-the other press Features A Student’s Online Resource Tom Mellish OP Contributor Stuck at home, essay in the word processor, and wonder- ing where to start? Feel that you only have search engines, and web sites to choose from? Douglas Library has exten- sive resources for the studious. Either at the library or at home, the world is literally your oyster. Culled from the DC Library's site are and Dictionary.com. These resources are a critical asset to any paper or lab, if only to show the inter- est you have in the subject. Off-campus access requires a valid Douglas College Library card. Dictionary.com has to be the all-time favourite. You have the occasional pop-up window, but if you can see beyond this it is a fabulous URL to add to your favourites or bookmark. For reference, the library offer the Bartleby site at , where one can ref- erence major works including encyclopaedias, style and usage guides, quotations, books on religion and mythol- ogy, etc. There are a few too many ads at Bartelby, but a great line-up of information. The Xrefer reference engine is slicker, containing ency- clopaedias, dictionaries, thesauri and quotations from leading publishers. The oddities of the world can be found at the Guinness World Records site at ; the Longest Elvis Marathon was last week. Information Please at is almost too cluttered with almanacs, atlases, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias. Finally, the classic Old Farmer's Almanac at , offers advice like, “Don’t forget to ‘fall back’ on October 27. Daylight-saving time ends at 2:00 a.m., so be sure to set your clocks back an hour. Happy har- vesting!” For short biographical entries for well-known individu- als, look to the World Biographical Index at . Towards encyclopaedias, the DC library is linked to the following. The Canadian Encyclopaedia Online at gives a cute “on this day in history,” and the Columbia Encyclopaedia at claims to be the most complete and up-to-date encyclopaedia ever produced. Microsoft's Encarta Concise Encyclopaedia at is a bit busy, and apparently free if you paid for the CD rom. Chic, with little QuickTime movie clips of BC history, The Encyclopaedia of British Columbia at . The immaculate Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations at offers such gems as, “I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.”—Orson Welles. Quoteworld.org at offers a more focussed format, and you can get a refreshing quote-of-the-day emailed to you. There are many language references online at the DC library site—Thesauri, Dictionary, and Translators. The old Roget’s International Thesaurus of categories at stands next to Rogets Il: The New Thesaurus at of “Words Related and Opposite in Meaning.” If you want to look cultivated in your essays, The Oxford English Dictionary is the where the hors-d’ceuvre platter waits. The OED is part of our college’s Subscription Reference Databases. It can be accessed at ., For other Dictionaries in English, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and the Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable can be found at . The American online dic- tionary Mirriam-Webster Online can be found at . Retuming to Dictionary.com at , one can translate text and web pages instantly. Here you can find writing resources, grammar, usage, style guides, and writing tips. You can find daily crosswords and word search puzzles. If you have a question about words, gram- mar or language, log on. There are periodicals, newspa- pers, classic text, and a language discussion forum. There are dictionaries in German, Greek, Latin, Spanish, and much more. Roget’s Thesaurus is also at to find your synonyms and antonyms. Dictionary.com is accessible from your mobile phone. Have a Word of the Day emailed on a regular basis to increase your vocabulary. A not too shabby French-English Dictionary is sattarder at , and a Chinese-English dictionary is at . An English-Spanish Dictionary is aparcamiento for you at . Over 265 online dictionaries in 73 languages can be found at Foreignword.com at . The global language resource includes a word of the day, endangered lan- guages, and Specialty Dictionaries. Students of MODL or ESL may benefit from Translation links. The Babel Fish at AltaVista Translation will translate a block of text if you're in a bind. Free Translation.com at is another easy-to-use site that will give you the “gist” of foreign language text and web pages . October 23, 2002 Another etymology-based site is for those students or friends who are having babies. At /\atin.html you can learn phrases in latin, such as “Bona fide” which means “good faith”. Offbeat but cool—at the symbol site of http://www.symbols.com/ click on “index” then scroll down to “word index” or “graphic search.” A http://www.yuni.com/library less formal site is the Dictionary of Symbolism at that could provide more cross-referenc- ing between symbols, but you get the general idea. If you are pondering over grammar, look no further. The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation at is a reference guide and workbook. Then there is the CCT'C Guide to and Writing hosted by Capital Community College. A guide to grammar and style can be found at . Right Words newsletter articles, at might get you through. The Forest of Rhetoric at is Brigham Young University’s guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric. UVic’s Writers Guide at = will keep your essay on track. An MLA Guide for Writing Research Papers can be found at . A Guide to Citation Style Guides is at and links to at least 16 different style guides. Douglas College's own style guides (in pdf format) are located at ehetpidi/ilibraty.douglas.bc.ca /style.html> Sharp Points at , is all about To keep in touch with current events, Newspapers Online is a poor man’s guide (popup city) to online newspapers. The classier MagPortal.com houses categorized and searchable free magazine articles. Worldwide can be found at News Directory.com . Full-text news releases can be found at the Canada Newswire site . Grammar matters of style. Directories A plethora of classics, of literature and otherwise, are at Project Gutenberg berg.net>, and _ the < http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/ >. Beyond the above listed, the DC library offers a wealth of full text databases in the form of journals, magazines, online