Reference books provide background information on a topic, such as definitions of terms, key figures and events, and well written overviews. They can be a useful starting point for any research project, because they fill in missing knowledge about the topic or provide you with the language of the discipline.
Selected books from our Reference collection:
State of the world's children : celebrating 20 years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child : statistical tables
Atlas of global development : [a visual guide to the world's greatest challenges]
The state of health atlas : mapping the challenges and causes of disease
Eurostat regional yearbook
Statistical analysis quick reference guidebook : with SPSS examplesFrom the Department of Natural Resources, Canada comes an excellent electronic resource: the The Atlas of Canada.
Search selected dictionaries and encyclopedias from Oxford University Press:
Examples:
Search Sage Knowledge for indepth, authoritative background information on social sciences topics.
"The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. "
