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Online Resources

The Iowa City Public Library offers access to a number of online resources including subscription databases (marked with ) and free web resources on a great variety of subjects.

A-Z list of all Resources

• Academic Search Elite - Multi-disciplinary database containing full-text articles from over 2,000 journals.
• All Iowa Reads - Information and discussion questions for past and present All Iowa Reads selections.
• Allmusic - Biographies of musicians, discographies, reviews, similar artists, and best pics.
• America’s Obituaries & Death Notices - America’s Obituaries & Death Notices is NewsBank’s large and comprehensive collection of newspaper obituaries and death notices from around the United States.
• America's Job Bank - Site with over 800,000 job listings.
• American Hospital Directory - Directory of over 6000 hospitals.
• American Medical Association - Includes medical information and a doctor finder.
• American Memory Collection - Library of Congress provides free access to historical documents, photographs, maps, multimedia, and sheet music pertinent to American culture.
• Ancestry - AVAILABLE ONLY WITHIN THE LIBRARY. Library Edition includes records from the U.S. census; military,court, land, and probate records; vital records; directories; passenger lists, and more. Like information available for the U.K., Canada and some European countries.
• ArticleFirst - Offers searching and browsing of articles and journal table of contents in one database.
• Best Hospital Finder - Rankings from U.S.News & World Report.
• Better Business Bureau - Includes business reliability reports, online complaint forms, and their popular charity reports.
• Biography in Context - Biographies from respected Gale Group sources. Search based birth and death year, nationality, ethnicity, occupation or gender.
• Chilton Library - Automobile and light truck repair and maintenance.
• College.gov - U.S. Department of Education website containing information and resources on preparing, applying, and paying for traditional two-four year, vocational, and career colleges.
• Consumer Price Index - Inflation statistics and price data.
• Contemporary Authors - Complete biographical and bibliographical information and references on more than 120,000 U.S. and international authors.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism - Extensive collection of critical essays on contemporary authors.
• Corridor Careers - Job opportunities in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area.
• County Business Patterns - Economic statistics on a county level.
• CQ Weekly - Coverage of the U.S. Congress including the status of bills, votes and amendments, floor and committee activity.
• Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites - Categorized & cross-referenced index to genealogical resources on the Internet.
• Des Moines Register - the largest circulation newspaper in the state of Iowa. Coverage from 11/27/2002 – present.
• DocFinder - Information on doctors, including board actions.
• EbscoHost Magazine Index - Multiple databases that cover a wide range of topics and which contain full-text articles, citations, and abstracts from sources such as newspapers, periodicals and newswires.
• EbscoHost Mobile - Multiple databases that cover a wide range of topics and which contain full-text articles, citations, and abstracts from sources such as newspapers, periodicals and newswires.
• eHow - eHow.com is an online community dedicated to providing visitors the ability to research, share, and discuss solutions and tips for completing day-to-day tasks and projects. Includes more than 1.5 million articles and 150,000 high-quality videos.
• Ellis Island Records - Search immigration records.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica Online for Kids - Search Compton’s Encyclopedia, E.B. Elementary Encyclopedia or a dictionary. (for kids)
• Encyclopedia Britannica - Search Encyclopaedia Britannica, Britannica Student Encyclopaedia, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and a World Atlas. Provides for searching by keyword, subject, and alphabetical listing.
• Encyclopedia of Associations - Detailed information on over 135,000 nonprofit membership organizations worldwide.
• ERIC - Published and unpublished sources on thousands of educational topics.
• Family Search - Genealogical service provided by The Church of Latter Day Saints containing family histories, family trees, ancestry, and census records.
• Federal Student Aid - Federal Student Aid Gateway, including the FAFSA online forms.
• Google Image Search - Component of the popular search engine that solely searches the image content of webpages.
• Google Scholar - Use as an index to search scholarly literature from a variety of disciplines and sources, including books, abstracts, theses, citations, and peer-reviewed journals.
• Government Printing Office - The Government Printing Office produces, procures, and disseminates printed and electronic publications of the Congress as well as the executive departments and establishments of the Federal Government.
• GPO Monthly Catalog - Covers all types of U.S. government documents, including Congressional reports, hearings, debates, and records; judiciary materials; and documents issued by executive departments (Defense, State, Labor, Office of the President, etc.).
