At a time when so many Americans not only disagree about public policies, but can’t even agree on basic facts, print and online reference tools play a critical role in meeting the need for accurate—and authoritative—information.

According to a May 2025 survey, just under half of all responding adults said they think they see false or misleading information online every day. Amid the growing ecosystem of fake news and misinformation spreading online, library reference tools provide carefully vetted information that is trustworthy and reliable.

“In an era of rampant misinformation and digital overload, the demand for authoritative sources has never been more critical to ensure accuracy, trust, and informed decision-making,” says Courtney Peckham, product manager for EBSCO Magazine Archives. “Fortunately, tools like academic databases and magazine archives address this critical need.”

What’s more, as technology improves, publishers are leveraging digital features to enhance the research process by making it easier for students, scholars, and the public to find useful information. By linking related content and adding rich metadata, publishers are taking online research and scholarship to another level.

Whether students are researching what life was like in the 1950s for a term paper, scholars are comparing interpretations of biblical quotes, policymakers are looking for research to support their decision-making, or community members are trying to learn about the customs of a foreign country they’re about to visit, new reference tools and capabilities are making these tasks easier than ever.

Here are some notable developments in reference tools for libraries.

American Geosciences Institute

Founded in 1948, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is a federation of about 50 organizations representing earth science fields. AGI used to be called the American Geological Institute, but the organization changed its name in 2011 to reflect that it represents a diverse array of fields beyond geology, including mineralogy, paleontology, seismology, and hydrology.

The organization’s flagship reference tool, GeoRef, is the world’s leading bibliographical index of geoscience-related research and information. Created as a print publication in 1966, it’s now a subscription-based online database containing more than 4.7 million references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports, theses, and dissertations from around the world—with about 100,000 new records added each year.

GeoRef is “the most comprehensive bibliographic record in the geosciences,” says Tia Colvin, director of scholarly information for AGI.

An invaluable tool for anyone doing geoscience-based research, the GeoRef database covers the geology of North America from 1666 to the present and the geology of the rest of the world from 1933 to the present. Its bibliographic records span 26,000 different serial publications in 40 languages from more than 100 countries.

GeoRef is compiled and maintained by a team of about 35 people, including native speakers of the global languages whose records it encompasses. “All of our editor/indexers are geoscientists themselves,” Colvin says, “so every record we produce is from someone who understands what they’re reading.”

Each record includes the full bibliographic information about its source, including title, author, serial and page number, ISSN, and, where appropriate, a link to the digital version. For sources available online, users can click on the link to read the full text of the article—provided they have access rights through their library.

Users can search the database for records related to multiple keyword search terms at a time. They can refine their searches by specifying a date range, source type, language, or publication. Users can also specify whether they want to see search results that include only an abstract or a link to the source’s full text.

More than 2,000 institutions worldwide subscribe to GeoRef, including public and university libraries. GeoRef subscriptions are available to libraries from various AGI partners, including EBSCO.
One thing that makes GeoRef unique, Colvin says, is that its editor/indexers visit libraries worldwide to look for books that aren’t available online. “That means we can also reference items that aren’t just available from a web crawler,” she notes.

The GeoRef project also offers a variety of specialty databases that provide access to unique and specialized content. These databases are designed to meet the needs of researchers, educators, and students in highly specific areas of the geosciences, such as groundwater and soil contamination. Because many of these databases were developed with federal grant funding, their bibliographic information is available to the public free of charge.

For instance, the Scientific Ocean Drilling Bibliography (https://iodp.americangeosciences.org/vufind) enables users to search for bibliographic records of research and information from various ocean drilling projects from 1969 through the present.

A unique aspect of this database is that users can search for information geographically. “We put in the map coordinates for each entry wherever we had those available,” Colvin says, “so if you draw a rectangle on the map, you can see all of the references in that area of the world.”

EBSCO Business Source Ultimate

With access to 3,696 full-text journals, including many peer-reviewed publications, Business Source Ultimate is the world’s most comprehensive and highest-quality business research database. It provides business case studies, company profiles, economic and market research reports, and other key information for business students and company executives alike.

“We continuously strive to make Business Source Ultimate a must-have foundation for libraries and other institutions that support business research,” says Dave Mangione, senior vice president of research databases for EBSCO. “Business Source Ultimate stands apart from other business research databases owing to several key advantages tailored for researchers at academic institutions and public libraries.” 

Business Source Ultimate provides researchers with essential business journals such as Harvard Business Review, Management Science, Marketing Science, MIS Quarterly, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Fortune, and many others, plus business videos from top providers such as the Academy of Management and the Associated Press. It also includes rigorous curation and indexing of open-access journals, which has resulted in a growing collection of 2,070 OA journals.

What’s more, the database’s hundreds of global journals from countries worldwide add an international perspective to business research. And ahead-of-print content keeps business students current with the latest business news and trends.

Business Source Ultimate also includes archival content dating back decades; this makes it valuable for longitudinal studies and historical business research. For example, Harvard Business Review articles are available as far back as the early 20th century. 

This impressive scope makes the database a one-stop resource for business research across many disciplines, such as management, economics, finance, accounting, and international business.
But its comprehensive coverage is just one of the resource’s advantages. Superior indexing and abstracting and an exceptional user experience also set Business Source Ultimate apart from the competition.

The database’s highly detailed indexing leverages a controlled vocabulary of subject terms to optimize discoverability. This allows users to perform precise searches and retrieve highly relevant results.
In addition, the EBSCOhost platform offers features that support both novice and expert researchers, such as advanced search filters; citation tools that support APA, MLA, and Chicago styles; persistent links; and mobile-friendly access. 

Users also have the option of using a streamlined user interface tailored specifically for business researchers, the Business Source Interface (BSI). Distinct from the traditional EBSCOhost interface, the BSI offers an intuitive platform for exploring country economic data, company profiles, industry insights, market research, and more.

The BSI offers a clean, modern look, with improved navigation and a visually appealing design that makes research more efficient using “topic tiles.” The BSI Company Discovery Pages enhance business research by offering a rich, consolidated view of company-specific information, including detailed company profiles and integrated content modules such as SWOT analyses, industry reports, case studies, videos, and links to top competitors.

Business Source Ultimate integrates seamlessly with other EBSCO databases to which institutions subscribe. The ability to search across multiple EBSCO databases both improves efficiency and expands the scope of the research experience.

“Business Source Ultimate helps students find academic business journal articles more quickly than other products and provides our best access to Harvard Business Review,” says a business librarian at a California university. And a liaison librarian at a North Carolina university says, “I find that Business Source Ultimate is a crucial resource for both our researchers and our library. Its comprehensive coverage, user-friendly interface, and emphasis on academic rigor make it an indispensable tool for enhancing research outcomes.”

EBSCO Magazine Archives

EBSCO is probably best known for its research databases that are continuously updated with newly published content from thousands of serial titles. But the company’s Magazine Archives are a little different, in that each product includes digitized content from the back issues of a single title.

Each magazine collection goes back to volume one, issue one, of its respective publication. There are currently 27 different titles available, with two or three new titles added each year—and each collection is sold individually.

The collections include Architectural Digest from 1922 to 2011, The Atlantic from 1857 to 2014, Bloomberg Businessweek from 1929 to 2010, Ebony from 1945 to 2014, Esquire from 1933 to 2014, Food and Wine from 1978 to 2010, Forbes from 1917 to 2010, Life from 1936 to 2000, The Nation from 1865 to 2020, People from 1974 to 2000, Sports Illustrated from 1954 to 2000, Time from 1923 to 2000, Travel + Leisure from 1970 to 2010, U.S. News & World Report from 1926 to 1984, Vanity Fair from 1913 to 1936 and 1983 to 2015, and more.

“Our customers really like these collections for a number of reasons,” says Product Manager Courtney Peckham. “They’re excellent for giving a historical perspective on trends, issues, and events. There are also operational advantages. Librarians no longer must retrieve this content from bookshelves. They fill in gaps created by lost or damaged issues. They also free up library shelving, which is a huge plus. Our customers often tell us they’re very squeezed for space.”

A key advantage is that EBSCO sells its Magazine Archives for a one-time fee that provides perpetual access. This means libraries can use grants or other temporary funding sources to buy these products. “If they have money to spend at the end of a fiscal year,” Peckham says, “they can invest in these one-time purchases without having to worry about how they’ll pay for access the following year.”

The collections are fertile grounds for exploring and can be used as powerful teaching tools. For instance, the Sports Illustrated collection is valuable for researchers interested in the rise of professional sports in the 20th century, the growth of high school and college athletics, and the emergence of celebrity culture. In Vol. 3, issue 9 (Aug. 29, 1955), an article excoriating Willie Mays for not hustling after a ball that got by him in the outfield—in which witnesses agreed he had no chance to throw out the runner at home—could be used to spark a discussion on race and whether it was a factor in how Mays was covered.        

Capturing each week’s news, Time magazine is an important source for researchers studying just about any aspect of 20th-century history and life. Students can search for content about a historic event, such as the Iran hostage crisis from 1980 to 1981, to see how it was reported during its time. 

The archives also capture every advertisement from each issue, and the ads are tagged with keywords as well. “The ads are a great resource for understanding cultural history,” Peckham says, “such as how cars were marketed over time and how women were initially not the target audience.”

Pricing for the Magazine Archives depends on several factors, including the size of an institution and which other EBSCO products it currently subscribes to.

Bloomsbury Digital Resources

A division of Bloomsbury Publishing, an independent global publishing house with offices in London, New York, Sydney, and Delhi, Bloomsbury Digital Resources seeks to enhance the learning experience for students, teachers, scholars, and librarians with innovative, engaging, and dynamic tools and content—including primary documents, historical archives, and audio/video resources online.

Bloomsbury Digital Resources brings together content from its publishing partners and imprints and packages this material with rich metadata to enable easy discovery. “We don’t want great material to be lost in the sea of information,” says Academic Publishing Director Kevin Ohe.

Enhanced metadata is just one way the company is looking to improve the user experience. By linking related content, “we’re pushing digital scholarship forward,” he notes.

A good example is the Arden Shakespeare Play Collection: Text and Language, a new database launched in October 2025 as part of Bloomsbury’s Drama Online digital hub. 

This online Shakespeare collection includes digitized versions of the content from two seminal print-based works: Arden Early Modern Drama, which adds non-Shakespearean Renaissance and Restoration plays from 1500 through 1700 to The Arden Shakespeare Third Series’ modern-spelling editions of the Bard’s plays and poems, complete with full commentaries; and The Arden Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language, a two-volume set that focuses on the use and meanings of Shakespeare’s words in context.

Not only is all this content online for the first time—but these resources will also be fully linked, so when students click on a word or phrase in the text of a Shakespeare play, they can instantly see a definition or explanation of its meaning. The database works the other way as well. If students or scholars click on a term defined in The Arden Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language, they’ll be taken to the exact spot in the play (or plays) where it’s used.

The database will also include videos of live performances of the plays, giving students and scholars a much richer way to experience these works.
“We’re living the promise of what digital can do,” Ohe says.

In 2024, Bloomsbury acquired Rowman & Littlefield’s academic and professional publishing business. The same year, the two companies co-published The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, a 24-volume set of Freud’s works as originally translated by James Strachey and now revised, supplemented, and edited by Mark Solms, a neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, and Freud scholar.

In August 2025, these works became available in electronic format through Bloomsbury Digital Collections. The digital version of The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud includes easy-to-navigate links to each section of every volume in the collection, and it’s fully searchable across all 24 volumes through a single search interface.

Rowman & Littlefield is also well known for its Historical Dictionaries series of print-based reference books exploring the history of individual countries. Bloomsbury Digital Resources is in the process of digitizing the content from these definitive historical resources, and the company soon will launch a fully searchable African History Reference Library, spanning more than 50 countries and events from antiquity to the 21st century.

Bloomsbury is also unveiling a comprehensive African American History database covering key events or eras in American history—such as slavery, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Civil Rights Movement—from an African American perspective. Bloomsbury acquired ABC-CLIO in 2021, and much of the content for this database comes from ABC-CLIO textbooks and digital content. 

Both the African History Reference Library and the African American History database will be available in a new cross-searchable Bloomsbury History online hub beginning in January 2026.

One of Bloomsbury’s strong suits as a publisher is its focus on religious and biblical studies. Theology and Religion Online (TARO) is a cross-searchable online hub that assembles the best of the company’s digital resources in this scholarship area.

The hub’s collections include the Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries, one of the most trusted and long-running scholarly commentary series for biblical studies, accessible to scholars and nonspecialists alike, and the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, a six-volume, state-of-the-art reference tool with more than 6,000 entries and 7 million words explaining Bible verses from nearly 1,000 contributors—as well as Eerdmans Bible Commentaries. In January 2026, Bloomsbury will add T+T Clark Bible Commentaries to the hub as well.

“As the number of online commentaries grows, the value this adds for researchers is significant,” Ohe says. “Bible scholars can read a passage and see instantly what multiple scholars have said about it in the past. We’re trying to make the scholarly process easier.”

Bloomsbury Visual Arts is an interdisciplinary hub designed for research and learning across design, art, architecture, and related fields. It brings together the company’s best arts-related resources within a single, cross-searchable platform that can be explored by subject area or collection—and Bloomsbury has been adding new content to this platform as well.

For instance, the Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture shines a spotlight on female architects working from 1960 to 2020. The content is cross-searchable with other material in the Bloomsbury Visual Arts hub, including collections such as Bloomsbury Architecture Library, Bloomsbury Design Library, and Architecture Design & Practice Online.

Women now make up at least half of all architecture students in many countries, but until now, students, scholars, and professional architects have lacked authoritative, globally connected histories of female architects who can serve as mentors, peers, and forebears. With more than 1,000 biographical entries and 600 images, the encyclopedia introduces users to the notable and often overlooked women in this field from more than 135 countries—forming a groundbreaking new area of historical scholarship.

“Most of these architects are unknown,” Ohe says. “This online resource brings to light these names people should know.”

Another recent addition to the Visual Arts hub is the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of New Media Art, a definitive guide to art in our technological world.

This landmark reference work examines the history and theory of art produced with electronic media, such as graphic design, computer animation, gaming and robotics, 3D printing, and AI-generated content. An indispensable guide for students and scholars of art history, applied arts, new media studies, museum studies, and STEM disciplines, the collection explores the artists and works that are pushing boundaries in the digital arts. It also includes articles addressing topics such as the ethical considerations of creating new media art and challenges to curation and preservation.

Art can often seem esoteric, Ohe says, and the Bloomsbury Visual Arts hub “helps make the topic accessible.”

World Trade Press

Founded in 1993 by Publisher and CEO Edward Hinkelman, World Trade Press produces reference books, databases, and ebooks that help people better understand the world around them. 

As an importer and exporter with degrees in economics, Hinkelman had traveled to more than 60 countries by the time he was 27. He founded World Trade Press to collect and publish information that would enable people to be successful internationally.

Initially, the company’s products were intended for businesspeople, traders, and logistics professionals. Now, they target all audiences, including students doing research and travelers visiting a new country for the first time.

Its flagship product is Global Road Warrior (https://globalroadwarrior.com), a subscription-based online database with information about 174 countries. As the most extensive country-by-country resource in existence for learning about culture, food, customs, history, and language, Global Road Warrior gives libraries a single, centralized information set for the countries of the world.

Each country guide features more than 200 key pieces of information, including the nation’s business culture, climate and weather, communications protocols (such as emergency numbers and a cell phone dialing guide), gift-giving customs, greetings and courtesies, spoken languages and glossaries of essential terms, health and immunization requirements, holidays and festivals, money and banking, points of interest, tipping norms, and more. 

“More than 1,200 libraries license the product, with a 94-percent renewal rate,” Hinkelman says.

Of all the content within this database, the food-related information—which includes a brief article about each country’s cuisine and five sample recipes—has proven the most popular. To give subscribers more of the type of information they most desire, World Trade Press has introduced a resource called AtoZ World Food (https://www.atozworldfood.com).

This subscription-based online database contains more than 7,000 traditional recipes for 174 countries in all course categories: appetizers, soups, salads, breads, main courses, side dishes, desserts, snacks, and beverages. It also covers food culture with more than 1,400 articles for these countries across six categories: National Cuisine, Regional Cuisine, Daily Meals, Dining Etiquette, Special Occasion Foods, and Food Trivia. 

“If you ask your library for a cookbook featuring Mexican or Italian recipes, chances are that’s not a problem,” Hinkelman says. “But if you ask for Norwegian or Moroccan recipes, that’s another story.” With AtoZ World Food, libraries can provide information about truly global cuisines.

World Trade Press has seven full-time employees whose only job is to research and add new recipes from countries around the world, Hinkelman says. The company is also compiling separate cookbooks for several countries. These are currently available in ebook format at https://www.theglobalkitchen.com.

One of the first resources that World Trade Press published back in the 1990s was a Dictionary of International Trade, which covered important topics for traders, shippers, and logistics personnel—such as specifications for air- and ocean-freight containers, information about the largest airports and seaports around the world, and explanations of “incoterms,” a set of 11 internationally recognized rules defining the responsibilities of buyers and sellers.

This guide has been the company’s bestseller over the years, with more than 400,000 copies sold. It has been updated numerous times, and the current version—at 840 pages—is the Dictionary of International Trade, 14th Edition: Handbook of the Global Trade Community by Edward G. Hinkelman, January 2025, ISBN 9781607800576.

While it’s an essential resource for international shipping and logistics companies such as FedEx and UPS, it’s also a useful reference book for libraries, Hinkelman notes.

Overton 

Founded in 2018 by Euan Adie, who previously created Altmetric, the London-based firm Overton aims to improve policymaking around the world by linking policy and research.

With more than 23 million records from 185 countries, Overton Index is the world’s largest database of public policy documents. It’s a searchable online index of policy-related information that researchers and government employees can use to learn about the policymaking landscape.

“We’re interested in getting the right evidence into policymakers’ hands,” Adie says.

The company does this in three ways: by connecting researchers with policy documents, measuring the impact of research on policymaking, and helping researchers engage more effectively with government agencies.

Overton Index helps institutions achieve these first two goals, and Overton Engage supports the third objective. 

“We define a ‘policy document’ as any document written by or for a policymaker,” Adie says. This includes not just official government documents, but also working papers, analyses, research briefs, think tank reports, transcripts from public committee hearings, and other “gray” literature. 

Although the database includes legislation, “we’re more interested in how the policy was formed than the actual law itself,” he notes.

Overton also identifies and tags the research, people, and other policy documents that each database entry quotes or references. This means researchers can use Overton Index to track the impact of their own work on policymaking to support grant, promotion, and tenure applications—and institutions can use it to see how their work is changing or influencing real-world practice.

Searching the database for “gun control legislation,” for instance, yields about 76,000 search results, including Pew research showing broad support for background checks in the U.S. and a University of Sydney study on the effects of firearm regulation in Australia. Users can filter the results by country, state, or territory; public or private sector; source type; document type; year or date range; and other characteristics.

“Someone from Florida State University, for instance, could run a query showing all the policy documents about tobacco control from 2022 on that cite research from their institution,” Adie explains. Research offices can compare the influence of their own university to that of peer institutions to see where they might improve.

Whereas Overton Index can reveal the impact researchers and their institutions have already had on policymaking, Overton Engage can help grow this impact.

Overton Engage is a database of policy-engagement opportunities. It collects calls for evidence and expertise in one place, so researchers can see where governments are asking for help and find ways to contribute to public decision-making.

“If I’m a researcher who studies climate change, I can find out where government agencies are looking for climate change experts to sit on a working group or present evidence in a hearing,” Adie says. “It’s similar to a database that researchers would use to find grant opportunities, but instead of grants, they can find opportunities to influence policymaking.”

Overton’s databases are licensed to research institutions on a yearly basis, and the cost depends on the size and scope of an institution’s research outputs. About 250 institutions worldwide currently subscribe.

For more information and to request a free trial visit Overton’s website.

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