I have a number of reference books in my collection: Columbia Encyclopedia, Cambridge Encyclopedia, the Compact OED, the Concise OED, Oxford Companion to English Literature, Harvard Dictionary of Music, and so on. I haven't opened any of them in a while though. I now mostly rely on the Wikipedia for a number of reasons, the most of important of which is that it has articles that wouldn't be found in a print reference. It's very good for pop and contempory culture and language. I've used it to find the definitions of sex slang like "blumpkin", "dirty sanchez", "sybian", and "pegging". Considering how it's compiled, its reliability can be questionable, but the better articles provide references. I like to browse by following the hyperlinks or searching whatever comes to mind.

Wikipedia is fantastic, but I still love my actual reference library. I have one entire shelf - behind the dining table, where it is most often needed due to after-dinner discussions - devoted to reference.

Brewer's is one of my favourites, too; I also like Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Slang, although I've had to stop the teenage daughters from using it to impress their friends...

Other than that, there is the esoteric section, with Parker's Astrology and Astrology for Dummies being the most thumbed, but also sporting books on tarot, runes and demonology; the gardening and wildlife section with a worn out Collins Guide to British Wildlife; books on music, science, history.

The art books take up a complete book case of their own; The 20th Century Art Book is the most used there.

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style,the MLA, The Chicago Manual of Style, online dictionaries, my ancient Webster's which accompanied me to college packed on the family dinosaur, (for sentimental reasons-and I love the thin onion-skin pages), Amelia Peabody's Egypt, The Joy of Cooking, and the Random House Word Menu- a dictionary/thesaurus with the words organized by topic...for instance, biology, photography...used in the opposite way you use a dictionary. For example: I need to know what the doo-hickey that holds a camera on to a tripod is called-so I would look under photography, tools and equipment.

We have the usual encyclopedias and dictionaries. However, now we use the Internet sites more than we use the books. I do have a Tabor's Medical reference that I use quite often. The one that gets the most use is probably the latest edition of The World Almanac and Book Of Facts. I look at it first as it's quick and easy to use and quite often has just what I need.

If I were building a reference library, I would also get a GOOD Bible concordance. It's surprising how often someone will use something that sounds like scripture, but you aren't really sure that they know what they are talking about.

Great idea for a thread! Am I the only one who read the encyclopedia from start to finish as a kid? I started with our Golden Book Encyclopedia, perfect for kids. Then we got World Book and I was in second heaven. I also poured over the World Atlas, still do.

Now - I have Websters Theasaurus, Websters Dictionary, Encyclopedia of Literature and Bartletts Familiar Quotations. I don't use them as much any more, but I still find going to the hardcopy is sometimes faster than finding info online!

And I still pour over the atlas. I use Natl Geographics huge one. I also have a smaller travel one that helps me when I am reading historical fiction or travel (wish more authors would include maps!)

Online, I use Google. I have figured out how to shift out the more trustworthy links from the junk (tho sometimes the junk is fun). I also use Snopes.com when I want to know if a urban legend is true. This is esp helpful when I receive one of those spam emails that just don't sound right.

I avoid Wikipedia like the plague. Until they figure out how to edit out truth from fiction, its not something I want to use as a reference.

The Phrase and Fable never leaves my nightstand.
As a lover of British Literature, I often refer to British English from A to Zed. Also, since many of my favorite authors are dead, and consequently, they wrote in the vernacular of years gone by, I have a small collection of old dictionaries. One could argue that one OED would solve all of my problems, but I like to have a dictionary handy and so have them all over the house. Another good one for lovers of old books is the Standard Dictionary of Facts put out by The Frontier Press Company. Mine is copyrighted 1917. It has a little bit of everything from short bios to natural history to literary characters. I love it and if I run across another one, I'll buy that one, too...to keep upstairs.
PAM

I often find references to ancient gods and goddesses and rely on Bulfinch's "Mythology." For general art history, I like the illustrated books of Sister Wendy. I could not live without my Larousse French dictionary, as well.

In addition to the Internet, my most used reference books (at home) are regular dictionaries of Icelandic, English and English/Icelandic, of unusual words, religions and beliefs, culinary and menu terms, and of Icelandic and English usage. I use dictionaries in something like 10 different languages on a daily basis at work.
Other reference books I use regularly are Icelandic and English grammar, an atlas, the names of Icelanders with etymologies, Icelandic feasts and holidays and their origins and traditions, The Birds of Europe, and cat breeds (I paint animals on rocks and those cat books have come in quite handy when I have been painting an unfamiliar breed).

