e-resources: Oxford Reference Online

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Below is a review for Oxford Reference Online. Kindly supplied by one of our Community Service Students.

I am currently in year 12, studying mostly maths and science. Many (all?) of my resources come from books published by Oxford University Press. These resources included quick references, books, etc.

Things I liked about Oxford Reference Online:

• Subject specialisation search
• See recently viewed searches and content 
• Add new lines with different conditions in advanced search
• Highlight text for dictionary definition
• Annotate text

When finding information online, I normally use a search engine (Google). The results include many websites and webpages from all over the internet. Oxford Reference seems to use its own published books as resources (which they have a lot of) so the reference can be useful for viewing content from their books.

Would I use this in preference to a Google search? Probably not. Using a search engine is more convenient and has results from more different sources.

However, Oxford Reference does have potential to have more detailed information about some topics since it uses its published books as sources (rather than public websites).

Web searches on some topics such as history often only show a small number of useful results (Wikipedia, …) Oxford reference claims to have a reference library best for "conducting more comprehensive research on a specific topic, drawing from in-depth articles".

Overall, this online reference can be useful for browsing Oxford's books and possibly conducting deeper research.

What now?

• Add your thoughts in the comments below.
• Go to the catalogue and reserve
• Borrow an ebook.
• Review a book yourself