Databases
Research Tools: Online Resources, Magazines, Newspapers, etc.
Dictionaries, Directories, and Encyclopedias
| Britannica Online Academic Edition |
| Britannica Online Public Library Edition |
| Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia |
| Merriam-Webster Online |
| Oxford English Dictionary |
| Oxford Reference Online Premium |
Languages, Literature, Writers and Books
| BBC languages |
| Book Collection: Nonfiction |
| Literature Resource Center –LRC includes Contemporary Authors —Scribner’s Writers Series —Twayne’s Authors Series |
| LitFinder |
| LiveMocha : Language Learning |
| PoemFinder See LitFinder |
Social Sciences, Careers, and Tests
Business
| Business Insights: Essentials |
| Business Index ASAP |
| Business Source Premier |
| Reference USA |
| Regional Business News |
| Small Business Reference Center |
General Reference, Magazines, and Newspapers
For Young People
| Britannica Learning Zone |
| Britannica Online for Kids |
| Britannica Online School Edition |
| Homework Alabama |
| Kids InfoBits |
| Kids Search |
| Live Homework Help |
| SIRS Discoverer |
| Tutor.com |
Health and Science
| Alt HealthWatch |
| GreenFILE |
| Health Source: Consumer Edition |
| Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition |
| MedlinePlus |
| PubMed |
Local History
| Title | Description | Audience | Source | Help |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academic Search Premier | Full text and images from over 4,700 journals covering biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, religion & theology, etc. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Alabama Coal Mine Fatalities, 1898 – 1938 | The Alabama Coal Mine Fatalities Database consists of 2188 records compiled by the staff of the Government Documents department using available annual reports of Alabama mine inspectors from 1898 through 1938. | Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Alabama Episcopal Church Registers | The Alabama Episcopal Church Registers are a part of the records of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama preserved in the Archives of the Birmingham Public Library. The Alabama Episcopal Church Registers lists confirmations, baptisms, marriages, burials and more for 14000+ people in a growing list of Alabama parishes. | Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Alabama Inventors Database | This database includes inventors who lived in Alabama at the time they received their patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The Government Documents Department of the Birmingham Public Library has compiled these records and will add to and update them as information becomes available. |
Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Alabama Mosaic | AlabamaMosaic (Alabama’s Digitization Project) is a work in progress. A number of collections are available for browsing and searching. More collections will be added in the near future. The purpose of AlabamaMosaic is to make unique historical treasures from Alabama’s archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories electronically accessible to Alabama residents as well as scholars throughout the world | Teens Adults | NAAL | |
| Alt HealthWatch | Alt HealthWatch provides in-depth coverage across the full spectrum of subject areas covered by complementary and alternative medicine. It offers libraries an immediate resource of full text articles, from 140 international, and often peer-reviewed, journals, reports, proceedings and association & consumer newsletters. In addition, there are hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| BBC languages | Learn languages online | Teens Adults | ||
| Birmingham Black Barons | The Birmingham Black Barons, one of the most successful baseball teams in the Negro Leagues, played from the 1920’s until the 1950’s. The team played their home games at Rickwood Field. This database is a keyword index to articles that appeared in local newspapers including the Birmingham News, the Birmingham World and the Birmingham Reporter. The Government Documents Department of the Birmingham Public Library is compiling this database which is being updated regularly. | Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Book Collection: Nonfiction | A rich research database for public libraries, it contains informative abstracts and full text for more than 2,000 popular nonfiction books. The database includes full text entries on social studies and science, as well as information on careers, health, sports, adventure, and technology. | Children Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Britannica E-Books | Over 325 Britannica e-books on subjects like biographies, geography, government, history, literature, math, philosophy, science, and sports |
Children Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Britannica Learning Zone | PreK-2 Interactive Learning Enviroment | Children | AVL | |
| Britannica Online Academic Edition | Encyclopædia Britannica Online includes the complete encyclopedia, as well as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, Britannica Student Encyclopedia and the Britannica Book of the Year. Through this service, you can find more than 118,000 articles, updated and revised by Encyclopædia Britannica editors and contributors; over 14,000 illustrations, including photographs, drawings, maps, and flags; and more than 215,000 entries–including definitions, pronunciation guides, and word histories. |
Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Britannica Online for Kids | Children | AVL | ||
| Britannica Online Public Library Edition | Britannica Online Public Library Edition includes two unique home pages — one for children and another for adults — that will serve an entire library community with a single product. Britannica Online Public Library Edition contains 4 full encyclopedias, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Compton’s by Britannica, Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia, and Britannica Concise Encyclopedia each covering the research needs of a different age group. Along with this encyclopedia content, Public Library Edition contains full-text magazine articles, Web sites that have been reviewed and verified by Britannica editors, a homework help section for students, a world atlas, Merriam-Webster dictionaries and thesauri for children and adults, a Spanish-English dictionary, video and audio content, daily content updates, and more. Audience: general public | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Britannica Online School Edition | Britannica Online® School Edition offers teachers and students access to three complete encyclopedias, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Britannica Student Encyclopedia and the Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia that ensure consistency with classroom-topics and age-appropriate language. Teacher and student tools are also included such as video, media, journals, magazines, interactive activity guides, lesson plans, an Internet guide and downloadable student activities. The School Edition has 118,000 articles, 22,000 images, 2,000 video clips, 24,000 biographies and detailed maps of 196 countries. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus and Spotlight features are also a part of this resource. |
Children Teens | AVL | |
| Business Index ASAP | Management issues, economic indicators, business theories and practices, activities of companies and industries worldwide. Full-text articles, images, and citations from academic journals and trade magazines. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Business Insights: Essentials | Company profiles, brand information, rankings, investment reports, histories, chronologies. Detailed news and information on companies and industry. | Teens Adults | AVL | Business and Company Resource Center |
| Business Source Premier | Business, management, economics, finance, banking, and accounting. Full-text articles from more than 1,000 newspapers and magazines. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Career Library | Explore career interests, plan for college or the workforce, or test your knowledge via interactive quizzes, standardized test questions, GED sample tests, and more with Career Library from EBSCO. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Civil Rights Digital Library | The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. | Teens Adults | ||
| Digital Collections | Teens Adults | BPL | ||
| EBSCOhost | Full text articles, abstracts, and citations from magazines, newspapers, academic and professional journals, trade publications, reference works, travel guides, ERIC(r) the Educational Resource Information Center, etc. Daily news updates. General reference, current events, business, consumer health, general science, and multi-cultural periodicals. Images and maps. Electric Library Full text from popular magazines, reference books, travel guides, newspapers, and broadcast transcripts. Find topics, pictures, and maps by subject. Many options for sorting results include relevance, date, reading level. Has a “go to best part” feature. |
Children Teens Adults | AVL | EBSCOhost Web (PDF) |
| Encyclopedia of Alabama | An ever-growing, comprehensive source of information on Alabama’s history, culture, geography, and environment. | Children Teens Adults | ||
| ERIC | Part of EBSCOhost Web. Educational Resource Information Center. Full text of more than 2,200 digests. Citations and abstracts from over 980 educational and education-related journals. | Adults | AVL | |
| Ethnic NewsWatch | Information about ethnic groups in articles, editorials, and reviews. Newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic and minority press. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia | Teens Adults | AVL | ||
| Gale Virtual Reference Library | Gale Virtual Reference Library delivers a wealth of eBook reference content in a database format, allowing libraries to choose exactly which titles to make available to their patrons. The sources that Gale Virtual Reference Library offers in eBook format include multi-volume encyclopedias, biographical collections, business plan handbooks, company history compilations, consumer health references, and specialized reference sources. Subjects covered include Arts, Biography, Business, Education, Environment, History, Law, Literature, Medicine, Multicultural Studies, Nation and World, Religion, Science, and Social Science. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| General OneFile | Millions of full-text magazine articles on business, computers, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health care, hobbies, humanities, law, literature, art, politics, science, social science, sports, technology, etc. Images. Updated | Children Teens Adults | AVL | |
