Category: Adult Resources

Databases Series: Driver’s Education

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Hello!  My name’s Rebecca.  I’m back again, and for those who haven’t been following this series, I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to this series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

Today’s resource is slightly different in that it’s a free resource that we have listed among our databases because we’ve found it to be an excellent, in-demand resource for those of you looking for help passing a driver’s exam.  This resource is driving-tests.org.  It contains practice tests, handbooks, video simulations, and more for car, commercial, and motorcycle driver’s license exams in all 50 States as well as the District of Columbia.  Just choose your state when you first click the link, toggle to the test for which you’d like to study, and begin.  You can also download the handbook for your exam directly from this resource; just scroll down towards the bottom of the page to find it.

Find Driving-tests.org by going directly to the website or by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> D –> Driver’s Education – Practice Tests and Handbooks

This post is number eighteen in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: Candid/FDOP

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Hello!  My name is Tom, and I am the Candid Community Co-supervisor here at the Chester County Library. Today I’ll be guest starring and introducing you to one of the library’s databases that is all about grant seeking.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

I’ll be discussing the Foundation Directory Online Professional database from the company formerly known as The Foundation Center, now called Candid. The Foundation Directory Online Professional (FDOP) is a global resource that provides information on 302K+ funders, 28.8 million awarded-grant records, 2.2 million recipient profiles, and 1.5 million key decision makers. It provides detailed profiles of funders, grants, recipients, and companies. Funder profiles and grant information are updated daily. Candid’s premier fundraising tool gives grant-seekers unprecedented access to the largest amount of clean and coded philanthropic data that currently exists. By combining exhaustive data with intuitive search functionality and informative data visualizations, this tool makes fundraising quick and efficient.

The FDOP is a premier resource for our over 800 local area nonprofit organizations who are looking to expand their funding base. It has a user-friendly but powerful search engine that quickly scans and retrieves customized results for your mission or program.

The Foundation Directory is currently only available on our desktop PCs at the Chester County Library.

This post is number seventeen in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: ChescoPIN

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Hello!  My name’s Rebecca.  For those who haven’t been following this series, I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to this series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

Today I’d like to tell you a little bit about ChescoPIN.  ChescoPIN is a portal that holds most of Chester County’s online public records databases or provides links to other county portals that hold the relevant records.  For records housed directly through this portal, it allows users to search these databases, organized by county department, by entering values in the appropriate fields of the forms provided on the website.  The county departments with records housed directly through ChescoPIN are the Prothonotary, the Assessment Department (real estate), and the Tax Claim Bureau.  For records housed in another county portal, it will link directly to the relevant portal, where you can then search that specific database.  The county departments with records housed in other county portals are the Recorder of Deeds and the Pennsylvania Judiciary (criminal records).

For those who have used ChescoPIN before or who are looking for the Register of Wills and Orphans’ Court/Marriage Licenses, please note that these will have been moved to a new portal by end of day today (Monday, March 31). ChescoPIN will continue to link to this new portal once the move has been finalized. The new portal can be found here.

Find ChescoPIN on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> C –> ChescoPIN

This post is number sixteen in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: Computer Learning Resources

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Hello!  It’s Rebecca, back again!  I hope you enjoyed or learned something new once again from Mikaila, our Business and Career Librarian, who wrote last week’s post about another of our business databases.  For those who haven’t been following this series, I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to this series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

This week, rather than writing about a single database, I’d like to write a bit about a couple of databases that include resources covering a single topic – basic computer skills.  I talked about LearningExpress Library already earlier in this blog series, which has a few basic computer courses included in among everything else it offers.  So today I’ll talk about DigitalLearn and PA Online Learning. 

DigitalLearn is a project of the Public Library Association that has free, easy-to-follow tutorials on basic computing, being safe online, job skills, social media, and more.  They’re simple, list their skill level, and show the time it takes to complete upfront.  Some of the relevant learning courses include Navigating a Website, Intro to Email, Introduction to Google Maps, Getting Started with Telehealth, Intro to Facebook, Online Fraud and Scams, Applying for Jobs Online, Cloud Storage, and Using Healthcare.gov to Enroll in Health Insurance.