• Grolier Online - Includes New Book of Knowledge encyclopedia for reference and current events, Lands and Peoples for country information, and America the Beautiful for states’ information.
• Grolier Online Kids - Includes New Book of Knowledge encyclopedia for reference and current events, Lands and Peoples for country information, and America the Beautiful for states’ information. (for kids)
• Health Info Iowa - The best health information source for Iowans.
• Health Source – Consumer Edition - Consumer information from up to 80 health magazines.
• Health Source – Nursing/Academic Edition - Scholarly medical information from over 550 journals.
• HeritageQuest - Census data, family records and local histories and much much more.
• Historical Quotes - Historical stock prices.
• Historical Resources at ICPL - Iowa City and Johnson County historical resources in the Iowa City Public Library.
• ICPL Collection Blog - Iowa City Public Library staff provide reviews and recommendations of items in the collection.
• Information Please Almanac - A compendium of statistics and up-to-date facts and figures, on everything you need to know.
• Iowa City Press Citizen - Iowa City’s local newspaper. Coverage from 11/13/2002 – present.
• Iowa Department of Education - Home page with links to news, grants, programs, directories, documents, reports, data and statistics.
• Iowa HealthCare Collaborative - Provides medical data to improve hospital and clinic standards. Contains information on patient safety and statewide healthcare quality.
• Iowa Legal Aid - Iowa Legal Aid website, a project of Iowa Legal Aid, the Volunteer Lawyer Projects of the Iowa State Bar and Polk County Bar Associations, and HELP Legal Assistance offering general legal information.
• Iowa Maps - Find state, county, city maps from the Iowa Department of Transportation.
• Iowa Workforce Development - Job Search; select a city or type of job.
• Kelley Blue Book - Car prices and reviews.
• LawSource - American Law Sources Online provides a comprehensive uniform and useful compilation of links to all Internet sources of American law that are available without charge.
• Learning Express - Over 770 practice tests, tutorials, and eBooks. Find United States citizenship exam preparation, law school exam (LSAT) preparation and more.
• LexisNexis Library Express - Access to over 9,500 news, business, and legal sources. News and business resources can be accessed remotely from LexisNexis. Legal resources are only available in the library.
• Local News Index - Produced by the Iowa City Public Library, provides indexing for local information in newspapers and magazines. It currently goes back to 1965 and continues retrospectively.
• Mango Languages - A premier resource for all your language-learning needs. Mango is an interactive tool that helps you learn Spanish, French, German, Italian, and 30 more languages. Also includes English instruction (ESL) tailored to speakers of 14 languages.
• Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory - Search the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory by name, firm, geographically, or area of practice.
• MasterFILE Premier - MasterFILE Premier is a multidisciplinary database provideing full text for nearly 1,700 general reference publications with information dating as far back as 1975.
• Medline - Covers all areas of medicine, dentistry, nursing, health services, administration, nutrition, and much more.
• MedlinePlus - Provides access to extensive information about specific diseases and conditions and also has links to consumer health information from the National Institutes of Health, dictionaries, lists of hospitals and physicians, health information in Spanish and other languages, and clinical trials.
• Merriam-Webster - Online collegiate dictionary and thesaurus.
• Monster - The leading global online careers website.
• Morningstar Investment Research Center - includes mutual funds, stocks, and electronically traded funds. Please note that electronic use is limited to one user at a time. You will receive a message if the site is being utilized. Please try accessing again later.
• My Virtual Reference Desk - Megasite contains thousands of reference works.
• NADA Blue Book - NADA Blue Books Prices and product reviews for new and used cars, motorcycles and more.
• Nation Job Network - Information for both job seekers, employers and more.
• New Materials at the Library - New materials recently added to the Library collections.
• New York Times - America’s newspaper of record.
• New York Times Bestseller - New York Times expanded bestseller lists.
• NewsBank - The Gazette 1/1/1992 – present and a collection of 1729 U.S. newspapers and news magazines, divided by state and region.
• NewspaperArchive - Full text of local newspapers from across the country, the largest historic newspaper source online.
• Novelist Plus - Electronic readers advisory service for fiction and nonfiction. Find by author, genre, or enter a novel you liked and get recommendations for similar books.
