The Best Online Encyclopedias

Answers.com gives you free access to 4 million topics from over 100 dictionaries, encyclopedias, bios, tech terms, news, sports, weather, and much more.

A current and comprehensive online encyclopedia, from the Columbia Encyclopedia, covering all the major branches of knowledge from astrophysics to Zimbabwe.

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.

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.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.

Over 14,000 definitions of computer terms and concepts from CMP's TechWeb, online.

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.

HyperHistory Online navigates through 3,000 years of world history with timelines of civilizations (plus maps), people, and events.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.