Online Almanacs

By Pack, Thomas | Information Today, May 2003 | Go to article overview

Online Almanacs


Pack, Thomas, Information Today


Why turn to a quirky online publication like an almanac?

There are two kinds of almanacs, according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. It defines the traditional type as "a publication containing astronomical and meteorological data for a given year and often including a miscellany of other information." The other is a "publication containing statistical, tabular, and general information."

You can find both types on the Web.

For example, the Old Farmer's Almanac, published in print since 1792, offers a companion site (http://www.almanac.com) that's been online since 1996. It provides traditional almanac content, including astronomical info, weather forecasts, and gardening tips.

An example of the second type of almanac is CNN Daily (http://www.cnn.com/almanac/ daily). It offers general information, including news highlights, details on upcoming national and international events, and a list of historical happenings for each day of the year. Many other online almanacs offer both useful and useless information.

Traditional Almanacs

The Old Farmer's Almanac (http://www .almanac.com) gets more than 2 million hits per month, according to its editors, who describe it as "a mixture of practical, historical, and quirky information."

The following is an overview of the site's features:

* Weather pages offer detailed 5-day forecasts for thousands of cities and towns across the U.S. and Canada. A searchable weather history database contains weather conditions for 1,500 locations for any day since Jan. 1, 1994. Weather Lore pages explain such phenomena as tornadoes and droughts.

* Gardening pages include frost charts, planting tables, and source lists for seeds and flowers. * Astronomy pages offer charts and tables for various celestial events, including moon phases, comet and meteor appearances, and rise/set times for the sun, moon, and planets. a Cooking pages feature tips, recipes, and cooking charts.

* Household pages include tips and charts for homeowners. * Forums on gardening, astronomy, cooking, and other topics let you get involved in online discussions with other site visitors.

- An online Country Store allows you to buy almanacs, related publications (such as The Old Farmer's Almanac Favorite Cookies), calendars, charts, and even music (like the musical "Celebration of the American Farm"). You will find some of the same features at a similarly named site: the Farmers' Almanac (http://www.farmersalmanac .com). The editors of this site update their Weather, Gardening, and Best Days pages a few days before the beginning of each month. Also available are household tips; astronomy information; a message board; and fishing, gardening, and other calendars. Look in the site's collection of FAQs for information on such topics as how to get skunk spray off a dog, why ladybugs try to get in your house, how to use cricket chirps to tell the temperature, and how to get wax off a rug. The site includes an online store where you can buy not only printed editions but also downloadable almanacs and weather forecasts.

With so many databases, encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, and other serious reference resources available on the Web, why turn to a quirky online publication like an almanac?

The Farmers' Almanac editors provide a pretty good answer: "With an ever-increasing use of the Internet as a source for information, people sometimes ask us how the Farmers'Almanac will fare as we continue to move into a world of technology We simply say-as many of our readers tell us-that our success lies with the Farmers'Almanac's usefulness, its wit and wisdom, and its charm of days gone by." This Day in History The CNN Daily Almanac is a good place to go if you want today-in-history trivia. For instance, when I was researching this article in March, I discovered that on the same day in 1802, Congress passed an act calling for a library to be established in the U. …

The rest of this article is only available to active members of Questia

Already a member? Log in now.

Notes for this article

Add a new note
If you are trying to select text to create highlights or citations, remember that you must now click or tap on the first word, and then click or tap on the last word.
One moment ...
Default project is now your active project.
Project items

Items saved from this article

This article has been saved
Highlights (0)
Some of your highlights are legacy items.

Highlights saved before July 30, 2012 will not be displayed on their respective source pages.

You can easily re-create the highlights by opening the book page or article, selecting the text, and clicking “Highlight.”

Citations (0)
Some of your citations are legacy items.

Any citation created before July 30, 2012 will labeled as a “Cited page.” New citations will be saved as cited passages, pages or articles.

We also added the ability to view new citations from your projects or the book or article where you created them.

Notes (0)
Bookmarks (0)

You have no saved items from this article

Project items include:
  • Saved book/article
  • Highlights
  • Quotes/citations
  • Notes
  • Bookmarks
Notes
Cite this article

Cited article

Style
Citations are available only to our active members.
Buy instant access to cite pages or passages in MLA, APA and Chicago citation styles.

(Einhorn, 1992, p. 25)

(Einhorn 25)

1. Lois J. Einhorn, Abraham Lincoln, the Orator: Penetrating the Lincoln Legend (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 25, http://www.questia.com/read/27419298.

Cited article

Online Almanacs
Settings

Settings

Typeface
Text size Smaller Larger Reset View mode
Search within

Search within this article

Look up

Look up a word

  • Dictionary
  • Thesaurus
Please submit a word or phrase above.
Print this page

Print this page

Why can't I print more than one page at a time?

Help
Full screen

matching results for page

    Questia reader help

    How to highlight and cite specific passages

    1. Click or tap the first word you want to select.
    2. Click or tap the last word you want to select, and you’ll see everything in between get selected.
    3. You’ll then get a menu of options like creating a highlight or a citation from that passage of text.

    OK, got it!

    Cited passage

    Style
    Citations are available only to our active members.
    Buy instant access to cite pages or passages in MLA, APA and Chicago citation styles.

    "Portraying himself as an honest, ordinary person helped Lincoln identify with his audiences." (Einhorn, 1992, p. 25).

    "Portraying himself as an honest, ordinary person helped Lincoln identify with his audiences." (Einhorn 25)

    "Portraying himself as an honest, ordinary person helped Lincoln identify with his audiences."1

    1. Lois J. Einhorn, Abraham Lincoln, the Orator: Penetrating the Lincoln Legend (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 25, http://www.questia.com/read/27419298.

    Cited passage

    Thanks for trying Questia!

    Please continue trying out our research tools, but please note, full functionality is available only to our active members.

    Your work will be lost once you leave this Web page.

    Buy instant access to save your work.

    Already a member? Log in now.

    Author Advanced search

    Oops!

    An unknown error has occurred. Please click the button below to reload the page. If the problem persists, please try again in a little while.
https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-333695891/online-almanacs
www.questia.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-07
82098
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:PNLUSF2D3EDZE4FPSU2HVKKEPEN5HZZK
<urn:uuid:613a7daa-c7bb-4a03-b392-5e46cce78915>
2016-02-12T17:29:48Z
69.32.208.13
sha1:DR4742ZOSFJARZ7GWZVZXGVTLKASYIAA
<urn:uuid:20020c50-5818-473e-8deb-44763ee04fd4>
https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-333695891/online-almanacs
response
<urn:uuid:23213dc8-e32c-4609-8f2c-bcc9bae09c1e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-07
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf