Reference Desk

Ask a Librarian
Librarians from the Library of Congress help answer reference questions. Users can e-mail questions in or chat online during designated times.

CyberSleuth – Kids
Directory for an online search engine and guide for the K-12 students.

Fact Monster 
On-line atlas, almanac, dictionary and encyclopedia.

Internet Public Library Youth Division
IPL homework help, fun facts, and projects.

Merriam Webster Dictionary Online

Sweet Search
A search engine that searches only the sites that have been reviewed and approved by a team of librarians, teachers, and research experts.  In addition to the general search engine, Sweet Search offers five niche search engines.

RefSeek
A search engine designed for academic use. Ref Seek seems to eliminate the advertising and paid links found on Google, Ask, Yahoo, and other commercial search engines.  Ref Seek’s intention is to serve only search results that are academic in nature.

KidRex
A new kid-safe search engine powered by Google custom search. KidRex uses a combination of Google’s safe search mode and their own database of filtered keywords, phrases, and websites. In the event that a questionable website does get past the filters, KidRex has a site removal request form.

Famhoo
Another option for kid friendly searches. Famhoo draws on the collective results of the major search mainstream search engines like Google, AOL, and Yahoo. Famhoo simply provides a stricter family filter than the filters available on mainstream search engines.

Ask Kids
The kid friendly, kid safe version of the popular search engine Ask.com. Ask Kids is divided into categories of which one is a general search option.

Wolfram Alpha
A computational search engine. If students have any questions involving numbers, Wolfram Alpha is the place to go.