Almanacs

Almanacs are filled with a wealth of quick facts and information. Whether you want to know who was the 23rd U.S. president, the square mileage of California, when a popular actor was born, how to convert miles into inches, or who won the Super Bowl last year, an almanac should be your first stop.

Almanacs are invaluable when you need to check or clarify basic facts while doing your research. For example, let's say your research paper mentions that a person was governor of Ohio in 2002. You will help establish your credibility in your paper by correctly identifying if this person is still governor or is a former governor. This fact would be very easy to check in an almanac.

Finding information in an Almanac

To find information in an almanac, you must use its table of contents or index.

The table of contents is located at the beginning of a book and gives a helpful outline of the major parts of the book. Here you'll find the titles of chapters and sections in the book and the page number on which each begins. The contents in a table of contents are arranged according to their appearance in the book. 

The index is located at the back of the book. It is an alphabetical list of keywords, concepts, topics and other useful materials that appear in the book and the page numbers where these are located in the book. 

Table of contents and an index page from the 2000 World Almanac

Hint: The table of contents is useful for finding the general section of the almanac with information on the topic you're researching whether it's health, sports, education, taxes, or year in review. The index is useful for finding specific page numbers for individual items of information.