Research aids

Wiki compilation of acronyms (alphabetical and by category), definitions, casual expressions and more. Also has a conversion engine.

Internet publisher of literature and reference works giving unlimited access to books and information on web, free of charge.

Service that provides a simple method for searching and ordering documents from British Library's extensive collections.

A 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English.

Service to search the holdings of the UK’s national libraries (including the British Library), many University libraries, and specialist research libraries.

Gateway access to the Library of Congress's own catalogue and to those of many other institutions. Amazingly comprehensive. Website is, however, slow to open.

Service offering over 10,000,000 fully accessible books and texts.

Sketch Engine contains 400 ready-to-use corpora in 80 languages, each having a size of up to 20 billion words.

This is a subscription service (30-day free trial available).

An online corpus service offering the chance to tap into the resources of the Collins Word Web.

This is a subscription service.