PA Online Learning is a free growing collection of tutorials on how to use software, social media, and library resources, such as POWER Library.  Tutorials are a nice mix of videos, images, and text and are relatively comprehensive, providing the basics and then building off of those basics as you move through the course.  Some of the relevant learning courses include Computer Basics, First Steps with Digital: iPads and Tablets, Gmail – Email from Google, Google Chrome, Google Search, How to Zoom, Tech Talk: Passwords, LinkedIn – Social Networking for Job Seekers and Professionals, Instagram – Share Your Moments, and Searching for Jobs Online with Indeed.

Find DigitalLearn on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> D –> DigitalLearn

Find PA Online Learning on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> P –> PA Online Learning

This post is number fifteen in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: Statista

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Hello!  My name is Mikaila.  I am the Business and Career Librarian at Chester County Library, and I am back once more as a guest star on this series!  Today I’ll be introducing you to another of the library’s business databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card.

The business database that I’ll be discussing today is called Statista.  Statista is an international database that focuses on market and industry analysis.  While Reference Solutions can hone in on data surrounding your individual business and community, Statista looks at the big picture of how your business engages with the larger scale industry.  With Statista, you can view data on over one million market and consumer statistics covering 80,000 topics, 170 industries, and over 150 countries.  For E-commerce businesses, Statista can be invaluable in gathering the marketing and consumer insight that may be difficult to garner in such an expansive playing field.  Whether it’s to better understand your market or provide research for your business plan, you can download statistics, reports, market insights, and forecasts and surveys at your leisure.

Find Statista on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> S –> Statista

This post is number fourteen in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here. If you would like to read Mikaila’s first guest post, the one on another of our business databases called Reference Solutions, you can find it here.

Databases Series: News for You

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Hello!  My name’s Rebecca.  For those who haven’t been following this series, I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to this series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

Following in the past couple weeks’ trend of introducing you to newspapers, I would like to talk a little about News for You.  News for You is a weekly news publication written at a basic adult English level for ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers and others with limited English proficiency.  The articles cover a wide-range of subjects both domestic and international.

For those who prefer to read a physical newspaper, we do offer copies on a limited basis for free upon request at the CCL Reference Desk.  But for those who don’t mind reading online, News for You Online includes curriculum and assignments for ESL students and teachers, vocabulary lists pulled from the week’s articles, teacher guides and voting guides, and more to support English language learning.  The best feature, however, is the built-in ability to listen to the articles read out loud.  You can click the play button at the top of each article to play the article out loud in full, or you can click on a single sentence to hear only that sentence.

Contact the Reference Desk at 610-344-5957 or ref@ccls.org to receive the login code.

Find News for You Online on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> N –> News for You Digital Access

This post is number thirteen in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Hello!  My name’s Rebecca.  For those who haven’t been following this series, I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to this series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

Last week, I introduced you to how to access the New York Times online through the library, and this week I’d like to similarly introduce you to how to access and navigate The Philadelphia Inquirer online through the library.  Just as with the New York Times, access to The Philadelphia Inquirer is completely free with your library card, but The Philadelphia Inquirer through us might look a little different from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s standard website.  This is because our access to The Philadelphia Inquirer is through an organization called NewsBank that aggregates the current issues with historical records. 

So when you click our link to access The Philadelphia Inquirer, you will notice that you have three options to choose from.  The Philadelphia Inquirer 1829-1922 in image format, The Philadelphia Inquirer 1981-current in text format, and The Philadelphia Inquirer 2018-current in image format.  The difference between image format and text format is that image format is essentially just a scanned copy of the physical newspaper whereas the text format is just the text of the articles.  Text format articles will show up in a list of links to each article individually categorized by section of the newspaper.  Image format will show the entire issue at once with clickable thumbnail images down the side of the screen that you can click through similar to how you would flip through the pages of a physical newspaper.  You can use the viewer pane to zoom in and out of the page to make articles easier to read.  So all you have to do to read The Philadelphia Inquirer is choose between image and text format, choose your issue date, and start reading!

