Few disciplines are as well supported by auxiliary reference material as history. There are a host of bibliographies on virtually any era, movement, or major event, as well as regional and thematic encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, chronologies, catalogs of special collections, and guides to historical literature. Some of these sources are available online, but most exist only in print, and savvy researchers know that this wealth of reference material can save them vast amounts of time otherwise spent reinventing the wheel.
There are also hundreds of encyclopedias and dictionaries devoted to particular regions, time periods, and genres. These vary widely in degree of scholarly sophistication and completeness. The difference in quality from one encyclopedia to another can be very striking. The best way to become familiar with these resources is to browse the reference sections in the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library. For online sources to browse some of the collections of reference works linked under "Online Reference Collection".
East Asia
China
Japan
Korea
Gazeteers are dictionaries of geography, typically organized alphabetically by place name.
The library has thousands of gazetteers, geographical dictionaries, and dictionaries of place names. Listed below are some examples. To find gazetteers for a specific place, search in the Online Catalog using subject terms "gazetteers" or "names, geographical". For example: