Research Guides: Journalism: Reference Sites (Dictionaries, Encyclopedias)

Free Reference Sites

Unfortunately, there aren't as many out there as one would think. Publishers still want people to pay for this information. And the lack of free competition explains the popularity of Wikipedia...

U.S. State Department Countries
Use the Countries & Areas tab. Overviews of each country, plus links to useful publications such as "Background Notes," USAID pages, and the Library of Congress Handbook for the country
World Factbook
Full text version of this handbook for quick facts and maps for every country, published by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Google - "Wisdom of the Crowds" approach when verifying facts
An important part of Google's ranking is popularity -- those sites that are linked to more frequently rise to the top. If you are looking for factual information, say the capital of Burkina Faso, I would scan several of your top results and see if they agree. What are the odds that several popular sites are going to be wrong about a factual piece of information? If they are, then it's the general consensus that is wrong, which would be interesting in of itself...