Reference Sources

What are reference sources?

Reference sources are places to find facts. They can be printed, like books and posters, or digital like online encyclopedias or interactive maps.

Some examples are:

almanacs - up-to-date facts about a topic, published each year
encyclopedias - facts organised by topic
atlases - facts shown as images (eg maps, photographs)
dictionaries - word meanings organised alphabetically
thesauruses - synonyms (words that mean the same as other words) organised alphabetically

Reference sources are good for finding out the background facts about a topic. They are not good for giving opinions.

You need to put the facts together with your own knowledge to come up with your own opinions.

Is Google a reference source?

Reflect and gather your thoughts on this, then click the drop down arrow on the right to check if you are right.

Google is NOT a reference source. But is it a place to find reference sources.

When you do a search, Google displays information from relevant sites to try to answer your question. It displays where it got the information. You should always visit that site and decide whether it is reliable before believing it. Learn more about making this decision on the BPS library Orbit homepage.

In this resource guide you are encouraged to find sources yourself as well as using the ones available here. Kidtopia is a custom search engine that shows only sites that have been selected by teacher librarians for their quality, reliability and relevance to your school work. You don't have to weed out the adds or deal with the rubbish results you sometimes get. Try it out for yourself!

Reference Sources in this Guide

The reference sources Guide are:

World Book Online (online encyclopedia)
Britannica Kids (online encyclopedia)
Kids Wordsmyth (online dictionary)
Oxford Atlas Project 2 (print atlas)
World Atlas (online atlas)

Image by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine via Flickr CC0

BPS Library Reference

Click the arrow on the right to read about what the BPS Library offers.

BPS Library offers print and online reference sources. You can use the print ones in the library, but you will need permission to borrow them.

Some of the print reference sources available in the BPS Library are:

Almanacs:

Guinness Book Of World Records
National Geographic Kids Almanac (international edition)

Encyclopedias:

World Book Encyclopedia (available in Print and online - use BPS Library log in)
The Macmillan Junior Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and the Environment
The Kingfisher Football Encyclopedia
My First Dinosaur Encyclopedia

Atlases

Oxford atlas project. 2.
The Australian Animal Atlas
Scholastic Atlas of Weather
The Children's Atlas of Natural Wonders

Dictionaries

The Macquarie Dictionary
The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary
Mandarin Chinese English Visual Bilingual Dictionary
Scholastic Science Dictionary
Scholastic Rhyming Dictionary

Thesauruses

Collins New School Thesaurus
The Concise thesaurus

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