Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) is a free Internet-based collaborative multilingual encyclopedia containing more than 15 million articles (more than 3.2 million in English) written by volunteers around the world. Wikipedia is currently the largest and most popular general reference site on the Internet and covers an amazing variety of subjects, including everything from word definitions to people and personalities to current events, history, science, technology, entertainment and much more. Launched in 2001, the project is supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

Most of Wikipedia’s articles can be edited by anyone who has registered access to the site. Although the policies of Wikipedia strongly support verifiable information and a neutral point of view, the occasional cultural bias as well as reliability and accuracy have been criticized. However, an investigation by the journal Nature found that the material the journal compared came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopaedia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors." The journal noted the importance of Wikipedia as an encyclopedic reference and also as a frequently updated news resource.

The name Wikipedia is a word combining wiki and encyclopedia. Wiki is the Hawaiian word meaning quick, but in modern usage refers to a technology used in creating collaborative websites.

Some other useful reference web sites:

http://www.britannica.com/ web site of Encyclopaedia Britannica

http://www.bartleby.com/ Bartleby Publishing, a gateway to standard reference books online

http://www.encyclopedia.com/ provides access to The Columbia Encyclopedia, Oxford’s World Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia of World Biography and many others

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/ hosted by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). The site is a loosely organized, community-contributed forum, with entries on just about anything.

If you’d like to carry your Wikipedia encyclopedia references with you for school, business or just for fun, there’s the Wikireader,(www.thewikireader.com $99, annual update subscription $30), which brings the world of Wikipedia, to your pocket or purse in a stand-alone device. WikiReader holds more than three million entries from the online site and is quickly and easily searchable for information by keyword(s) entered in the on-screen keyboard.

You can check previous searches via the History feature, or use the Random feature to find, well, random entries just for fun. You never know what you will come up with using random searches. On the practical side, when we saw a flag showing a rattlesnake and the quote "Don’t Tread On Me," we checked the Wikireader and found a long history of the Gadsden flag, dating from the early years of this country and symbolizing freedom, military units in the American Revolution and even some roots in the early Confederacy. Very cool.

Wikireader’s 3.5-inch touch screen has a virtual keyboard and selection and scrolling functions. The clear, easily readable text-only LCD screen is not back lighted, so you’ll need good ambient lighting to view. Wikireader is so compact, portable and easy to use we found ourselves carrying it with us all the time. Information has never been easier to find.