I yearn for a set of leather-bound OEDs and Britannicas, but those will have to wait until I get a house with a room I can use for nothing but books. The Web is very useful for finding information, but nothing beats being able to reach out and grab a solid reference book.

Cece, my college Webster's is the 7th edition. What is yours? I do find I need my glasses to look anything up in it now, though.

Agnespuffin,I have a Strong's Bible Concordance and, believe me, you have to be strong in order to lift it.

Somehow I don't think your posting about "Don't go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me" by Paula Begoun or "The Southern Living Garden Book" but those are two highly referenced books in my library.

Carolyn-
The SECOND College Edition!
cece...the ancient one

One reference book I found fascinating in high school and after was the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, a standard reference commonly referred to simply as "the CRC". In high school, I liked reading about the various elements and looking up organic compounds and their properties. I suspect every lab had one somewhere. When I went to college and later to work, it was an invaluable reference. I also used the CRC Standard Mathmatical Tables and Formulae for the log tables necessary in the pre-handheld-calculator era and the integration formulae. I also bought and used Perry's Chemical Engineer's Handbook for grad school and work. I used to browse it for ideas for solutions to problems I was working on.

Other than my music refrence books (of which I have way too many to count) I often use resources requiring other languages so I heavily rely on my English/French, English/German, English/Spanish and English/Italian Dictionaries. Due to my interest in aesthetic criticism of contemporary music and literature I refer to my Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory and Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. As for a regular dictionary, I use my computer's widget and I generally use online encyclopedia's as I have membership through several universities. I also use my Webster's Thesaurus, Oxford Dictionary of Music, MLA Handbook and The Chicago Manual of Style.

When I was growing up I would come upon a lot of interesting items in the World Book Encyclopedia that I wasn't looking for in the first place. Sometimes I think kids today miss out on this type of serendipitous reading when they use the internet. So, when my kids get just a little older I plan to buy a set of encyclopedias. However, I'll still use an internet version for checking some things.

I use many of the references previously mentioned. In addition, because I love to read Victorian novels, I have a copy of What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew(From Fox Hunting to Whist - the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England) by Daniel Pool. In addition to chapters on various aspects of life it has a useful glossary.

I have a Britannica in one of the widely-despised Pro/Macro/Micropedia-format editions, but it's still one of the most-used references in this house. Because of the format, I usually end up on the floor surrounded by about 6-8 volumes. :)

Cjoseph, I have a late 70's edition of the CRC, which I excitedly ordered for myself once I was out of school and had enough money to purchase it. I thought it one of the most useful references ever during school, but to my chagrin, I've used it probably only a dozen times since graduating. What I've used more often is the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms and the M-H Encyclopedia of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.

As others have mentioned, invaluable references are an unabridged dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus & Bartlett's Quotations. I also frequently use a rhyming dictionary, Oxford Guide to English Literature, the Timetables of History, and Clute's Guide to Science Fiction. For buying presents for my sister from eBay, I keep a Florence's Guide to Depression Glass next to the computer. :)

I have several Audubon and Peterson Field guides, and although I like all my bird guides (including the very beautiful Sibley guide), I keep the Stokes book by my binoculars for backyard birding because it's compact yet has all the information on one page per bird, without having to flip from picture to map to text.

cheryl

Cheryl, one funny thing happened to me when a procedure called for the use of "waterglass" in building an experimental apparatus. Nobody in the lab knew what it was, and I looked through every technical reference in the library that I thought might have a definition including the CRC and the McGraw-Hill. Nothing. After a couple of days of frustration, I was sitting in my reading chair, and on a whim grabbed my Concise OED and looked up the word. There it was: sodium silicate.

>When I was growing up I would come upon a lot of interesting items in the World Book Encyclopedia that I wasn't looking for in the first place

Thats usually what would happen to me - I'd see something that would lead to something else and next thing I know I am reading the volume. And yeah, I think kids miss out on this (this trait got me in trouble at grad school tho. I'd be in the library looking for specific articles, but the whole journal would have some interesting things and three hours later I was still standing in the stacks reading, um, somthing that did no pertain to my topic at all....)

