Official Quiz Bowl Organizations
College Bowl -- The original quiz bowl, now considered to produce sub-par questions for too-high prices, yet still a staple of the quiz bowl circuit. NAQT -- Created as an alternative to College Bowl, the "National Academic Quiz Tournament" organization is generally considered to provide better questions and more enjoyable play. Here is where the power toss-up has its root. ACF -- Created by Carol Guthrie of Tennessee and University of Maryland players in protest to "College Bowel," the "Academic Competition Foundation" was dissolved after a few years. It was resurrected as the "Academic Competition Federation" and has come to be known as the home of the truly vicious, "hard core" academic question. TRASH -- The opposite extreme of ACF, "Testing Recall About Strange Happenings" exists for those who relish the questions rejected or tokenized by other formats as "trash." Movies, sports, pop music, Viagra, this is the format.
Online References Approved of by the Team
Wikipedia -- This user-edited, constantly growing encyclopedia is currently the most used reference by the team. Although one can find an article on almost anything on the site, varying article depth is an issue. The Reference Desk -- Dwight Kidder's very large index of online reference sources. An excellent place to start looking to find information on anything. Encyclopaedia Brittanica Online -- As complete as EB has to be, unfortunately restricted to paying customers. Information Please -- Another excellent reference source, it tends to have good breadth at the cost of less depth. Good for finding surface-level facts, especially to use for deeper research elsewhere. Shakespeare Online -- It figures that someone at MIT would put the complete works of the Bard online. I still prefer ink and paper, but this comes in handy now and again. You can grab single scenes, acts, or even entire plays as individual pages, whatever's most convenient for you. It even includes annotations, and lets you search for specific passages in any or all of his works. Encyclopedia Mythica -- An absolutely outstanding online mythology reference. DEK rates it 5 out of 5; my extremely limited knowledge of mythology and I have no reason to argue. Chinese to Celtic to Greco-Roman to American Indian to Arthurian legend, it's all here. Internet Classics Archive -- A great collection of classical texts, from the histories of Thucydides and Livy to the Confucian Analects to Aesop's Fables. Guess what? This one's hosted by MIT as well. Internet Movie Database -- A good place to find information on movies, for those who actually study trash (?!?), or just need some more information when writing trash questions. (ed. - Movies are not trash!)
Online Quiz Sites (not necessarily QB-related)