Trove of information.

One of the cool things about college is the load of secret stuff included in the tuition. Well, it’s not exactly “secret” — just poorly advertised. Based on a passing suggestion made by my Shakespeare professor, I went hunting around on our library’s website and found that we, as Tufts students, have access to a metric assload of Internet-based information. “I do not recall them mentioning this on my prefrosh library tour!” I thought indignantly. Then I remembered that I only took it to get a free Tufts mug, which is currently collecting dust on my desk at home, unused.

Really, though there’s all kinds of cool stuff I can get at: the OED, the Oxford Reference Collection (encyclopedias, bilingual dictionaries, maps, quotations, etc.), Lexis-Nexis, the Grove Dictionary of Music, and seemingly hundreds of other sources. I guess I figured that we had a lot of neat stuff, but the breadth and value of the material here is truly staggering. A personal subscription to OED Online alone is $300 a year. Part of me wonders if it’s worth it for our library to pay for all this, but the other part is screaming at me to take advantage of it and do a research project in my spare time.