Some great sites to check out in 2010

The American Library Association's Eleventh Annual Best Free Reference Web Sites was released recently. Here are a few of the the highlights:

BBC Country Profiles

   "This site supplies information on the history, economy, and politics of countries and territories. Each profile includes an overview, map, facts, and current leaders. A media overview provides information on the press, television, radio, news agencies, and number of Internet users." - from the Best List 2009

The Blue Letter Bible

   "Containing 14 searchable versions of the Holy Bible, Blue Letter Bible offers an extensive insight into one of the world’s most popular books... Additional resources include charts, outlines, timelines, and maps, plus four streaming audio versions, are available from each passage’s page." - from the Best List 2009

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

   "This site is one of the fastest ways to find information about the exploitative practices of 4000 businesses worldwide, which would be difficult to locate by other means. Users can begin searching by company name, issue, country, or topic. Balanced coverage is provided via news, announcements, and special resources while providing responses from the accused companies." - from the Best List 2009

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

   "Sponsored jointly by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), this site provides select digital access to American newspapers from 1880 to 1910 and from mainly ten states." - from the Best List 2009

Online Conversion

   "This site boasts that one can “convert just about anything to anything else.” And with 50,000 conversions and 5,000 units, it has an impressive range. Sure, it has the popular conversions: length, temperature, speed, volume, weight, cooking, area, fuel economy, and currency. But it also contains measurements for women’s clothing sizes between countries, light-years, density, torque, horse height, meeting room size needed for attendees, gauge and much more."  - from the Best List 2009

Check out the full list for other best-of sites, including the American Presidency Project, PubChem,  and Lexicool