Databases

Streaming video, music & more!

hoopla

Stream movies, TV episodes, music, e-books, e-audiobooks and digital comic books…all for free with your library card! When you register for an account with hoopla, you’ll be able to borrow up to 4 titles per month. Best of all, there are no holds, no wait list, and no fines with this exciting new service! Just visit www.hoopladigital.com to create an account with your library card and PIN, then download the free hoopla apps for your smartphone, tablet, or smart TV to get started.

Children’s Resources

Britannica Library: Children’s Research

Britannica Library: Tweens & Young Adult Research

Your library card is your ticket to the award-winning Encylopedia Britannica, where you’ll find encyclopedia articles, multimedia, e-books and other learning resources, with a kid-friendly, easy-to-navigate interface. The links above are perfect for elementary and middle-grade students, but you can access all of Britannica Library here.

Scholastic Learn at Home

Even when schools are closed, you can keep the learning going with these special cross-curricular journeys. Every day includes four separate learning experiences, each built around a thrilling, meaningful story or video. Kids can do them on their own, with their families, or with their teachers. Just find your grade level and let the learning begin!

High School and Adult Resources

Ancestry Library Edition

Ancestry Library Edition is available only in the main library and Hinkston branch.

Access an unprecedented online collection of information about individuals from North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and more!  Answers await everyone—whether professional or hobbyist, expert or novice, genealogist or historian—inside the more than 7,000 available databases. Here, you can unlock the story of you with sources like censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and more.

Archive Grid

Online access to nearly a million descriptions of archival collections owned by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies and archives worldwide. ArchiveGrid is an important destination for searching for historical documents, personal papers and family histories held in archives.

Britannica Library: Reference Center

Britannica Library brings a wealth of information right to your computer, with comprehensive, in-depth articles and multimedia on a wide variety of subjects. Britannica Library: Reference Center is perfect for high school students, college students and adults, but you can access all of Britannica Library here.

Chicago Tribune

From historical issues and events, like the U.S. Civil War, immigration, industrial developments, race relations, and World War I and II; to today’s headlines, you can search full-text articles from the Chicago Tribune. Coverage dates back to 1849 (as Chicago Daily Tribune and Chicago Press and Tribune). Historical issues through 2012 can be viewed as full-page scans of the print edition. Publicly available content from journal articles, books, conference papers, and reports is also included.

Consumer Health Complete

Learn more about key topics across the health and wellness spectrum — from mainstream medicine to complementary, holistic, and integrated medicine. Searching for the name of a drug or herb provides information in English and Spanish about why it is prescribed, how it should be used, precautions and side effects to watch out for, and much more. Tools in the detailed records let you save, print, or cite information for reports. You can also listen to any HTML full text resource with the built-in text-to-speech function or have it automatically translated into dozens of different languages.

Consumer Reports

Known as the most trusted source for information and advice on consumer products, this website contains information on making better buying decisions. Users will find advice on saving money, home improvement, personal finances, improving health and more.

Creativebug

CreativeBug offers access to thousands of arts and crafts tutorial videos, including crochet, sewing, jewelry making, bookbinding, and more.

Driving Tests

Driving-tests.org has information about Illinois driver’s licenses and permits, and several practice tests for the Illinois car, motorcycle, and CDL tests.  The CDL section includes practice tests for hazardous materials, school buses, double/triple trailers, tankers, and other endorsements.  Illinois DMV handbooks for cars, motorcycles, and CDL are also available.  Road sign practice tests and a copy of the Illinois DMV handbook for cars are available in Spanish, and a practice test of the rules of the road is available in Russian.

ERIC – US Department of Education

The Education Resources Information Center, or ERIC, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, is the most complete bibliography of educational materials available. This database of peer-reviewed journals and professional magazines is the perfect place for education students to start their research on a new subject.

Fold3

Fold3 Library Edition by Ancestry provides convenient access to US military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served.  With content from the Revolutionary War onward, this continually-growing collection is an invaluable research resource for historians, genealogists, researchers, military enthusiasts, veterans and their families, teachers, and battle reenactors.  The Fold3 name comes from a traditional flag folding ceremony in which the third fold is made in honor and remembrance of veterans who served in defense of their country and to maintain peace throughout the world.

GreenFILE

GreenFILE is a research database of peer-reviewed journals and popular articles on all aspects of ecology. Learn more about humanity’s impact on the environment by searching through almost 5,000 full-text articles.