Oh, I forgot: Oxford Spanish/English Dictionary and 500 Spanish Verbs, both of which are getting rather worn down. And I also have some professional references like Ling's Speech for the Hearing Impaired child and Ages and Stages.

cjoseph-okay, I admit it....I thought the punchline was going to be that they wanted you to use an actual "water glass" (I don't know-to catch a liquid distillate?) like the ones you would set on the table for dinner-but it was SO obvious that all you scientists didn't get it!

cece

Cece, you can't possibly be more ancient than I! I looked again at my Webster's Collegiate. It is copyrighted in 1951 and says it is based on the second ed. of the Webster's International Dictionary.

carolyn we have a 1949 edition of Webster's New Collegiate. It has a label on the fly-leaf 'presented to . . . my Grandmother's name . . . with the compliments of G & C Merriam Co.'
I don't use it much as I have enough trouble with English spelling let alone American.

cjoseph, my DH the bio chemist latched straight onto sodium silicate, tells me it was used as an egg preservative as its clear liquid sets to a glass-like coating and remembers using it to make a crystal garden in early chemistry lessons.

Carolyn:
Mine is the Second College Edition of the Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language-Complete Reference Edition
...so we may be comparing Winesaps to Macintosh here-both apples...just slightly different versions!
The original copyright is 1953. The edition copyright is 1972.
And the binding is giving way-it needs a treatment in the repair workroom at the library.

Now, you have hurt my feelings!!! I got shoes older than your dictionaries.

Waaaayyy back in the early 1950s, I bought a one volume An Enclycopedia of World History. It has an unusual format (at least it's unusual to me) in that it takes each country from it's begining. Breaking down the basic information about that country into time periods with a short paragraph or two about the situation then. So it's possible to compare what was going on in each country within just a few pages. Then, for a more detailed look at whatever I want, I go to my Britannica. I have found that comparing what was going on in...oh, say, China and Sweden in 1340-1380 is fascinating.

>The edition copyright is 1972.

Mine is the 72 as well. Now and then when I am looking up a word, I find a petal or leaf still stuck in the pages. When I was in college I had a thing about flower pressing and that was the heaviest book I could find. I just forgot where I put them all! Nice little time capsule, finding those.

>So it's possible to compare what was going on in each country within just a few pages

Oh, I completely forgot - I have the Timetables of History: A horizantal LInkage of People and Events. Fascinating to use when one wants to see what is happening in several places at a certain time. China and Sweden would sound interesting, may need to check that out.

And I also was a big fan of hisoritcal minutia - loved the People's Almanacs from the 70s, not just for the trivia, but for the myth breaking essays on history that taught me tons more than I learned in school.

I also have The Queens of England by Norah Loft and The Lives of the King and Queens of England, ed by Antonia Fraser. They both are invaluable for their short and distinct summaries that are quickly read when I am in the middle of a book and need to know background fast.

Vee, I knew I was turning into everybody's grandmother.

To you others of grandmotherly age, I salute you. Shoes older, indeed.

Oops, your talk of Websters and encyclopedias reminded me. The most used (and showing it) of all reference books is my beloved Websters, which my dad gave me nearly thirty years ago. I was an ungrateful child and secretly wished for an OED, but grew to love the Webster for its etymology. It now gets used in tandem with DH's Collins.

Another heavily used one is my Harmsworth Encyclopedia from ca 1923, 9 volumes. The greatest delight in using that over the Wikipedia is the sidetracking - the wonderful snippets of useful information which one comes across while looking for the right page.

I love my Anchor Atlas of World History, esp when I'm reading ancient history and I'm trying to remember the historical place name vs the modern one.

Thank you to everyone for some great suggestions!

Another book I often refer to is the Oxford Book of Foreign Words and Phrases.

Now thats a book I could use. I hate when I'm in the middle of the book and the author decides to toss in a phrase that only the characters understand. If there is no way to understand the phrase in context, I get really miffed. So that book would certainly releave some stress!

Yes, the Oxford Book of Foreign Words and Phrases would be great to have.

I loved World Book Encyclopedia as a kid too, and my kids enjoyed it too. I always liked those clear pages in the human body section.

I use dictionary.com a lot now, but the book I look in the most is the Sunset Western Garden Book.