• One Community One Book: Johnson County Reads - Annual community-wide reading project which invites community residents to discuss the same human rights-related text.
• Press Citizen CareerBuilder - Iowa City jobs from this daily Iowa City newspaper plus job listings from career sites nationwide.
• ProceedingsFirst - Provides tables of contents of papers presented at conferences worldwide.
• Proquest Newspapers - The Iowa City Press Citizen 11/27/2002 - present, The Des Moines Register 11/13/2002 - present , The New York Times 6/1/1980 - present, New York Times Magazine 1/5/1986 – present, The Wall Street Journal 1/2/1984 – present and a collection of national newspapers.
• Reference USA - Includes Business Database, with information on 12 million U.S. businesses, and Residential Database, with information on 120 million U.S. households.
• Science Daily - Science news and feature articles seven days a week.
• Science.gov - A gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by US Government science agencies, including research and development results.
• Searchasaurus (Ebsco) - A general children’s encyclopedia, an animal encyclopedia, a dictionary, a picture resource and a newspaper index. (for kids)
• Small Business Administration - Lists resources by region, addresses of local offices and calendars of events.
• Social Security Death Index - AVAILABLE ONLY WITHIN THE LIBRARY. Genealogical tool lists birth and death dates, and place of death.
• Tax Information - Look here for answers to basic tax filing questions and sources for tax assistance.
• Thomas - Guide to United States Congressional members and staff and legislation.
• Thomas Register - Search ThomasNet to find manufacturers, distributors and service providers.
• Title Source 3 - Find information, books, audio cassettes, and videos. Note: You must select Anonymous Login to begin your search (look for the button at the bottom of the page).
• TopicSearch - Information on a wide variety of topics, from sources such as magazines, newspapers, biographies and book reviews.
• TumbleBooks - An online collection of animated, talking picture books, audiobooks and ebooks for children. Includes picture books in Spanish and other languages. TumbleBooks can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection. No password is necessary.
• U.S. News and World Report College Rankings - U.S. News has collected data from more than 1,400 colleges and ranking them in various categories.
• United States Census - The most authoritative site for economic and demographic information about the U.S.
• United States Census Historical Resources - United States Census Historical Resources including the Statistical Abstract, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 and the Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789 - 1945.
• United States Census Resources - Selected resources from the University of Iowa Library describing the population, demographics and economic condition of the United States.
• Universal Class - Universal Class offers over 500 online non-credit continuing education courses taught by real instructors with remote, 24/7 access so you can study in your schedule. Universal Class offers courses in Exercise and Fitness, Entrepreneurship, Arts and Music, Home and Garden Care, Cooking, Computers and Technology, Health and Medicine, Homeschooling, Job Assistance, Law and Legal, Parenting and Family, Pet and Animal Care…plus 100’s more. You can enroll in up to five courses at a time and have six months to finish each course.
• US Department of Education - Info for students, parents, teachers and administrators.
• US Universities and Colleges - Colleges and universities in the United States.
• USA.gov - Official information and services from the U.S. government, including forms.
• Value Line Investment Survey Online - The service includes full-page reports and analyst commentaries as well as Timeliness™ and Safety™ ranks on the approximately 1,700 stocks covered by The Value Line Investment Survey Standard Edition. Also includes the Small and Mid Cap Edition.
• Vital Statistics - How to locate birth, death, marriage and divorce records, as well as statistics on these events.
• Wall Street Journal - Daily newspaper published by the Dow Jones & Company that focuses on business and financial news.
• Ward's Business Directory of U.S. and Private Companies - Information on small to mid-sized private companies.
• What's Next? Adult Fiction in Series - Help finding books in series, courtesy of Kent Public Library.
• World Almanac - Includes World Almanac and Book of Facts,World Almanac of the USA, the World Almanac of US Politics, World Almanac for Kids, and Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia.
• World Health Organization - Health reports worldwide, including disease outbreaks, statistics, and newsletters.
• WorldCat - The world’s most comprehensive bibliography.

Access to subscription databases from anywhere but the Iowa City Public Library requires a current Iowa City Public Library card and a password and because of licensing restrictions are available only to residents of Iowa City and of areas covered by contracts for library service: rural Johnson County and the cities of Hills and University Heights.