The show ran for years and the panel’s experts became celebrities as they displayed both their knowledge and wit to a national radio audience. The show’s creator thought a reference book with answers would be a good companion to the show and have wide appeal. The first “Information Please Almanac” was soon published. The almanac is still published today, more than 50 years later.

Information Please is now part of the Learning Network and the web site “Infoplease” continues the tradition with millions of useful and interesting facts in its searchable database. Infoplease offers a wide variety of information beyond what is usually available in Almanacs. “Combining the contents of an encyclopedia, a dictionary, an atlas and several up-to-the minute almanacs loaded with statistics, facts, and historical records, Infoplease places the resources of an entire reference information center at your fingertips.”

What is particularly pleasing is the depth of information available and the ease in finding what you are looking for. The home page seems, at first glance, to be disorganized and without a discernable structure. It becomes obvious after using the site for a while why it seems so. Information is presented about every conceivable subject whether it is today’s news, or the important scientific discoveries of last year. Each day the important events occurring that day in history are quickly available, as well as your horoscope, movie highlights or sports scores. Its just too much stuff on too many subjects to organize on a single web page.

For those searching for detailed reference information, a site dedicated to the subject area might be a better bet. But, for a combination of news, news analysis, supporting information mixed with an encyclopedia and an almanac this site is a keeper in your browser “favorite” list.

There’s not a lot of humor used in Infoplease as there was in the old radio quiz show, but that sacrifice doesn’t harm the usefulness of the web site.