The Complete Reference Collection contains an encyclopedia, a world almanac, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a writer’s handbook, a world atlas, a geographical dictionary, a home medical guide, a world history encyclopedia, an Internet directory of Web sites, and multimedia (including animations, pictures, slide shows, sounds, and videos). 

Encyclopedia offers more than 5,000 text articles from Compton’s Concise Encyclopedia in a multitude of subject areas.

Almanac gives you access to a wide variety of statistical data in the form of text articles and tables from the 1997 edition of The World Almanac and Book of Facts.

Dictionary/Thesaurus lets you look up word meanings and synonyms from Webster’s New World Dictionary and Webster's New World Thesaurus—together containing almost 100,000 entries. Although the dictionary and thesaurus are two separate books in The Complete Reference Collection, they work very closely together.

Writer's Handbook comprises the complete text from The Merriam-Webster Concise Handbook for Writers that can help you become a better writer.

Atlas represents a collection of more than 300 maps that let you explore the world. The collection includes maps of the world, all seven continents, every independent country, a number of dependencies, and certain key historical eras.

Geographical Dictionary lists over 41,000 entries (representing roughly 48,000 places) from Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary that can help you spell and locate cities, rivers, mountains, deserts, bodies of water, and other geographical features found on maps.

Medical Guide lets you explore information on health, safety, first aid, and diseases and their treatments in the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Complete Home Medical Guide.

History Encyclopedia includes nearly 9,000 articles from World History: A Dictionary of Important People, Places, and Events that describe historical eras, events, people, and places.

Internet Directory is a descriptive list of more than 4,000 Web sites and their addresses that link you to information on the World Wide Web.

Multimedia contains all the program’s animations, videos, pictures, slide shows, sounds, and tables (other than the tables in the almanac, the medical guide, and the geographic dictionary, which are included within the texts of those books), which are linked to related text articles and other information in the reference collection.