Literature Notes - e.g. "Cliff's Notes"

SparkNotes.com - An excellent site containing notes and summaries for all popular and common books.  The site is organized, and their information is very relevant.  Usually, both summaries and commentary is provided.  The site is absolutely free, and you don't even have to give them your email address.  Also contains "Cliff's Notes" for other subjects such as Chemistry and Physics, but they are not as complete and relevant as the Literature Notes.

PinkMonkey.com - Another excellent site, very similar to SparkNotes.  However, the information from each site is not exactly identical, so it is advisable that you read the summaries from various sites to get a better understanding of the topic. These people also have notes on topics like Math, Physics, American Government, etc.

Cliff's Notes - These are the real Cliff's Notes that you can buy at a bookstore. Best of all, they now have free online versions.

Classic Notes - As the name suggests, they provide notes and summaries for the classics, i.e. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  The content seems to be pretty extensive, and summaries and analysis are usually both given, along with character definitions and other useful information.  Once again, it will be to your advantage to read multiple sites to get a better understanding of the topic and/or book.

A Book a Minute Notes - As the name might suggest, these are ultra condensed summaries of books.  You obviously will not get a lot of details, but it's still useful for helping you understand the main theme or plot.

Beowulf - A study guide to Beowulf.  Offers summaries and some analysis.

My Personal Notes - These are the notes that I created while studying for tests/quizzes.  However, they are very condensed, and if you did not read the story, you will have absolutely no idea what the notes are saying.  Thus, THESE ARE NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR READING THE BOOKS.  Also, some of the sections to certain books are missing.  They were either deleted or I never made them for some special circumstance.  Sorry.

Online Essays, Papers, and Book Reports

PlanetPapers.com - These guys seem to have an extensive collection of essays and papers on a wide range of topics.  Before viewing a paper, you are given it's word count, number of total views by other users, and their ratings.  The site is very organized and easy to navigate, and is a excellent "starting point" for anyone in search of sample essays. 

CyberEssays.com - Compared to some of the other sites out there, this site isn't half bad.  They have a good sized collection, it's absolutely free, and there aren't any distracting or misleading advertisements.  

Studyworld.com - Here you will find essays, texts, and biographies on many historical figure and events.  However, their collection is vastly incomplete, and many sections that they plan to have in the future are not working yet.  However, you can still use what you can find.  Topics include American History, Moral Issues, and Biographies.

123HelpMe.com - Free essays on many popular books, including Macbeth, Hamlet, Death of a Salesman, Scarlet Letter, and more. They also rate their essays, green being best, red being "student written."

CollegeTermPapers.com - In order to gain access to their database, you have to submit your own essay or report first, making this an unlikely choice for non-desperation students, unless you feel comfortable giving out your essay or report to the world.  It is stated very clearly in their privacy statement that they have the power to distribute, show, comment on, and/or sell whatever you submit, so take caution.  If you really want access to their files, which really aren't too bad, you could always put in bogus information, set the category to miscellaneous, and paste a few lines of junk into the box (doesn't matter what it is, it'll take it), leave the bibliography blank, and submit.  The script that handles the submissions isn't very smart, and it'll take just about anything.

FreeEssay.com - Essays on Popular Books - A medium sized collection of essays on popular and classic books.  You won't find too much, but you can still use whatever you can find.

FreeEssay.com - AP Essays - The size of the collection here is absolutely tiny, but due to the high quality work that they produce, this site still gets a 4.  These are good examples of what they want/expect on AP tests and maybe even Freshman college papers.  If you can find your topic here, use it well.

EssayWorld.com - When you first arrive at this site, don't use the search box labeled "What Topic Is Your Essay On?"  That box is an advertisement, and you'll have to pay for whatever results it finds, and in my opinion, the results aren't even that good.  Click on the essays tab, and use the 2nd search box (the one labeled "Search for Essays using the Essayworld Database"), or you could browse be category.  Their collection isn't very extensive, but they do provide word counts.

PaperCamp.com - There is an amazing amount of essays and reports on this site, but unfortunate you have to pay for most of them .  When you enter the site, click on the Free Papers option to get a list of papers that you can view immediately w/o choking over a credit card number.  However, their database of free reports is rather limited, and each report isn't very extensive.  In fact, there are even some broken links on the site.

My Personal Essays - These are a collection of essays that students wrote for Honors American Literature.  They are to be used only as examples of what some other students in the H. American Lit class wrote.  Please note that not all of these received an A grade (in fact, very few did...), and they are certainly not perfect.  However, they are real life examples written by Juniors at SPHS, so they can still be quite relevant and useful, both in content and writing style. 

Other Resources

Dictionary.com - An excellent site for doing vocabulary work.  It searches several dictionaries at once, so even if you can't find it in one, so you get several definitions from several different dictionaries in a single search.  It even has dictionaries for other languages, but some are either extremely slow or completely unresponsive.  

The Merriam Webster Dictionary Online - Need I say more?

Online Book Search - A search engine made by the University of Pennsylvania that actually gives you full text books online.  Very useful if you lose your book the night before a test or essay...  However, I've only used this engine once for practical purposes, so I'm not sure about the size of their library.

SAT Vocabulary Preparation - Some guy on Geocities decided to build word list that would help students score high on the SAT and "still be used in life."  However, few of these words are seen on the popular high frequency word lists, so their relevance could be challenged.  However, if you have time, memorizing these certainly won't hurt.
Note:  Due to filtering, you may not be able to access this site from certain public computers.

Honors American Literature Notes - I made these notes myself to study for Honors American Literature tests during my Junior Year.  Although my collection isn't even close to being complete, you can make good use of what's here.  Once again, if you did not read the stories, these notes will make absolutely no sense to you.