The library provides access to select subscription resources with quality content. Databases may include full-text newspaper, magazine and journal articles for research, or facts and answers on topics ranging from business and health to reading recommendations and test preparation. Most of these databases are accessible from home using your library barcode; a few are only accessible from within the library.
Chilton Library
Provides exclusive photographs, diagnostics designed by instructors, step-by-step repair procedures for automobiles and light trucks.
Mitchell On Demand (USE IN LIBRARY ONLY)
Automotive research and information database that provides problem diagnosis and repair, maintenance schedule, and access to quotes for services. It can be used to quickly diagnose problems, determine what maintenance your vehicle needs (based on mileage), or check for overcharges on time, parts, or warranties.
Biography Reference Bank
More than 72,000 biographies and obituaries along with 20,000 photographs of the subjects.
Literary Reference Source
Full text of literary journals and respected literary reference works. Contains plot summaries, literary criticism, author biographies and interviews, and the full text of thousands of poems and short stories.
NovelistPlus
NoveList Plus is a database of reading recommendations, for fiction, nonfiction and audiobooks and includes expert recommendations, reviews, articles, lists and more. It includes recommendations for adults, teen and children.
TumbleBooks
Online access to hundreds of children's ebooks-digitized or animated books, audiobooks, puzzles and games, and language learning books for children in preschool through grade school. Includes ebook titles for iPad and National Geographic videos & eAudios.
Business Source Premier
This source provides the full text for more than 8,800 business and academic serials back to the 1880’s.
IBISWorld (USE IN LIBRARY ONLY)
A full-text database of U.S. and Global industry market research reports including specialized industries for small business research.
Morningstar Investment Research Center - use links below
This research database is designed to provide comprehensive information related to stocks, funds, etfs, and individual companies. Use it to compare companies, or compile a sample portfolio before you invest your money.
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REMOTE USERS: Enter the first 5 digits of your library card barcode to access the remote site.
- Small Business Insights provides industry competition, potential customer base, and location analytics. Data is restricted to the Akron/Summit County area.
- Small Business Advisor provides information on numerous topics related to planning, starting, managing, and growing a business.
Small Business Source
Small Business Source offers exclusive full text for many top consumer small business reference books, as well as tools to address many small business topics. It includes business videos, a help and advice section and details on how to create business plans.
Value Line
Provides in-depth data on more than 3,500 stocks. This includes the Investment Survey (with Small and Mid-Cap) as well as industry reports, analyst commentaries and ranks and ratings.
Weiss Financial Ratings
It provides a single source for financial strength ratings and financial planning tools covering Insurance, Banks, Mutual Funds and Stocks. Research all your investments and ensure that you are using the best and most financially stable organizations.
Cypress Resume
An easy to use database to create a professional looking resume. It easily formats your resume in word format and provides suggested skill and ability wording for over 100,000 jobs.
Vocational and Career Collection
For technical and vocation-oriented libraries, the database provides full text access to over 350 trade and industry-focused journals.
Ohio Means Jobs
This site offers job searching, resume building and career training tools.
Consumer Reports
Offers access to the Consumer Reports website, with expert, unbiased ratings, reviews, product comparisons, and buying guides for many essential consumer products.
Weiss Financial Ratings
It provides a single source for financial strength ratings and financial planning tools covering Insurance, Banks, Mutual Funds and Stocks. Research all your investments and ensure that you are using the best and most financially stable organizations.
AtoZ Databases
AtoZ Databases contains financial information on over 30 million U.S. businesses & executives as well as addresses and phone numbers of over 220 million U.S. residents.
Gale Directory
Access trusted directories containing information about businesses and organizations. It includes the Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media as well as the directory of Scholarships, Fellowships and Loans.
CreativeBug
Unlimited access to over 1,000 online art and craft classes, plus patterns, templates, and recipes. Topics include art & design, sewing, quilting, paper, knitting, crochet, food & home, jewelry, holiday & party, and classes for kids.
Hobbies and Crafts Source
A comprehensive full-text resource for many of the most popular hobbies, crafts and recreation activities today, this database offers detailed "how-to" instructions and creative ideas. Full text is provided from leading hobby and craft magazines, including Bead & Button, Creative Knitting, FineScale Modeler, Quilter's World, and many more.
Home Improvement Source
Home Improvement Reference Center features full-text content from leading home improvement magazines, images not found anywhere else online and videos of popular home repair projects.
SAMS Technical Publishing (USE IN LIBRARY ONLY)
Original technical manuals for a wide range of consumer products back to 1946. It can be used for instructions and illustrations in repairing specific brands and models of radios, VCRs, cameras, clocks, etc.
ERIC
(Educational Resources Information Center) -- Over 800,000 references to thousands of educational topics. Includes journal articles, books, theses, conference papers, as well as standards and guidelines.
