collection of links to Web sites about East and Central Europe, Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union, with substantial selections of links for each country plus resources for K-12 teachers.
• Sher's Russian Index - A huge collection of links to sites in all areas of interest, from history and government to literature, folklore, humor, and the environment. Also includes links to many metasites, both in Russia and elsewhere.

Southeast Asian

• ALA Recommended Sites
• AsiaSource - This huge portal is sponsored by the Asia Society. It links to news, business resources, resources for teachers, a database of Asian foods, and recipes. If you only want to visit one site for Southeast Asia, this is the one. Searching the site is not as helpful as browsing deeper into the collections by clicking on links.
• Asiaville - The site offers selected links to business and cultural information for most Asian countries, including all of Southeast Asia, except East Timor. Click on "sitemap" for a list of countries.
• East and Southeast Asia: Net Resources - Maintained by Robert Y. Eng of the University of Redlands, this site provides pages of Internet resources with an emphasis on political issues and history. While slightly less comprehensive than some of the Southeast Asia WWW Virtual Library pages, these have the advantage of being more frequently updated.

World religions

• ALA Recommended Sites
• Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library - The Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library is one of those sites you wish was available for every religion. It is so thoroughly organized and classified that locating specific informational sites is easy. Buddhism is really not a single thing, but a complex of matters, and this site recognizes this. There are links within the pages to the WWW Virtual Libraries for "Pure Land Buddhism," "Tibetan Studies," and "Zen Buddhism." There is also a link to a Theravada Buddhist InfoWeb. A helpful search engine is available as well.
• Finding God in Cyberspace - This is one of the best Web sites on the Internet for finding information on religion. John Gresham has built and maintained this site for several years. The section devoted to world religion links to some of the best gateways to information available. His site also provides brief annotations.
• Gateway to Sikhism - The Gateway to Sikhism is among the best resources for finding material on the Sikh religion. The site is organized around key Sikh subjects and themes, such as Sikh gurus, Sikh history, Sikh way of life, Sikh scriptures, and Sikh youth. There is also a search engine feature.
• The Hindu Universe - Probably the largest and best single site on Hinduism on the Internet, the Hindu Universe provides links to more than 17,000 sites. The resource directory offers a helpful organization framework for finding resources related to such topics as scriptures, god, worship, philosophy, customs, history, and interfaith relations. The Hindu Universe is a project of the Hindu Students Council and is the Web site for the Global Hindu Electronic Networks.
• The Islam Page - The name says it all; this is the page to go to for finding information on Islam. Near the top of the page, one has the opportunity to read the Qur'an in any of more than 20 different languages. There also are several different search tools available for the textual and topical examination of the Qur'an. As one searches further on the Islam Page, one moves into large subject areas of links, which include beliefs of Islam, Muslim character, comparative religion, and Islamic history. There are 20 pages of links on this site.
• Jainism: Jain Principles, Tradition, and Practices - This Colorado State University-maintained site is the best on the Internet in terms of Jain study. The links are gathered around ten basic categories, which include such areas as Jainism introduction, Jain texts, Jain images, Jain pilgrimages, Jainism in the eyes of others, directories and lists, slides, and regional organizations. The listed directory items seem quite small, but this seemingly negative feature also allows the searcher to browse through larger sections at a time (providing his or her eyesight is fairly good).
• Jewish Virtual Library - This library, once it is entered, is more like a living encyclopedia than it is anything else. One has options to click on, such as history, women, biography, politics, Israel, maps, and Judaic Treasures at the Library of Congress, with each launching a person into a different realm. The site is extremely well put together.
• Judaism and Jewish Resources Andrew Tannenbaum's site has been the premier gateway to Jewish resources on the Web for many years. When printed, the links comprise 29 pages of text. What makes that more impressive is that Tannenbaum has annotated all of the pages of links. This is the place to go to find resources. The table of contents on the first page is helpful in that one can link directly to the part of the site one wants to visit (say, "Jewish Studies"). It is a nearly flawless site.
• The Peace Encyclopedia - Yahoodi Communications, working with the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, has made available this creative and interesting encyclopedia. Under "A," such entries as abuse, antisemitism, anti-Zionism, apartheid and Israel, Arabs, Arabists, and assimilation appear. The encyclopedia is not solely focused on Israeli-Arab concerns, but that is certainly a major focus of it.
• Religions of the World - Minnesota State University's Emuseum is a kind of introduction to the major world religions. The opening page has a "clickable" world map showing how religious groups are concentrated geographically, with links to the specific religions: Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Animism, Christianity, and Hinduism. The information provided on these religions includes history, basic beliefs, terms, and links to other sites.
• A Shi'ite Encyclopedia - The encyclopedia can be viewed section by section, or it can be searched by keyword or concept. It also is available for download as a zip file. One can tell that a good deal of effort went into the encyclopedia by the size of the document and the efforts that have been made to make it available for searching and accessibility.
• Taoism Information Page - The title of this site makes it sound as if there is merely general information on Taoism provided, but that is quite misleading. In fact, this is a large and in-depth site offering links for commentaries and interpretations to the philosophical/religious writings of the Tao, as well as links to sites on Chinese philosophy in general. Other subjects are also addressed, such as Taoism and modernity, Buddhism and Confucianism, and Taoism and Martial Arts.
• Zoroastrianism Page - The single best Zoroastrianism Web resource for good information is the Zoroastrianism Page. Listed at the top of the page are several awards the site has won, including Study Web's Academic Excellence Award. What I have observed over a period of time is that the site keeps reliable information and is well-maintained