Reference Sources

• General
• Address / Phone Number / Zip Directories
• Almanacs and Handbooks
• Citation / Style Guides
• Careers
• Dictionaries, Thesauri, etc.
• Encyclopedias
• Maps & Atlases
• Money
• People / Biography
• Politics & Government
• Popular Culture
• Statistics
• Time & Chronologies

Helpful Tips and Hints

 Limited to HCC students, faculty and staff. Off campus access available with a library or e-Card barcode.

How to login from home.

 Freely available to all users

Citing database articles:

APA andMLA

Not sure where to start?

  Try our FAQ Search


Search many resources at once

  Library of Texas

 General Reference Sources

How to login from home

Reference sources provide short descriptive entries, overviews, definitions, numerical expressions, bibliographical references, and instructions about one or more subjects through multiple entry points.

• Acronym Finder

  
  An acronym and abbreviations dictionary. Find out what more than 4 million acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms stand for.

• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

  
  This tenth edition (1919) contains over 11,000 searchable quotations.

• Concise Columbia Encyclopedia

  
  A free encyclopedia.

• E-Library

  
  Provides full-text from more than 2,500 magazines, newspapers, reference books, and television transcripts -- plus thousands of pictures, maps, weblinks, and audio/video files. (Full-text).

• Encyclopedia Britannica

  
  The online version of the standard encyclopedia, covering a wide range of topics. Also useful as a guide to the World Wide Web, providing links to rated sites. Provides some magazine articles as well. (Full-text)

• Encyclopedia Britannica.com

  
  Free Version

• Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia

  
  Encyclopedia designed to meet the reseach needs of elementary, middle and high school students. (Full-text)

• General Reference Center Gold

  
  A general purpose database that includes the full text of many magazines and journals from a number of fields and disciplines. Good for popular, current event, opinion-oriented, practical, and how-to topics. (Some full-text)

• Handbook of Texas Online

  
  An encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture.

• Health & Wellness Resource Center

  
  Coverage of health information from medical journals, encyclopedias and pamphlets. (Full-text)

• Information Please

  
  A variety of reference sources in one place.

• InfoTrac OneFile

  
  One-stop source for news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics: business, computers, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health care, hobbies, humanities, law, literature and art, politics, science, social sciences, sports, technology, and many general interest topics. (Some full text).

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus

  
  Free dictionary and thesaurus.

• Occupational Outlook Handbook

  
  Authoritative guide to careers.

• Statistical Abstract of the United States

  
  A collection of statistics on social and economic conditions in the United States.