HelpNow

HelpNow offers personalized homework help in core subjects (math, reading, writing, science and social studies) from kindergarten through college.  Students can communicate with live, online tutors (in English or Spanish) using an interactive, virtual whiteboard to chat, write, draw, copy/paste text or images, and graph homework problems.  HelpNow also offers skills building and test preparation where after taking a quiz, the user can then connect directly to a live tutor to review the topics and questions covered in the quiz.  Users can submit papers and other assignments through the Writing Lab and Send Question Center for detailed feedback without a live tutor.

For students who prefer to work independently and form their own online study group, HelpNow offers a set of collaborative tools – Meet and Brainwave. Meet allows students to schedule their own online sessions using the Brainfuse Meet whiteboard, which is specifically designed for a group setting. Brainwave is a recordable whiteboard where students can draw, write and chat, and send it to others for feedback.

The Adult Learning Center is the adult learners’ version of HelpNow where patrons access GED prep, U.S citizenship test prep, resume assistance, Microsoft Office support, and Career Resources. Microsoft Office support allows patrons to ask questions about Excel, Word and PowerPoint. The Writing Lab, Send Question Center and the Skills Building are also included in the Adult Learning Center suite.

HeritageQuest

Discover the amazing history of you with this comprehensive treasury of American genealogical sources—rich in unique primary sources, local and family histories, convenient research guides, interactive census maps, and more.  With more than 4.4 billion records, it delivers an essential collection of genealogical and historical sources—with coverage dating back to the 1700s—that can help people find their ancestors and discover a place’s past.

JobNow

JobNow features live online coaches who, among other things, assist in resume/cover letter preparation, and help patrons prepare for job interviews.  In addition, patrons have 24/7 access to interview tips and career resources.

Lake County News-Sun Digital Archive

Read today’s news, explore local history, and catch up on current events with the digital archive of Lake County News-Sun!  You can search it from a computer in the library or remotely through the library website – all you need is your library card! Choose from the full-color digital archive, which covers 2018 through the current issue, or the text-only archive which goes back to 1997.

Legal Information Reference Center

Get assistance with legal matters from full-text eBooks and reports, as well as forms for basic documents such as wills, bills of sales, and rental agreements. Some forms are available in Spanish as well as English. Tools in the detailed records let you save, print, or cite information for reports.

Mango

Mango is an online language learning system that teaches English speakers real conversation skills for practical communication in 38 languages (from Arabic to Vietnamese).  Through fun and engaging interactive lessons, Mango makes learning a new language fast, easy and incredibly effective.   Those interested in learning English are taught in 15 languages.

Medline

Access 3,500 professional medical journals. This database covers all areas of medicine and includes journals from 1965 to the present.

Niche Academy

Niche Academy has online tutorials on a wide range of topics.  You can learn how to use many of the resources on this page, sign up with Facebook, learn the ins and outs of Pinterest, and much more!  Tutorials are added and updated regularly.

OAIster

OAIster is a union catalog of more than 19 million digital resources from over 1,000 organizations developed by the University of Michigan and harvested using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).

Teacher Reference Center

Find information about assessment, best practices, curriculum development, and much more related to teaching, from over 200 peer-reviewed journals.

VetNow

VetNow provides information and assistance about VA benefits and community resources for veterans and their families.  In addition to veteran-specific information, VetNow has many of the job-hunting and college tools from HelpNow and JobNow

WorldCat

WorldCat.org connects thousands of libraries’ collections in one place so you can browse the world’s libraries from one easy search box. In addition to information about millions of books, magazines, movies, songs, and maps, you can find article citations with links to full text, authoritative research materials, one-of-a-kind documents and photos of local or historic significance, and digital versions of rare items that aren’t generally available to the public. Do a search, click on a result, and you’ll see a list of libraries with that resource. From there, you can either directly access online content or find the resource at a library near you.

 

Español

Mango

Mango es un sistema de aprendizaje de idiomas en línea que enseña habilidades de conversación reales para la comunicación práctica en inglés e otros lenguajes. A través de la diversión y lecciones atractivas e interactivas, Mango hace que el aprendizaje de un nuevo idioma sea rápido, fácil y muy eficaz.

 

Free Resources Available Online

CIA World Factbook

Information about history, people, government, economy, and other facts about nearly every country in the world.

Directory of Open Access Journals

Search over 10,000 scholarly, peer-reviewed articles covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social science, and humanities.

Citation Guides from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab

Use these when writing research papers to make sure your citations and format style are correct. For MLA or APA citations.

Khan Academy

Local teachers and students use this site to do practice exercises and view instructional videos in math, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more. The personalized learning dashboard allows learners to track their progress and study at their own pace.