Databases

Available in a Cambridge Public Library only.  Thousands of family history databases, including vital records, census records, ship passenger lists, military records and lots more!

Biography in Context is an engaging online experience for those seeking contextual information on the world's most influential people. The new solution merges Gale's authoritative reference content (including Lives & Perspectives) with periodicals and multimedia organized into a user-friendly portal experience while also allowing users to search for people based on name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, or gender as well as keyword and full text.  Also includes the content of Contemporary Authors.

Looking for a book for your book club to read next or a book to bring on vacation or the hottest new business title or award winners for young adults and children? BookLetters is a reader's advisory service providing opportunities to sign-up to receive free email-newsletters with comments and reading recommendations in varied fields of interest. The service also includes Cambridge Public Library news and activities including author talks, bestseller and award lists, book discussion guides, author directories and other helpful information.

Books and Authors

Books & Authors offers new ways to explore the endless possibilities and combinations of books, authors, genres and topics. Combining over 140,000 titles, 50,000 authors, and thousands of read-alike, award winner and librarian’s favorites lists, Books & Authors helps bring readers and literature together. Through the use of expertly written and arranged content and a dynamic, cutting edge user interface, Books & Authors makes exploration of genre fiction and essential non-fiction fun!

Boston Globe

Provides full text access to The Boston Globe - 1980-current.

Contains the electronic editions of record for valuable local and regional newspapers-all in one easy-to-search database. Each paper provides unique coverage of local and regional news, including companies, politics, sports, industries, cultural activities, and people in the community. Search using keywords or browse by date. 

Britannica Suite

• Public Library Edition - 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. (Online Mobile Edition)
• Annals of American History - Explore the rich and varied history of the United States through speeches, historical accounts, memoirs, poems, images, and multimedia.
• Public Library Edition for Kids - Contains Compton's Encyclopedia, Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia, and a wealth of other age-appropriate material for younger students and children.
• School Edition - Elementary, Middle and High School levels, plus read-aloud al all levels and translation for over 50 languages. Britannica Online School Edition gives teachers and students instant access to four complete encyclopedias and other resources that ensure consistency with classroom topics and age-appropriate language.
• Learning Zone (Early Childhood) - Grade Level PreK-5. Play, discover, create—these are the cornerstones of learning for young children. Now, Britannica gives teachers an online solution designed specifically for the needs of ages 4 to 7.
• Spanish Reference Center - Spanish Reference Center delivers two products in one—a reference collection for ages 6-12 and another for the high school and college ages. Separate home pages for each level allow schools and libraries to tailor the product to their users' needs, making it the only online Spanish-language database that offers age-appropriate content for everyone.
• World Data Analyst - This rich trove of current and historical statistics on the countries of the world makes historical and cross-national comparisons easy.

Business Insights: Essentials

Business and Company Resource Center is a fully integrated resource bringing together company profiles, brand information, rankings, investment reports, company histories, chronologies and periodicals. Search this database to find detailed company and industry news and information

Search using keywords or browse by date.
Date Range: (8/4/2005-Current)

ConsumerReports.org

ConsumerReports.org is the sister product of the Consumer Reports print magazine and provides ratings and recommendations on cars, appliances, electronics, and thousands of other products under the categories of Home and Garden, Babies and Kids, Money, and Food.

Contemporary Literary Criticism - Select (CLC-Select) is an extensive collection of critical essays on contemporary authors.  Each CLC-Select entry contains a biographical/critical introduction, listing of principal works, and sources for further study.  

Criminal Justice Collection

The Criminal Justice Collection database focuses on all aspects of the criminal justice field. Publications include: American Criminal Law Review; Corrections Today; Criminal Justice; Criminal Justice Ethics; Forensic Examiner; Psychology Today; and more.

The Digital Media Catalog (OverDrive) provides popular audiobooks and eBooks for users to download.  For a list of compatible Audio Devices click here, for eBook Devices here.