| General Reference Center Gold | Directory listings for over 150,000 companies. Reports on major companies and industries. Primarily full-text articles. Available in the Birmingham Public Library Business, Science & Technology Department. | Children Teens Adults | AVL | General Reference Gold (PDF) |
| GreenFILE | GreenFILE offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects. Multidisciplinary by nature, GreenFILE draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology. Topics covered include global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for approximately 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records. Audience: high school through college, general public | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Health Source: Consumer Edition | This database is the richest collection of consumer health information available to libraries worldwide, providing information on many health topics including the medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine and general health. Health Source: Consumer Edition features searchable full text for nearly 150 journals. This database is updated on a daily basis. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition | This database provides nearly 550 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition also features abstracts and indexing for nearly 850 journals. This database is updated on a daily basis. | Adults | AVL | |
| History Reference Center | History Reference Center features cover-to-cover full text for more than 650 historical encyclopedias and other non-fiction books. The database also includes full text for nearly 60 leading history periodicals; 58,000 historical documents; 43,000 biographies of historical figures; more than 12,000 historical photos and maps; and 87 hours of historical film and video. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Homework Alabama | Alabama’s Free Live Online Homework Help Service: HomeworkAlabama.org. This service offers free homework help from subject specialists. Available Everyday from 3 p.m. until Midnight ! ! !Free Tutoring – Math – Science – Social Studies – English Grades 4-12 and College Intro. HomeworkAlabama.org is provided free of charge to all residents of Alabama by APLS (the State Library of Alabama) and your local Public Library with a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. |
Children Teens | APLS | |
| Informe! (Revistas en Espaol) | Spanish magazine articles. Searchable in Spanish. Some articles in English. Current events, business, health, technology, culture, etc. | Children Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Jefferson County Probate Court, Loose Records (1852-1936) | Jefferson County Probate Court, Loose Records is an Index for Boxes 1-637 (Birmingham) and Bessemer – 1916-1936. The microfilmed “loose records” are located in the Jefferson County Courthouse. Records that were not filmed can be accessed only through the Records Room of the Probate Court in Birmingham, AL. The Birmingham Public Library does not have this set of microfilm. | Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Kids InfoBits | Kids InfoBits meets the research needs of students in Kindergarten through Grade 5. It features a developmentally appropriate, visually graphic interface, a subject-based topic tree search and full-text, age-appropriate, curriculum-related magazine, newspaper and reference content for information on current events, the arts, science, health, people, government, history, sports and more. | Children | AVL | Kids InfoBits (PDF) |
| Kids Search | This new interface is designed to offer elementary school students an easy-to-use and graphically appealing search experience, including improved functionality over Searchasaurus and Primary Search. It features better relevancy ranking, topic searching and access to a wide variety of source types. The Basic Search screen highlights Topics rather than Source Types, and includes the ability to search Images or Images/Videos, from the toolbar. | Children | AVL | Kids Search (PDF) |
| LearningExpressLibrary | Skill-building and test preparation materials for standardized tests. Interactive practice exams based on official exams. Scoring and analysis of practice test responses. Basic skills, college preparatory, civil service, GED, and some specific careers. | Teens Adults | APLS | LearningExpressLibrary (PDF) |
| Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts | Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) indexes more than 600 periodicals, plus books, research reports and proceedings | Adults | AVL | |
| Literature Resource Center –LRC includes Contemporary Authors —Scribner’s Writers Series —Twayne’s Authors Series |
Biographies, bibliographies, and critical analysis of more than 120,000 literary figures from all time periods in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, journalism, etc. Full-text, excerpted, and commissioned essays. Explanations and overviews of prominent literary works. Links to about 5,000 Web sites on major authors and their works. Timeline placing literature within historical context. 2,300 author portraits. Search by author, title, genre, literary movement or theme. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| LitFinder | A premier resource for full-text literary works, including poems, short stories, novels, essays, plays and speeches. | Children Teens Adults | AVL | LitFinder (PDF) |
