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This user-friendly Gale database contains primary sources from the 19th to 21st centuries that are sure to appeal to people interested in modern counterculture and social histories, along with progressive political and societal movements. 

This Gale database offers a distinctive look into the history of American environmental conservation.

Reference works contain entire worlds, arranged, indexed, and designed to support research and exploration. These aids—hefty both in physical form and in depth and resonance—provide new interpretations, offer access into decades of academic work, and foster fresh ways of thinking.

Free reference sources, vetted, smart, and endlessly useful, are a rich resource for scholars and students. Here are our five top picks for 2023.

Databases foster deep research, expansive reading, and a myriad of inquiry avenues. These 10 tools, covering food, Shakespeare, study skills, and much more, are our selections for the best databases of 2023.

HeinOnline’s revamped, improved, and expanded iteration of Congress and the Courts provides a broader contextual foundation to analyze judiciary systems and actions.

The United States Geological Survey’s topoView offers access to maps in a way that's educational and entertaining.

This database project offers free, comprehensive, unprecedented access to three decades of material about Asian Pacific American history, culture, politics, and news, all published in AsianWeek. 

Drawing from multiple disciplines, the Bloomsbury Food Library enables users to explore niche aspects of food history and their wider implications in historical and sociocultural contexts.

Gale Business: Plan Builder effectively helps budding entrepreneurs, experienced business owners, and nonprofits create realistic business plans and analyze their business concepts.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Gale’s “Eighteenth Century Collections Online” (ECCO), the largest collection—32 million pages—of 18th-century books, pamphlets, periodicals, and other ephemera in the world. ECCO was revolutionary in providing researchers and students a text-searchable corpus at their desktops 24/7. 

In a world of continuously proliferating sources of information, finding and recognizing reliable information has become harder than ever before. To that end, the reference publishers featured here go to great lengths to ensure that the titles and databases they offer are accurate, free of bias, and genuine. 

Gale Digital Scholar Lab empowers users to aggregate large sets of digital humanities archival data while taking tech setup out of the process.

ProQuest One Psychology is an invaluable tool that provides access to a comprehensive collection of multiformat materials centered on psychology and counseling curriculums.

What’s the state of reference today? Members of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association, share their thoughts.

Kathryn Earle, managing director for Bloomsbury Publishing, discusses Bloomsbury’s signature style and shares insight into how their resources contribute to scholarship, research, and discovery.

Seth Cayley, vice president of global academic product at Gale, part of Cengage Group, offers insight into how Gale provides up-to-date content and innovative research tools for its users.

From film costumes to business statistics to the afterlife, 19 reference titles earned starred reviews from LJ since the start of 2023 through the November issue. 

Holly La Due, Princeton Architectural Press's editorial director, talks with LJ about the publisher’s reputation for identifying trends, visual culture, and broadening its scope of titles.

Librarian Sara Duff, vice-chair of RUSA CODES and chair of Notable Books, shares her thoughts on RUSA’s reference committees.

Publisher Roger Jänecke talks with LJ about Visible Ink’s distinctive approach to reference.

Digitization projects in Maryland, Montana, and Houston, TX, present a glimpse of current trends in digital archives, as state and city libraries work to create collections that reflect local and regional history.

Maps, atlases, gazetteers, and more pull readers into landscapes across the earth and sky, onto modern roads, and into history.

LJ’s database reviewers share their thoughts on databases that inspire, surprise, and offer new learning opportunities.

Walk through the doors of libraries across the nation where patrons are fully engaged in research and discovery. The staff at the Browne Pop Culture Library, a professor of library and information science and department chair of the Kennedy-King College Library, and the adult information services supervisor at the Springfield City Library offer tours and highlight the resources that enable scholarly pursuits in fields as varied as romance fiction, the African American diaspora, and changing city landscapes.

Top reference books for building collections.

Whether building circulating collections on hot topics or aiding scholars engaged in deep inquiry, these 780+ recent and forthcoming titles, organized by category, address a wide range of reference needs.

Set to be updated this cycle, consider these 80+ databases and online products. Arranged by category, these resources range from titles on the arts to those on travel and tourism.

Support research and scholarship with these 50+ new and forthcoming databases and online products, organized by category.

Designed by and for higher-education teachers in Spain, Latin America, and the U.S., Platino Educa delivers access to hundreds of hard-to-find Spanish-language and Portuguese-language films.

The documents and visual materials in this compilation detail the companies, events, and pioneers crucial to the 20th-century growth of the mass media and communications industry in the U.S.

Hiveclass gives time-strapped programming librarians guides and suggestions for creating active programs for all ages.

With its sophisticated search capabilities, support for primary-source literacy, and singular collections of primary-source material, this resource is a must-have for libraries supporting historical and political research of far-left political movements.

This first-rate resource is for anyone who wants to know more about the history, development, and evolution of educational policy, practice, and theory over the last century. Teachers, educational administrators, and policymakers will also benefit.