Every useful library has a good collection of dictionaries, biographical directories, glossaries, quote books, encyclopedias, chronologies, statistical abstracts, and gazeteers. If yours doesn't or that ready reference book can't readily be found, try some of the growing resources available in the virtual library shelves of the Internet. Don't be frustrated by finding a great title in a search, but being denied access to the resource.
Time is money, spend it well.
Be skeptical about the reliability of the search engine, ask questions of the resource provider to make sure you are using the resource properly. Don't think that if you can't find it on the WWW there isn't anything on the topic. While Internet resources are growing quickly, there are billions of valuable reference books that are not, and probably will not, be available through Internet access. The Internet is a good source of supplementary information for some kinds of information searches. With those cautions understood, let's look at some examples of ready reference sources on the Internet.