| Live Homework Help | Alabama’s Free Live Online Homework Help Service: HomeworkAlabama.org. This service offers free homework help from subject specialists. Available Everyday from 3 p.m. until Midnight ! ! !Free Tutoring – Math – Science – Social Studies – English Grades 4-12 and College Intro. HomeworkAlabama.org is provided free of charge to all residents of Alabama by APLS (the State Library of Alabama) and your local Public Library with a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. |
Children Teens | APLS | |
| LiveMocha : Language Learning | Social Language Learning – Online. Learn languages online at your own pace with fun language lessons. Connect with foreign language partners around the world | Teens Adults | ||
| MasterFILE Premier | Teens Adults | AVL | ||
| MedlinePlus | Teens Adults | |||
| Merriam-Webster Online | Teens Adults | |||
| Military & Government Collection | Adults | AVL | ||
| Newspaper Source | Newspaper Source provides selected full text for over 200 regional U.S. newspapers, international newspapers, newswires, newspaper columns and other sources as well as indexing and abstracts for national newspapers. This database is updated daily. Audience: middle school through college, general public | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery Interments | In 1871 the City of Birmingham purchased from the Elyton Land Company 21.5 acres of land for a city cemetery (later named Oak Hill). The deed was issued December 29, 1873. As the first city cemetery, Oak Hill became the resting place for virtually all of the Birmingham pioneers. Although the majority of burials at Oak Hill Cemetery date back before the 1930’s, it remains an active cemetery, averaging fifteen burials per year. | Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Obituary Index : Birmingham Area Newspapers | This database is an ongoing project of the Government Documents Department of the Birmingham Public Library. Obituaries from three Birmingham area newspapers are included: Birmingham News Birmingham World Methodist Christian Advocate |
Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Occupational Outlook Handbook | The premier source for career information! The profiles featured here cover hundreds of occupations and describe What They Do, Work Environment, How to Become One, Pay, and more. Each profile also includes BLS employment projections for the 2010–20 decade. | Teens Adults | ||
| Opposing Viewpoints in Context | This source draws on the acclaimed social issues series published by Greenhaven Press, as well as core reference content from other Gale and Macmillan Reference USA sources to provide a complete one-stop source for information on social issues. Access viewpoint articles, topic overviews, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Oxford English Dictionary | The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books. The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world, from North America to South Africa, from Australia and New Zealand to the Caribbean. It also offers the best in etymological analysis and in listing of variant spellings, and it shows pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Oxford Reference Online Premium | Oxford Reference Online Premium brings together language and subject reference works from one of the world’s biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource.The Core Collection contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books, giving subscribers unprecedented access to a comprehensive information resource.The Premium Collection offers all of the above, plus added functionality and more detailed information across a broad subject range from titles in the world-renowned Oxford Companions Series, to enhance the coverage already provided by the award-winning Core Collection. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| PoemFinder See LitFinder | Children Teens Adults | AVL | ||
| Points of View Reference Center | designed to provide students and schools with a series of controversial essays presents multiple sides of a current issue designed to provide students and schools with a series of controversial essays. Essays provide questions and materials for further thought and study |
Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Power Search (Thomson Gale) | A super-powered search engine featuring innovative cross-searching capabilities, users can access all the Thomson Gale content in the library’s collection by exploring one, several or all available databases simultaneously. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Professional Development Collection | Adults | AVL | ||
| PubMed | Adults | |||
| Red Mountain Cemetery, Records of Interments, 1888-1906 | Red Mountain Cemetery, sometimes called Southside Cemetery, was used by the City of Birmingham from 1888 to 1906 as a place to bury the indigent dead. The cemetery contains 4,711 burials and was located south of the city on the site that is now Lane Park and the Birmingham Zoo. The graves were not removed, but decades after the cemetery ceased to be used, the park and zoo were built over the graves. | Teens Adults | BPL | |
