Valuable Resources at Your Fingertips
By Dave Conway, January 2007
When Phyllis Ray addressed the Westlawn Civic Association about rebuilding plans for the Thomas Jefferson Library, she followed with an online presentation of all the databases that the Fairfax County Library has made available on the Internet for library patrons. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/dbsRemote/company/ is the site that lists all the databases that are available.
While licensing restrictions require the county to make some of these databases available online only from library branches, such as Value Line and Washington Checkbook, there are many useful ones that you can access from any Internet connection with your library card number. Get your highlighter out and mark the ones below that are most interesting to you!
Auto Repair Reference Center contains the complete automotive repair manuals that were originally published in the Chilton Total Car Care Series; other easy-to-read, illustrated auto repair manuals; technical service bulletins; wiring diagrams; and labor time estimates. The procedures are written specifically for the do-it-yourselfer, but are comprehensive enough for professional technicians. Every major manufacturer for domestic and imported vehicles is represented in the database, including auto repair manuals for most vintage makes starting as far back as 1954.
Books in Print contains information concerning titles, publishers, wholesalers, and book agents. Bestsellers and award-winners are included as well.
CQ Researcher offers in-depth, non-biased coverage of today's most important issues. CQ Researcher explores a single "hot" issue each week. Topics range from social and teen issues to the environment, health, education and science and technology.
EBSCO/Business Source Elite provides full text for nearly 1,040 journals covering business, management, economics, finance, banking, accounting, and much more.
EBSCO/EBSCO Animals provides in-depth information on a variety of topics relating to animals. This database consists of full-text records describing the nature and habitat of familiar animals. Many photos also included.
EBSCO/Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia is a short entry encyclopedia provided by EBSCOhost.
EBSCO/Health Source: Consumer Edition is a comprehensive resource of periodicals, pamphlets and reference texts on health issues ranging from self-help to drugs and alcohol.
EBSCO/MasterFILE Premier is a comprehensive journal database covering diverse topics including general information, business issues, health and multicultural materials. Includes an Image Collection with photos of people, natural science photos, photos of places, historical photos, maps, and flags.
EBSCO/Middle Search Plus is a comprehensive volume of topics designed to assist middle and junior high school students as they learn how to investigate current events.
EBSCO/Primary Search is a database of magazines on a broad list of subjects designed for the elementary school level.
EBSCO/Regional Business News 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.
EBSCO/The Serials Directory provides up-to-date and accurate bibliographic information and pricing for over 155,000 U.S. and international periodicals.
eLibrary allows focused research for students of all ages using a comprehensive database of reliable sources including magazines, books, newspapers, pictures, maps, and TV and radio transcripts.
Gale Group/Biography Resource Center is a resource that Provides in-depth coverage of current and historic people from almost every field of endeavor. It provides access to reference resources, full-text periodical articles, and portraits.
Gale Group/Business and Company Resource Center is a comprehensive database consisting of company profiles, histories, chronologies, rankings, brand information, investment reports, ratios, and periodical articles on over 300,000 companies.
Gale Group/Computer Database provides indexing and full-text access to the most well read and influential periodicals of the computer, telecommunications and electronic industries.
Gale Group/Expanded Academic ASAP meets research needs across all academic disciplines. Access scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers - many with full text and images.
Gale Group/Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of online encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Because each library creates its own eBook collection, the content you see may vary if you use the database at different libraries (your school, your public library, or your office).
Gale Group/General Reference Center Gold provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2700 general interest periodicals. Of those, more than 1900 are full text, including the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor.
Gale Group/Health and Wellness Resource Center is an authoritative database of medical journal, magazine, and newspaper articles, pamphlets, and medical encyclopedias and dictionaries covering a broad range of health topics. Includes a drug/herb finder and an alternative medicine module.
Gale Group/InfoTrac OneFile is a one-stop source for news and periodical articles on a wide range of topics: business, computers, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health care, hobbies, humanities, law, literature and art, politics, science, social science, sports, technology, and many general interest topics.
Gale Group/InfoTrac Religion & Philosophy features a selection of more than 250 magazines and academic journals covering religion and the related areas of philosophy, archaeology and anthropology.
Gale Group/InfoTrac Student Edition is designed for high school students, with access to a variety of indexed and full-text magazines, newspapers and reference books for information on current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, people, government, history, sports and more.