A collection of more than 1,100 periodicals and 200 reports (most full-text) focusing on all levels of education, educational administration and policy.

From arts and the humanities to social sciences, science and technology, this database meets research needs across all academic disciplines.  Access scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers - with full text and images! 

The Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. Sources may be searched individually or together.

Use this database to research all business and management topics. Includes directory listings for over 150,000 companies as well as investment analysts' reports on major companies and industries.

General OneFile is a one-stop source for news and periodical articles. OneFile contains over 5,000 full-text periodical titles, and more than 9,200 titles in all, on a wide range of topics.

Use this general interest database to search magazines, reference books, and newspapers for information on current events, popular culture, the arts and sciences, sports, etc. 

Global Issues In Context

Global Issues in Context offers international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events. Featured are hundreds of continuously updated issue and country portals that bring together a variety of specially selected, highly relevant sources for analysis of social, political, military, economic, environmental, health, and cultural issues. Each of these gateway pages includes an overview, unique "perspectives" articles written by local experts, reference, periodical, primary source and statistical information. Rich multimedia - including podcasts, video, and interactive graphs - enhance each portal. Use Browse Issues and Topics, Country Finder, Basic Search or Advanced Search to explore the database.

Health and Wellness Resource Center

Provides instant access to carefully compiled and trusted medical reference materials. Includes nearly 400 health/medical journals, numerous reference volumes, over 700 health videos, hundreds of pamphlets and health-related articles from 2,200 general interest publications. Material contained in this Resource Center is intended for informational purposes only.

Use this database to find articles on: Fitness, Pregnancy, Medicine, Nutrition, Diseases, Public Health, Occupational Health & Safety, Alcohol and Drug Abuse, HMOs, Prescription Drugs, etc.

HeritageQuest Online is a digital resource that combines searchable images of U.S. federal genealogical census records and digitized books containing family and local histories from around the country. It includes 25,000 family and local history books, U.S. census records, and PERSI, an index of over 1.6 million genealogy and local history articles.

Historic Cambridge Newspaper Collection

All historic newspapers in the Cambridge Public Library’s collection that do not have copyright restrictions are fully searchable and freely available. Newspapers include the Cambridge Chronicle (1846-1923), the Cambridge Press (1887-1889), the Cambridge Sentinel (1903-1912), and the Cambridge Tribune (1887-1923), with over 650,000 articles covering major historical events from Cambridge’s incorporation as a city in 1846 to the early years of prohibition. Genealogists, historians, local history buffs, and curiosity seekers alike can easily enjoy and discover Cambridge history.

The Historical New York Times provides the full image of articles published in the New York Times from its first issue in 1851 (to three years prior to the current year). It is searchable by keyword, subject, author, and article title. It includes illustrations and advertisements.

The authoritative Horn Book Guide publishes short, critical reviews of thousands of hardcover trade books published in the United States for young people.The reviews are clear and honest, identifying strengths and weaknesses and rating the books on a scale from one to six, with a marking books receiving the highest ratings of a 1 or 2. The Horn Book Guide Online is searchable by author, illustrator, title, subject, and bibliographic data, as well as by rating assigned the book in the original Horn Book review. 

Designed for junior high and middle school students, this resource includes mainly full-text magazines, newspapers and reference books covering current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, people, government, history, sports and more. 

Kids InfoBits targets the research needs of students in kindergarten through grade 5. It features a developmentally appropriate and visual graphic interface, a subject-based topic tree search and full-text, age-appropriate, curriculum-related magazine and reference content. 

Find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world. The optional MLA International Bibliography module adds citations for hundreds of thousands of books, articles and dissertations from 1926 to the present, linked to full text where available.

Mango Languages is designed to equip you with conversational abilities from the very start. Whether you're learning how to order a pizza or ask when the game starts, Mango immerses you in real, everyday conversations in a wide variety of languages. It features instruction in English for speakers of more than a dozen languages. For a tutorial of the program, you can visit this YouTube video.