| Reference USA | ReferenceUSA is the leading provider in business and consumer research. It helps users create marketing plans, conduct competitive analysis, raise funds and location people. Its quaility information helps researchers, students and job seekers answer a wide variety of questions and saves them valuable time and money. | Adults | JCLC | Reference USA |
| Regional Business News | This database provides comprehensive full text coverage for regional business publications. Regional Business News incorporates coverage of 75 business journals, newspapers and newswires from all metropolitan and rural areas within the United States. This database is updated on a daily basis | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Sanborn Maps, 1867- 1970: Alabama | Digital versions of large-scale maps of Alabama towns and cities. Fire insurance maps with data on structures in use at the time the map was made. Includes information such as the outline of each building, the size, shape and construction materials, heighheights, and function of structures, location of windows and doors. Street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers. | Teens Adults | JCLC | |
| Serials Solutions | Serials Solutions provides a reference tool to determine which full-text electronic serials are available through the AVL licensed databases. Use Serials Solutions to reduce search time when looking for a specific electronic journal and to find and use AVL resources that may be overlooked. Serials Solutions will help you to know what electronic journals are available in the AVL databases. Audience: middle school through college, general public | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| SIRS Discoverer | School topics and current events from articles and graphics from more than 1,400 U.S. and international magazines, newspapers and U.S. government documents. Research ideas, activities, biographies, photo essays, country facts, almanac, dictionary, thesaurus, and current events. Middle and elementary school. | Children | AVL | |
| Small Business Reference Center | EBSCO’s Small Business Reference Center covers topics such as buying/selling a business, managing employees, writing a business plan, understanding legal information, and marketing a business. | Teens Adults | AVL | |
| Student Edition | Magazines, newspapers and reference books (most are full-text). Information on current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, people, government, history, sports, etc. High school. | Teens | AVL | |
| Student Research Center | Provides students with the most appropriate research tools for easily obtaining the information that they need from their EBSCO databases. Users can easily pre-determine which content sources (e.g., Magazines, Newspapers, Biographies, Country Reports, Film & Video) will be included with their search. They can also search their databases by topic heading, make use of an online dictionary and encyclopedia, explore the top searches of the day, and even limit their search according to appropriate Lexile reading levels. Audience: middle and high school |
Teens Adults | AVL | Student Research Center (PDF) |
| Tuition Funding Sources | Tuition Funding Sources is a private website designed to help students find scholarships, college and career information. TFS offers students the largest scholarship database in the world with over $41 Billion in scholarship awards along with a career personality test and detailed college and career information. | Teens Adults | JCLC | |
| Tutor.com | Alabama’s Free Live Online Homework Help Service: HomeworkAlabama.org. This service offers free homework help from subject specialists. Available Everyday from 3 p.m. until Midnight ! ! !Free Tutoring – Math – Science – Social Studies – English Grades 4-12 and College Intro. HomeworkAlabama.org is provided free of charge to all residents of Alabama by APLS (the State Library of Alabama) and your local Public Library with a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. |
Children Teens Adults | APLS | |
| Vocational and career collection | Part of EBSCOhost Web. Full text of articles in over 360 trade and industry related periodicals. | Adults | AVL | |
| World Data Analyst | This powerful yet easy-to-use online tool lets students analyze countries at a glance. World Data Analyst offers detailed statistical comparisons of countries around the world, using both the most recent statistics and historical figures. Plus, students can create tables, charts, and even export the information to a spreadsheet for printing and data crunching. Students can also link to country articles from the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. It all leads to better understanding of our ever-changing world. Audience: middle school and above | Teens Adults | AVL | |
WorldCat Discovery |
Worldwide library catalog identifies libraries that own items searched. Comprehensive reference service available only though libraries. Databases, links to the World Wide Web, over 10 million online full-text articles, full-image articles from over 4,000 | Children Teens Adults | APLS | |
| WPA Index to Alabama Biography | The “WPA Index to Alabama Biography” was a Works Progress Administration project begun in the 1930’s then abandoned when funding for the WPA was curtailed. Although the index was never completed, over 97 titles such as Who’s Who in America, other biographical dictionaries, and local histories were indexed by the workers. It is an invaluable tool for researching Alabama biographical sources. | Teens Adults | BPL |