Best Free Reference

Created by the German National Library of Economics and the University and City Library of Cologne, this resource offers access to business- and economics-related literature, a calendar of scholarly conferences, a virtual reference desk, and more.

The National Hockey League marks its centennial by (how else?) digitizing its statistics archives—an endeavor six years in the making. Sports fans will be delighted with, for instance, stats on individual players, box scores for every game in history, and advanced searching and filtering.

This website offers a wealth of information about international business. The Global Insights section "provides international business and trade information on over 200 countries, the 50 U.S. states, as well as nearly two dozen industry sectors, and many of the world's trade blocs." The "Reference Desk" provides access to resources on international trade laws and statistical data sources for international business. In the "Tools and Data" section, researchers can access the MPI (Market Potential Index) and DIBS (Database of International Business Statistics) free of charge, as long as it's for academic use (users must register with the website using a .gov or .edu email address).

The organization known for defending freedom of expression and celebrating literature has launched an online archive with more than 1,500 hours of audio and video going as far back as 1966. These recordings of meetings, debates, and panel discussions offer a wealth of literary and cultural discourse.

From Germany’s National Railroad, this user-friendly site offers travelers a time­table for trains all over Europe—don’t leave home without bookmarking it.

Part of Europeana Collections, which offers access to digitized artwork, books, and more, Europeana Radio lets users stream more than 200,000 tracks, taken from archives from 12 European nations. Listeners are encouraged to aid classification efforts by tagging tracks by genre.

Through a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, WHYY-FM recently created a digital archive of episodes of Fresh Air (with streamable audio), the phenomenally popular radio show. Users can access this rich cultural trove, available via WorldCat.

Last year, the Library of Congress (LC) made available approximately 25,000 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. These detailed historical documents contain information such as street names, building materials, and property boundaries and are a boon to genealogists, historians, urban planners, and many others. LC will continue to add maps every month until 2020.

History lovers, rejoice. Virginia Common­wealth University Libraries and seven partner institutions present a new resource that curates ads, pamphlets, placards, and other ephemera from social movements such as women’s suffrage.

Those with wanderlust have a new tool—this site (also available as an app for Android and iOS) lets users find and book trips by bus, train, or airplane. Specifics on hotels and car rentals is included. The “explore” option lets the intrepid see all trips available from a given location.

The University of California (UC)–Davis Library has digitized more than 200 catalogs from wine distributor Sherry-­Lehmann, dating from the 1930s to the 1950s. Users are invited to transcribe the digitized data, making it more searchable. The library was also responsible for another crowdsourced wine-related project, Label This, a collection of wine labels from Maynard Amerine, a UC-Davis professor of viticulture and ecology.