Mailbox
Provides teachers and parents unlimited access to 52,000+ worksheets, crafts, forms, songs, games, graphic organizers, patterns, clip art and lesson plans for grades PreK-6.
Professional Development Collection
Designed for professional educators, this database provides a highly specialized collection of nearly 550 high quality education journals, including more than 350 peer-reviewed titles. This database also contains more than 200 educational reports.
Gale eBooks
A collection of over 200 reference books available on a variety of topics including science, career information, environment, art, history and medicine. Chapters or sections of the books can be printed, emailed or downloaded.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias
The Oxford Research Encyclopedias (OREs) offer long-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars. Subject areas include the humanities, social sciences, and science.
Science Reference Source
Topics covered in in this database include biology, chemistry, earth and space science, environmental science, health and medicine, history of science, life science, physics, science and society, science as inquiry, scientists, technology and wildlife. Science Reference Source contains full text for hundreds of science encyclopedias, reference books, periodicals and other sources.
Worldbook Kids
Intended for grades K-8 this online encyclopedia maintained by Worldbook, Inc provides age-appropriate articles, dictionary and atlases, activities, as well as a picture and sound dictionary.
Worldbook Online
A variety of Worldbook products including versions for preschool, grade school and high school and college students. There are Spanish and French language versions as well as links to Atlases and Dictionaries.
Mango
Available on your desktop or through an app Mango uses native speakers, repetition and voice comparison to learn a new language or English as a second language. To use the app you will first need to create a Mango profile online through the library, then use that profile to activate the App
Transparent Languages
Over 100 foreign language courses are available that can help you learn languages including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. There’s also an ESL component that provides English language learning to speakers of over 25 different languages.
Foundation Directory (USE IN MAIN LIBRARY ONLY)
Directory of grant-making foundations. It can be used to research prospective foundations and to tailor your grant application to the interests and mission of the specific grant-making organization.
Guidestar (USE IN MAIN LIBRARY ONLY)
Provides information on programs and finances of charities and nonprofits, news about philanthropy, and resources for donors and volunteers. Search by name, keyword, city or state and nonprofit type.
Access World News
Includes current and archived news content from more than 12,700 sources spanning 200+ countries. Explore and stay informed on local, national, and international topics, people and events in areas such as business, health, education, jobs and careers, political and social issues and more.
African American Heritage
Search records, books, serials, and other historical records specific to African Americans to trace your genealogy or to do research.
Akron Beacon Journal
Full text access to all content from 1984 to the present, except for letters to the editor and advertising. Choose image edition to view today’s paper. Click on text version for full-text access to content from 1984 to the present.
Akron Reporter
Akron’s newspaper serving the African American Community is digitized and available for the years 1969-1999 and 2003-2018.
American Ancestors (USE IN MAIN LIBRARY ONLY)
Created and maintained by the New England Historic Genealogical Society this site provides a number of digital documents for researching your ancestors.
America's News
Comprehensive news and information at the local, state, regional and national levels. It offers the full-text of over 2,000 newspapers and online news sources from the United States and select international locations. It includes the current day image editions of 10 Ohio newspapers including the Akron Beacon Journal, Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch and Canton Repository.
Ancestry Library Edition (USE IN LIBRARY ONLY)
Ancestry Library Edition provides easy access to more than 10,000 genealogy databases with a single search.
Archives Catalog
The Library’s local history collections include a variety of materials pertaining to Akron and Summit County history. The Archives Catalog encompasses materials from the Special Collections Division, as well as other Main Library divisions, and the Frank E. Lawrence Collection at Tallmadge Branch Library. Additionally, the catalog includes the archival and photograph collections of the Summit County Historical Society and Summit Metro Parks.
FamilySearch Affiliate Library (USE IN LIBRARY ONLY)
The Akron-Summit County Public Library is an affiliate of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, which houses millions of genealogical sources. Affiliate libraries can access select digital images of genealogical sources and records that are restricted outside the library. You will need a free FamilySearch account to search and view records.
Find My Past (USE IN MAIN LIBRARY ONLY)
Provides access to over 2 billion historical records from around the world including the largest collection of Irish records online as well as records from England, Wales, and Scotland and the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI).
Fold3
Fold3 provides convenient access to US military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served.
Heritage Hub
Explore your family history with the premier collection of U.S. obituaries and death notices for in-depth genealogical research from 1704 – today. HeritageHub helps you easily identify relatives, uncover new information and potentially unknown family members. Includes deep coverage from all 50 states, hard-to-find content from the mid 1900’s, and original obituary images.
HeritageQuest
HeritageQuest features U. S. Census Records, 1790-1940, a digitized collection of more than 25,000 family and local history books, Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, Freedman's Bank Records (1865-1874), the U.S. Serial Set, and more.
