Subject Encyclopedias   Tags: background_information, encyclopedias, encyclopedias_subject, reference  

• Art/Architecture
• Business
• Communication/Media
• Criminal Justice/Law
• Education
• Environment
• Health/Medicine
• Literature/Language
• Music
• Philosophy/Religion
• Science/Technology 
• Social Issues
• Social Sciences
• U.S. History
• World History

Subject encyclopedias are a good starting point for researching a topic, especially an unfamiliar topic. The library provides access to hundreds of online encyclopedias, arranged here by broad subjects.

So why use these instead of Wikipedia? I suggest you use these in addition to Wikipedia, because unlike Wikipedia, the encyclopedias provided here are written by experts in a particular field, Wikipedia entries could be written by anyone; see the Wikipedia general disclaimer.