The Best Online Encyclopedias



General Encyclopedias

Encarta (Concise) Encyclopedia
Encarta Encyclopedia is Microsoft's free concise encyclopedia which contains 16,000 articles and more than 2,200 photos, illustrations, maps, charts, and tables.
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Encarta Encyclopedia home page: encarta.msn.com at Microsoft.
Encyclopedia.com
Encyclopedia.com was created by Infonautics Corporation to provide Internet users with a simple, one-stop research site. Composed of high-quality articles from the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, the site links more than 50,000 diverse articles to the resources available on Infonautics' popular online research service.
Enter a keyword or phrase to search the Encyclopedia:

Encyclopedia.com home page: www.encyclopedia.com
The Britannica Concise
The Britannica Concise is a rich source of answers to questions about the full range of human knowledge, with more than 25,000 alphabetical entries, covering the arts, business, computers, geography, history, literature, medicine, philosophy, politics and popular culture.
The Britannica Concise offers a free alternative to the now fee-based online Encyclopedia Britannica , albeit with shorter entries.
Enter a word or phrase to look up (e.g. Edison):

The Britannica Concise home page: education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia/ at Yahoo.
Answers.com - Free Encyclopedia  - www.answers.com
Answers.com gives you free access to 4 million topics from over 100 dictionaries, encyclopedias, bios, tech terms, news, sports, weather, and much more.
Infoplease.com - Free Encyclopedia  - www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia
A current and comprehensive online encyclopedia, from the Columbia Encyclopedia, covering all the major branches of knowledge from astrophysics to Zimbabwe.
Wikipedia.org - Free encyclopedia  - www.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia is an international, open content, collaboratively developed encyclopedia. The project started on January 15, 2001. Find articles about Applied Arts and Sciences, Philosophy, Mathematics, Natural Science, Social Sciences, Culture and much more.


Subject Encyclopedias

Botany encyclopedias

A Modern Herbal - Botanical.com  - www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/mgmh.html
A Modern Herbal, first published in 1931, by Mrs. M. Grieve, contains Medicinal, Culinary, Cosmetic and Economic Properties, Cultivation and Folk-Lore of Herbs. Including:
 • Plant & Herb Index More than 800 varieties of herbs & plants.
 • Index of Recipes: A listing of 29 plants that include recipes.
 • Index of Poisons: A listing of poisonous plants.
 • Index of Over 1,000 Natural & Organic Products.
Botany Encyclopedia of Plants.  - www.botany.com
Botany.Com, the Encyclopedia of Flowers and Plants, is a complete resource for all of your Gardening Needs. It provides information regarding the general description of the plants, the various methods of cultivation, such as indoor or outdoor planting, soil and temperature requirements, pruning, and other important details, the means of propagation (seeds, cuttings, division, etc.), and the different varieties and hybrids. The directory of plants includes, annuals, bulbs, cactus, succulents, fruit, grass, water plants, herbs, spices, houseplants, perennials, shrubs, bushes, trees, vegetables, vines, crawlers and wild flowers.

Computer encyclopedias

TechEncyclopedia  - www.techweb.com/encyclopedia
Over 14,000 definitions of computer terms and concepts from CMP's TechWeb, online.

History encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Medieval Studies  - www.the-orb.net/encyclo.html
The Online Resource Book for Medieval Studies (ORB) is a cooperative effort on the part of scholars across the internet to establish an online textbook source for medieval studies on the World-Wide Web. In principle, authors of the various articles that make up ORB maintain their own articles at their own locations. Each article is connected to ORB's Title Index, which can be accessed at any time by clicking on the ORB icon anywhere it appears.
World Hyperhistory Online  - www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
HyperHistory Online navigates through 3,000 years of world history with timelines of civilizations (plus maps), people, and events.

Human Body & Medical encyclopedias

Anatomy of the Human Body
The Bartleby.com edition of Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body features 1,247 vibrant engravings - many in color - from the classic 1918 publication, as well as a subject index with 13,000 entries ranging from the Antrum of Highmore to the Zonule of Zinn.
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Anatomy of the Human Body home page: www.bartleby.com/107/ at Bartleby.com
MedlinePlus - A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia  - www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/encyclopedia.html
The A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia includes over 4,000 articles about diseases, tests, symptoms, injuries, and surgeries. It also contains an extensive library of medical photographs and illustrations.

Life Sciences encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Life Sciences (ELS)  - www.els.net
The Encyclopedia of Life Sciences is the largest and most comprehensive reference work ever published in the biological sciences. It is a unique and dynamic resource for the new millennium developed by the Nature Publishing Group.

Orient encyclopedias

Encyclopaedia of the Orient - North Africa and the Middle East  - www.i-cias.com/e.o
The Encyclopaedia of the Orient is a one-stop online resource which covers all countries and cultures between Mauritania in the west and Iran in the east, Turkey in the north and Sudan in south. It is exactly what the name indicates, an encyclopaedia. And even better everything is free. The Encyclopaedia contains original material, what you read here is written for this publication, only. The content is updated on a weekly basis.

Philosophy encyclopedias

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy  - www.iep.utm.edu
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a non-profit organization run by the editors. The Encyclopedia receives no funding, and operates through the volunteer work of the editors, authors, and technical advisors.
Most of the articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy are original contributions by specialized philosophers around the internet; these are identifiable by the author's name at the foot of the article.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  - plato.stanford.edu
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a dynamic reference work and is a publishing project of the Metaphysics Research Lab at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford University. Each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field.

How Stuff Works

How Stuff Works  - www.howstuffworks.com
HowStuffWorks.com is an award-winning online destination for anyone who wants to know how anything works. Articles explain how hundreds of things work, from elements of the human body to space-age technology. Recognized internationally as the leading provider of information on how things work, HowStuffWorks content explains the world from the inside out.