Historic Map Works
The core of the collection consists of over 1,564,517 cadastral, land ownership maps detailing the geographic and development history of the United States over several hundred years. It can be used to find historic maps from all over the world.
MyHeritage Library Edition
MyHeritage Library Edition provides access to over 6 billion historical and genealogical records, including census, vital, and military records, family trees, and many other record types. The record collections are most comprehensive for North America and Europe, but the database also contains hundreds of millions of records from other regions.
NewspaperARCHIVE - Academic Library Edition
Search for articles in over 110 Ohio newspapers dating from 1800 to the present.
Newspapers.com - Ohio Collection
Contains historical Ohio newspapers from the early 1700s into the 2000s with full runs and portions of runs of local newspapers.
Ohio Obituary Index
An index to 3,800,000 obituaries, death & marriage notices & other sources from Ohio from the 1810s to the present day. Obits may be ordered from more than 70 partner libraries, including the Akron-Summit County Public Library. Entries for the Akron Beacon Journal are being added daily.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
Detailed maps at building level for more than 400 Ohio communities from 1868 to the 1960s are provided by this database.
Summit Memory
An online, collaborative project capturing the history of Summit County, Ohio. Collections include historic photographs, documents, newspapers, artifacts and audiovisual resources contributed by partner organizations throughout the county. Summit Memory is administered by the Akron-Summit County Public Library.
Alt HealthWatch
This alternative health database provides full text for more than 140 publications in the collection, including full text for many peer-reviewed journals.
Consumer Health Complete
Full text journals, magazines, and reference books from EBSCOhost dealing with health, wellness, fitness, and nutrition.
Health Source Nursing/Academic Edition
Provides access to hundreds of articles and scholarly journals related to nursing and health care.
MEDLINE
This authoritative online resource from the National Library of Medicine provides a wealth of useful information on medical issues and disciplines, including: nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine and prescription drugs.
Merck Manuals
The Merck Manual has been a trusted source of medical information since 1899. No longer published in print, Merck now provides current authoritative articles as well as video and audio content online for free. Choose from a Consumer version that is written in everyday language or the Professional version written for doctors and students.
Natural Medicines - use links below
Informational database with peer-reviewed, evidence-based, and consensus based articles devoted to integrative and alternative therapies. Includes links to articles, webinars, pod casts, blogs, dictionary, nutritional information, calculators, and practitioners.
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Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
Full text access to all content from 1984 to the present, except for letters to the editor, death notices and advertising.
AccessScience
An authoritative online STEM education resource; it includes over 8,500 articles covering all areas of science.
Black Life in America
Comprehensive coverage of the African American experience from earliest times to today. Sourced from nearly 19,000 American and global newspapers from 1704 to the present, including over 400 African American newspapers. Updated daily.
CultureGrams Online
This resource includes: worldwide photo gallery, slideshows, video clips, famous people collection, and a recipe collection that offers five homegrown recipes from all countries in the database. Plus, sortable (create-your-own) data tables help put dozens of facts into perspective.
Explora for Public Libraries
Ebsco’s interface for public libraries provides easy-to-use features and reliable content from the world’s leading magazines and reference books on thousands of topics.
Explora Primary School
Student research tool with news, magazines and encyclopedia articles for grades K-5.
Explora Secondary School
Student research tool with news, journals, magazines and encyclopedia articles for grades 6-12.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
A collection of over 200 reference books available on a variety of topics including science, career information, environment, art, history and medicine. Chapters or sections of the books can be printed, emailed or downloaded.
MAS Ultra – School Edition
Designed specifically for high school students this database provides full text for more than 700 popular general interest and current events publications with information dating as far back as 1975. This database also provides access to 500 full text pamphlet and over 350 full text reference books.
Middle Search Plus
Aimed at students this online resource provides access to hundreds of magazine and encyclopedia articles, historical documents and maps.
Points of View Reference Source
This database covers many topics, each with an overview (objective background/description), point (argument) and counterpoint (opposing argument). Providing a balance of materials from all viewpoints, it includes over 1,300 main essays, leading political magazines from all sides of the political spectrum, newspapers, radio & TV news transcripts, primary source documents and reference books. It also offers guides for writing position papers, developing arguments and debating.
Primary Search
This database for elementary school students provides access to primary school focused publications including, encyclopedias, almanacs and magazines. Use it to supplement a research project, find a school play to perform, or pore through the map, photo, and flag database.
TOPICsearch
This current events database allows researchers to explore social, political & economic issues, scientific discoveries and other popular topics discussed in today's classrooms. It contains full text for over 102,800 articles from more than 2,500 diverse sources, including more than 1,550 full text periodicals.