Find our links to The Philadelphia Inquirer on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> P –> Philadelphia Inquirer

This post is number twelve in this databases series!  If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: New York Times

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Hello!  It’s Rebecca again!  I hope you enjoyed or learned something new from last week’s post by Mikaila, our Business and Career Librarian.  For those who haven’t been following this series, I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to this series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

Today, I’m going to introduce you to the New York Times.  That might sound a bit silly, because I’m sure all of you know what the New York Times is, but I’d bet some of you didn’t know that you could access the online version of this newspaper for free through the Chester County Library System! 

Access from home is provided in the form of a 24-hour day pass that can be renewed every day.  To get this day pass, first you’ll want to create an account with the New York Times website.  All you’ll need to do is input your email address and create a password.  Once you have an account with the website, go back to our databases page and click the Remote Access link to bring you to the page that will allow you to connect your library card to your account for the day.  You will then have full access to the New York Times online for 24 hours. To gain access again the next day, just click on that same Remote Access link, log in to your account if you aren’t already, and connect your library card.

Access from within the library is one step easier!  If you are on the library’s wifi network, all you need to do is create or log in to your account to get full access.  No need to link your library card and no 24-hour access limitation.

Find our links to the New York Times on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> N –> New York Times

This post is number eleven in this databases series! If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: Reference Solutions

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Hello!  My name is Mikaila.  I am the Business and Career Librarian here at Chester County Library, and I’m excited to be the first guest star on this series!  In line with the former posts, I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

This week, I’ll be discussing Reference Solutions (formerly known as Reference USA).  Reference Solutions is a multi-database resource that focuses on U.S. and Canadian data.  I usually describe it as an in-depth white pages/yellow pages in which you can research information on over 104 million U.S. businesses and 322 million consumers.  This tool is invaluable to small businesses who are looking to do the following: research your competition, so you can see where your competition is located as well as a snapshot of their business to get an idea of their day-to-day operating; create mailing lists for vendors, B2B, and B2C; record data and download heat maps for your reference or to input in a business plan; and generally better understand how you and your market fit in your service area.  Reference Solutions is updated regularly to ensure your research is verified.

Find Reference Solutions on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Tools and Research –> All CCLS Databases –> R –> Reference Solutions

This post is number ten in this databases series! If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.

Databases Series: Kanopy

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The logo for Kanopy Plus and Kanopy Kids. The logo for Kanopy Plus is text in varying shades of white, orange, and red. The logo for Kanopy Kids is images of cartoon characters around the text.

Hello!  My name is Rebecca, and I am the Information Literacy Librarian here at the Chester County Library.  (You might recognize me as the librarian with the purple hair!)  Welcome to a new series here on our blog where every week (or thereabouts) I’ll be introducing you to one of the library’s databases.  A library database, for those who are unsure, is essentially just an online resource that the library pays for so that you can access it for free with your library card!

Today, I will introduce you to Kanopy, our free streaming service.  Kanopy offers films, TV shows, documentaries, and children’s programming available to stream on-demand for free with your library card.  While the content you can find on the site won’t be the latest big blockbuster, you can find a wide and ever-growing collection of audiovisual content, from the well-known to the lesser-known, from the BBC and classic films, to anime and K-Dramas, to children’s storytimes and PBS Kids.  There’s something on there for everyone!

Want to make sure your kids access only the media appropriate for them?  Click on the Kids button in the top right-hand corner to only show Kanopy Kids programs.

Stream Kanopy on your computer, through the mobile app on your smartphone or tablet, or through the SmartTV app directly on your television.  Just add your library card, create an account with your email and a password, and you’re in!

Find Kanopy on our website by going to chescolibraries.org –> Downloads.  Click on the orange button that says “Click Here” under Kanopy Plus, and it will take you directly to Kanopy.

This post is number nine in this databases series! If you missed the previous installments, you can view them here.