Phone Directories, Maps & Expert Sources

Phone Directories:

• Telephone Directories. Switchboard and Yahoo! People Search are among the computerized telephone directories that allow name searching with limited address information.

• Criss-Cross Directories. InfoSpace has valuable criss-cross directories that enables users to find names and phone numbers with addresses only. Reporters also can easily find neighbors' names and phone numbers.

• Phone Number Reverse Directory. InfoSpace, InfoUSA and AnyWho provide a reverse function that enables users to find addresses and resident names with just the phone number.

Maps:

• Mapblast, Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest give users the ability to quickly call up detailed maps of any area of the country, down to the specific location on a block.

• World Atlas from Mapquest.

Expert Sources:

• ProfNet and the National Press Club have databases that reporters can search by area of expertise to find potential sources. Reporters' queries also can be posted via ProfNet and MediaMap's SourceNet.

• The Poynter Institute creates a new site several times each month for major current stories.

• Kitty Bennett, news researcher at the St. Petersburg Times, has created a one-stop site for finding expert sources.

Other Desktop News Sources:

• Encyclopedias. Find the full-text versions of  the Columbia Encyclopedia and InfoPlease, which has almanacs and encyclopedia.

• Congressional Research Service. CRS, a research arm of Congress, provides legislators and congressional aides excellent non-partisan briefing papers on many complex issues. CRS environmental-related reports are available through the National Library for the Environment.

• Issues Background. Public Agenda Online provides detailed background on a wide variety of public policy issues.

• Fast Demographic & Economic Facts. The Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States contains a wide range of statistics describing various social and economic aspects of the country.

• CIA World Factbook. Political, economic, demographic and geographic information on the world's nations.

• Story Ideas. Tip sheets on more than 18,000 investigative stories, provided by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.

• Math Help. Robert Niles' site for the math-challenged journalist.

• Conversions. ConvertIt provides calculators to convert various measurements, time zones, etc. Another good conversion tool is Online Conversion.

• Inflation Adjuster. Columbia Journalism Review's inflation calculator allows users to quickly convert dollars from a past year into recent years' value, adjusted for inflation.

• The Elements of Style. William Strunk Jr.'s classic work on the rules of writing and grammar.

• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Insert part of a famous quote and find the correct citation, or search by source. Also available is Simpson's Contemporary Quotations.

• Roget's Thesaurus.

• American Heritage Dictionary.

• Literature References. Bartleby provides full-text of many literary reference books.

• Web Ownership. Uncovering the registered owner of a commercial Web site (ending in .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, name) is a two-step process. First, go to Internic WhoIs, which will tell you the registrar of the site. Then go to that specific registrar (look for the whois button on that site) to learn who the Web site is registered to and to get contact information.  For international Web addresses, go to Domain Search.

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