Gale Group/Junior Edition - K12 is like the Student Edition but designed for students in junior high and middle school.
Gale Group/Kid's Edition - K12 is like the Student Edition but designed for elementary school students.
Gale Group/Kids InfoBits is like the Student Edition but designed for students in Kindergarten through Grade 5.
Gale Group/LegalTrac provides indexing for approximately 1300 titles including major law reviews, legal newspapers, bar association journals and international legal journals.
Gale Group/Literature Resource Center: LRC, Scribner, Twayne US, Twayne English, and Twayne World Authors integrates the resources of several literary resources to provide access to biographies, bibliographies and critical analysis of authors from every age and literary discipline. In addition, it includes plot summaries, articles covering literary movements, and more.
Gale Group/LitFINDER contains 125,000 full-text poems, thousands of full-text stories, study guides, full-text plays, and the best-known speeches of the past 2,500 years.
Gale Group/Military and Intelligence Database provides access to more than 600 military-related and general interest periodicals, with more than 500 of them displayed in full text.
Gale Group/Student Resource Center Gold provides a selection of original reference material, overviews, critical essays, primary source documents and full-text from periodicals and newspapers that are updated daily.
Gale Group/What Do I Read Next? contains descriptions of more than 96,000 highly recommended adult, young adult and children's fiction titles from eight genres. It includes search options by title, author, subject genre, locale and more.
Grolier/America The Beautiful is a comprehensive program about the states and territories of the U.S., designed to meet the needs of all grade levels.
Grolier/Encyclopedia Americana Online includes the full text of the print Encyclopedia Americana and related research sites through the Internet.
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia is based on the text of the Academic American Encyclopedia. It contains new and expanded articles, bibliographies, interactive features and links to other sources of information on the Web.
LearningExpress Library provides a completely interactive online learning platform of practice tests and tutorial courses series designed to help patrons, students, and adult learners succeed on the academic or licensing tests they must pass. You'll get immediate scoring, complete answer explanations, and an individualized analysis of your results.
MedlinePlus brings together, by health topic, authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), other government, non-profit and other health-related organizations. Preformulated Medline searches are included in MedlinePlus and give easy access to the medical research literature. MedlinePlus also provides you with a database of full-text drug information and an illustrated medical encyclopedia.
Morningstar.com Library Edition provides data on stocks and funds, analyst reports for stocks and funds, tools to build and analyze a portfolio, and tools to allow users to learn new stock and fund-investing strategies and portfolio-building-skills.
NetLibrary provides thousands of e-book titles on a wide variety of subjects.
NoveList assists fiction readers in choosing new authors and titles with subject access to over 60,000 fiction titles and more than 29,000 reviews. First Citings alerts readers to promising new authors.
OverDrive audiobooks can be downloaded from the Internet and listened to on a computer or portable device that plays Windows Media Audio files. Some OverDrive audiobooks can be copied onto a CD, and then you can upload them from the CD onto your MP3 player or iPod for your own personal use.
Oxford English Dictionary is the definitive source for the meaning, history, and evaluation of the English language. It contains the full 20-volume set including 2.5 million quotations, the three volumes from the Additions Series, and quarterly updates with new words.
ProQuest databases offer indexing, abstracts, and selected complete texts of articles and newspapers from thousands of publications.
Recorded Books audiobooks can be downloaded from the Internet and listened to on a computer or portable device that plays Windows Media Audio files.
ReferenceUSA provides information on 12 million U.S. businesses, including company name, address, SIC code, corporate affiliation, ticker symbol, stock exchange, and more. It also has information on 102 million U.S. residents including name, address, phone number, median household income, and median home value. (This database makes it easy to find the address and phone number of a person, as well as all their neighbors—try it with your name!)
SIRS Discoverer provides the complete texts of articles that help develop research, reading, writing, language, and computer skills while making learning fun for young researchers.
SIRS Government Reporter provides current and historic government documents; landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions, information about federal departments, agencies, elected leaders and more. The database also contains carefully selected full-text documents and graphics concerning a wide variety of topics including: health, science, economics, environment, politics, foreign affairs, business and industry.
SIRS Renaissance provides current and dynamic information on the arts, multimedia, philosophy, and religion. Full-text articles are selected from over 700 domestic and international publications.
SIRS Researcher has thousands of complete texts of articles on social, scientific, health, historic, economic, business, political and global issues.