Use this collection for full-text articles from 50 magazines and local newspapers for coverage of Massachusetts people, places and historical events.

MUZZY Online

Available in eight world languages, the MUZZY story is a captivating and entertaining way for kids to learn another language. Just choose a language and get started!

National Geographic Magazine Archive 

Featuring the complete archive of the magazine from 1888 through 1994, National Geographic Magazine Archive includes every page and every photograph, all fully searchable through an intuitive interface.
 

Naxos Music Library 

This database includes the New York Times from January 1, 1985 to the present, including the New York Times Magazine and the New York Times Book Review.

NoveList is a readers' advisory resource which assists in finding new authors and titles.  NoveList allows you to use a favorite author or title as a template to locate other authors and titles of interest.  You can also enter words that describe the contents of a book you would like to read, and NoveList retrieves titles that contain these words in the book's subject headings field.  In addition, you can browse over 1,200 theme-oriented book lists, 150 award lists and 1,000 fiction related web-sites.  NoveList contains materials for all ages including picture books, children's "chapter" books, young adult titles and books for adult readers. The database provides enhanced subject access to over 92,000 fiction titles.  Updated quarterly, NoveList integrates information from a variety of sources.   

Opposing Viewpoints In Context

Opposing Viewpoints in Context is an engaging online experience for those seeking contextual information and opinions on hundreds of today's hottest social issues. Drawing on the acclaimed Greenhaven Press series, the new solution features continuously updated viewpoint articles, topic overviews, full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, statistics, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites organized into a user-friendly portal experience.

Search the Oxford English Dictionary online for the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past.

Contains hundreds of reference sources from this famous publisher, including the acclaimed Oxford Companions series, Visual English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and acclaimed natural history titles such as the Encyclopedia of Mammals.  

Gale PowerSearch provides you with access to all the Gale content in your library's collection through one, single search query. PowerSearch helps users select the databases most appropriate to include in a cross-search by providing an alphabetical listing along with a description of each one. Users search with the method that's easiest for them - by entering keywords, using pre-defined subject terms or constructing complex search queries using Boolean logic. Below the search term field, users will find a list of Gale databases so they can simply select as many databases as they want to include in their search. The database from which each document is found appears as part of the search results. 

ReferenceUSA is a directory of nearly 14 million U.S. businesses, searchable by name, yellow page heading, SIC code, zip code, estimate sales volume, and more.

Science In Context

Science in Context provides topic overviews, experiments, biographies, pictures and illustrations, as well as articles from over 200 magazines and academic journals and links to quality web sites. The database covers curriculum-related science topics, and offers teachers an easy-to-use tool to identify content directly correlated to state and national standards.

Statesman's Yearbook Online 

This database 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. 

T.E.R.C. is an invaluable source for higher education. It contains information on colleges, graduate schools, and specialty programs. T.E.R.C. also offers scholarship searches, practice tests, and downloadable e-books to prepare for the entrance exams. 

U.S. History In Context

U.S. History in Context is an engaging online experience for those seeking contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in U.S. History. The new solution merges reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites organized into a user-friendly portal experience.

Value Line is a complete, multidimensional investment management solution that enables both new and experienced investors to make timely, better-informed decisions. It provides a wealth of in-depth financial information, intelligently presented both in print and online, plus objective research, insightful commentary, proven price projections, and advanced analytical tools.  User Manual.

World Book Online is your online route to reliable, authoritative, easy-to-understand information and an array of supplementary search tools and information sources.  World Book Online can fulfill many research needs.  You may need the answer to a particular question.  Or you may want general information to help with a school assignment.  And, of course, many people simply like to explore World Book, letting one topic lead them to another.

World History In Context

World History in Context is an engaging online experience for those seeking contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in World History. The new solution merges reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites organized into a user-friendly portal experience.

OCLC catalog of books and other materials in libraries worldwide.