dictionary, general encyclopedia, atlas, gazetteer, yearbook, almanac, handbook, biblography dictionary, book of quotations, index.
A general encyclopedia--usually a set of books, covers just about every subject. It has information about people, places, and things. Like a dictionary, an encyclopedia is alphabetically arranged. Every year parts of it are brought up to date, and a yearbook that goes along with it is put out. To help find informaiton, an encyclopedia has outside guides (letters printed on the spine of each book, showing what part of the alphabet is covers), inside guides (guide words on top of each page), headings and subheadings to break up larger subjects, and index. Some encyclopedias are devoted to only one subject, such ar religion. the sciences, psychology, or art. These are called subject encyclopedias.
An atlas--is a book of maps. It also contains charts, tables, and other geographical facts.
There are political maps to locate countries and cities, rivers and mountains; physical maps to show the highs and lows of the land; economic maps to show farming and business and industry; historical maps to show important places and events in history. To read a map a person needs to know the map symbols. These are explained in the front part of the atlas. The index in back helps locate places opon a map.
A gazetteer--is a geographical dictionary. Names of places, rivers, mountains, and so on are listed in alphabetical order. From a gazetteer a person can find out such facts as where a place is, how many people live in it, the height of a mountian, the length of a river. 'Webster's Geographical Dictionary' is an example of a popular gazetteer.
Yearbooks, almanacs, and handbooks are sometimes hard to tell apart.
A yearbook--mostly reviews the important happenings of facts of a particular year. Examples include encyclopedia yearbooks.
An almanac--comes out every year. But it concentrates more on giving up-to-date facts about hundreds of subjects, sports, births and deaths, foreign countries, famous people, radio and TV, dams and rivers. One of the best known is 'The World Almanac and Book of Facts'. It is one of the few reference books in English with the index in front.
A handbook--is a guide to a particular subject. Examples include 'Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology', 'Guinness Book of World Records', and 'Chilton's Auto Repair Manual'.
A biographical dictionary--is a book of important people's names, with facts about their lives. Order is alphabetical by last name. Some biographical dictionaries list only living people ('Who's Who'), others only dead people ('Who Was Who'). Some biographical dictionaries list people from many countries, others from only one country. Before using a biographical dictionary, it's important to know whether a person is still alive and what country that person comes from. Who is and isn't included is explained in the front part of the book.
A book of quotations--is used to find out who said something worth quoting and exactly what the words were. It's a collection of phrases and sentences, uaually from the works of many authors. But some such collections are from one author (Walt Witman) or work (the Bible). Quotations may be arranged alphabetically by subject or by author either alphabetically or by date, from ancient to modern times. Each such book has a large index that includes not only the subjects of quotations but also the key words.
An index--can be a book by itself. It tells where to find information and terms in other books or materials. 'Index to Plays in Collections', for instance, tells in which book or books a particular play can be found. To read an index, a person has to understand the many abbreviations explained in front of the book. A person may also have to ask the librarian for help in getting materials mentioned in the index. Generally not all of them are in the library.
You are on glossary page one (1).
Glossary page two (2).
Tutorial lesson/quiz.