Reference & e-Resources 

Have a question? Answers you can trust, now available any time night or day! Try using Ask Away.

Books, Newspaper Articles and Magazines Research Databases

• Ebsco Research Databases - Rice Lake Public Library patrons now have access to a wide variety of databases online. Online databases are computerized collections of information, indexed for easy retrieval.Have a question? Answers you can trust, now available any time night or day! Some are subject specific while others contain a wide variety of information. Some provide abstracts or full text and some just provide a citation to an article from a periodical or other printed source. The information in databases is generally not available free on the Internet and is usually more reliable and authoritative since it has been produced or selected and edited by people with relevant subject expertise.
• Auto Repair Reference Center - Maintenance and service information about your car or truck.
• NoveList - With over 125,000 fiction titles in the database, 90,000 full text reviews, over 36,000 subject headings and a complete spectrum of searching options, NoveList gives you both the flexibility and power you need to address even your most discriminating readers' questions. Use the product's "Find a Favorite Author" or "Find A Favorite Title" feature to locate a list of John Grisham's titles, and then use one of these titles to find more than 200 legal thrillers for your John Grisham fans. The product also uses natural language searching to search the product's full-text reviews to find "fast-paced thrillers" or books that make good "read aloud" titles for a day-care center.
• NetLibrary (must be signup with your local library to use, please see a librarian) - provides access to your library’s eContent collection. eContent is the digital version of books, journals, and database content. You can access your library’s eContent 24 hours a days, seven days a week.
• Thomas Register - the most comprehensive resource for industrial information, products, services, CAD drawings, and more…

Search Engines

• Google - an easy-to-use interface, advanced search technology, and a comprehensive array of search tools for accessing online information. Users are able to search for and find content in many different languages; access stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; get phone book listings for every city in the United States; retrieve information from more than 35 million non-HTML documents; and access the world's largest archive of Usenet messages, more than 700 million, stemming from 1981.
• Yahoo - One of the most popular Web portals listing 14 basic subjects pointing to thousands of other Web sites.

Genealogy

• Heritage Quest Online (Library Bar Code Required) - Genealogy & Local History Collection of 25,000+ family and local history books, every word searchable. These titles have been digitized from ProQuest's microfilm collection, Genealogy & Local History, which assembles genealogies, local histories, primary source materials, and genealogical and local history serials including material from all 50 states and Canada. Also online: Complete U.S. Federal Census, 1790-1930. PERSI™ - The PERiodical Source Index is a comprehensive subject index covering more than 6,500 genealogy and local history periodicals written in English and French (Canada) since 1800. Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files. Freedman's Bank Records. And more...!
• Ancestry Library Edition (must be within the library to use) - contains approximately 4000 databases, including U.S. federal census images and indexes, United Kingdom census images and indexes from 1871 to 1901, immigration records and passenger lists (original images for major U.S. ports), and birth/marriage/death records with a monthly update of the Social Security Death Index.