Very Short Introductions
An excellent way to get a quick authoritative and accessible overview of a variety subjects.
Legal Forms
Access and print a variety of legal forms. Also features a directory of attorney’s by state and a dictionary of legal definitions.
Academic Search Premier
This database provides full text for nearly 4,650 serials, including full text for more than 3,600 peer-reviewed titles.
Business Source Premier
This source provides the full text for more than 8,800 business and academic serials back to the 1880’s.
Computer Source
This database offers full text for nearly 300 technology related publications and indexing and abstracts for over 100 more.
Consumer Reports
Offers access to the Consumer Reports website, with expert, unbiased ratings, reviews, product comparisons, and buying guides for many essential consumer products.
MasterFILE Premier
This database contains full text articles from nearly 1,800 general reference, business, consumer health, general science, and multicultural periodicals. Full text articles go back to January of 1990 and indexes and abstracts of articles are available through January 1984.
MAS Ultra – School Edition
Designed specifically for high school students this database provides full text for more than 700 popular general interest and current events publications with information dating as far back as 1975. This database also provides access to 500 full text pamphlet and over 350 full text reference books.
Middle Search Plus
Aimed at students this online resource provides access to hundreds of magazine and encyclopedia articles, historical documents and maps.
Primary Search
This database for elementary school students provides access to primary school focused publications including, encyclopedias, almanacs and magazines. Use it to supplement a research project, find a school play to perform, or pore through the map, photo, and flag database.
Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
Full text access to all content from 1984 to the present, except for letters to the editor, death notices and advertising.
Religion and Philosophy Collection
This offers access to more than 300 full text journals, including more than 250 peer-reviewed titles, making it an essential tool for researchers and students of theology and philosophical studies.
Sociological Collection
This database provides access to hundreds of journals with thousands of articles related to the aspects of sociology including social behavior, relationships, community development, culture and social structure.
Access World News
Includes current and archived news content from more than 12,700 sources spanning 200+ countries. Explore and stay informed on local, national, and international topics, people and events in areas such as business, health, education, jobs and careers, political and social issues and more.
Akron Beacon Journal - Including Digital Version
Full text access to all content from 1984 to the present, except for letters to the editor and advertising. Choose image edition to view today’s paper. Click on text version for full-text access to content from 1984 to the present.
Akron Reporter
Akron’s newspaper serving the African American Community is digitized and available for the years 1969-1999 and 2003-2018.
America's News
Comprehensive news and information at the local, state, regional and national levels. It offers the full-text of over 2,000 newspapers and online news sources from the United States and select international locations. It includes the current day image editions of 10 Ohio newspapers including the Akron Beacon Journal, Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch and Canton Repository.
Black Life in America
Comprehensive coverage of the African American experience from earliest times to today. Sourced from nearly 19,000 American and global newspapers from 1704 to the present, including over 400 African American newspapers. Updated daily.
Heritage Hub
Explore your family history with the premier collection of U.S. obituaries and death notices for in-depth genealogical research from 1704 – today. HeritageHub helps you easily identify relatives, uncover new information and potentially unknown family members. Includes deep coverage from all 50 states, hard-to-find content from the mid 1900’s, and original obituary images.
New York Times - use links below
Enjoy free unlimited access to NYTimes.com in our branches using your Library account. To access NYTimes.com from home, create an account, login and then redeem an at-home access code for 24 hours of unlimited at-home access.
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New York Times Cooking
Unlimited access to recipes, cooking lessons and more.
New York Times Games
Unlimited access to New York Times crosswords and games.
NewspaperARCHIVE - Academic Library Edition
Search for articles in over 110 Ohio newspapers dating from 1800 to the present.
Newspaper Source
Newspaper Source provides selected full text for 25 national (U.S.) and international newspapers. The database also contains full text television & radio news transcripts as well as full text articles from over 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers.
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 including Crain’s Cleveland Business.
Wall Street Journal Subject: Newspapers
Digital version of the Wall Street Journal from 2008 to within the last 3 months.
AccessEngineering
A database of over 600 reference books covering topics including makerspace, engineering and chemistry.
AccessScience
An authoritative online STEM education resource; it includes over 8,500 articles covering all areas of science.
Birds of the World
Birds of the World is the most comprehensive reference for the life histories of over 10,000 bird species
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Science Reference Source
Topics covered in in this database include biology, chemistry, earth and space science, environmental science, health and medicine, history of science, life science, physics, science and society, science as inquiry, scientists, technology and wildlife. Science Reference Source contains full text for hundreds of science encyclopedias, reference books, periodicals and other sources.
Ohio Means Jobs
This site offers job searching, resume building and career training tools.
Databases can also be viewed by title on the Databases by Title page.
