Whether you need some facts and figures to fill in your reporting about a place (a plane crashes in Mountain Home, Ark., and you've never heard of the town), or you are going somewhere and you need to scout it out before you get there (you are going to NashCAR and want to know more about the country music capital), there are some great gazetteers, groovy guides and helpful handbooks available about almost any location on earth.

You can book a flight, book a room, check the weather, chart an itinerary and print out a map.

Here's where to go before you go:

Maps

The U.S. Gazetteer http://www.census.gov/main/www/access.html

The Census department has put together a one-stop shopping site for maps and Census materials. You can select either the Map Stats for a variety of statistical profiles of states, counties, cities or go to the U.S. Gazetteer and zoom in on an area map with labels customized to your needs.

BigBook www.bigbook.com

Got your hotel reservation, but need driving instructions or a map of where to go? Use Big Book to get details about your destination. The maps are zoomable, the directions easy to follow.

Yahoo Maps http://maps.yahoo.com/yahoo/

Another great service from the good folks at Yahoo. Plug in an address and city and a map will be drawn for you. Zoom in or out, rotate further north or south. You can get point-to-point directions, with a map of your starting and ending points.

City Info

Yahoo www.yahoo.com

Yep, Yahoo, again. When you want to check out what is going on in a city, get some background on the government there, find the local weather or television station or newspaper site - just go to Yahoo and click on United States and then select the state and city you want. Their compilation of information is well organized and you can run through sites with all that kind of background information and things specific to that area. A virtual guidebook.

And if you want to find other travel guides, go to Yahoo's Travel section (under Recreation and Sports) and on Destination Guides. You'll get a listing of great sites with travel information for various cities in the United States and around the world.

Planes and Trains

Almost every airline you can imagine has a website (usually just type in the name of the airline for the address), but if you want to see what flights are available, check out:

Yahoo's Flight Information Site http://yahoo.flifo.com/

I love this site. Put in where you want to fly from, where you want to fly to, when and what time of day and you'll get back a variety of options. Specify an airline you want to use, or see all the possibilities. They'll give you the prices, and you can even buy the ticket.

Amtrak www.amtrak.com

Don't let fear of flying stop you. Take the train. Trakrouter has four different ways to calculate the best route.

Lodgings

Travelweb www.travelweb.com

Tell them the city, even the hotel chain, if you have a preference, and you'll get a list of the available hotels. Click on one of the hotels, and a page with everything you could possibly want to know will be displayed. Click on "area info," and it will tell you how far that hotel is from some of the sights in that city. Nora Paul can be reached at (813) 821-9494, or by e-mail at npaul@poynter.org

If you have suggestions for this column, e-mail Nora Paul at npaul@poynter.org.