Websites for library members
Access To Research
Free, searchable access to a wide range of academic articles and research. Subjects include art, architecture, business, engineering, history, languages, politics, philosophy, mathematics and the sciences.
Available on library computers only
Only one printed copy of an article allowed for research purposes.
Ancestry Institution
Trace your family history using records from England, Scotland and Wales censuses from 1841 to 1911, birth, marriage and death records and UK parish and probate record.
Available on library computers only
British Library Newspapers
From 1800 to 1900 and Times Digital Archive 1785 to 1985.
COBRA
COBRA includes information for businesses on start-up, legal, employment, marketing, exporting, finance, health and safety, plus exhibitions and events and many useful links in the Local Area Profile.
Available on home and office computers.
Credo Reference
An online library that gives you access to hundreds of reference books, including encyclopaedias, dictionaries and books of quotations, plus a range of specialist subject books. Now includes almost 10,000 topic pages where you can find information from many different sources, all on one topic, all on one screen.
Go Citizen
Help with 'Life in the UK' test and British citizenship tests.
Infotrac Newstand
A searchable database of the Birmingham Post, the Evening Mail, the Sunday Mercury and the Sports Argus from January 1998 to 2005. Use Publication Search to search for specific titles.
Also includes The Sun from Jan 1997, Daily Mail from Jan 1996, The Guardian/The Observer from Jan 1996 and The Times/The Sunday Times from Jan 1997.
Midlands Historical Data
Electoral registers and historical directories for Birmingham and surrounding counties
Oxford Dictionaries
Explore Oxford Dictionaries for a range of different languages.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
50,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2000. You can do a quick search, browse by date or in alphabetical order or look at the list of themes, eg saints, Oscar winners or poet laureates!
Oxford English Dictionary
The authoritative guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words. It traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources.
Oxford Reference Online
Brings together over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books.
Public Information Online
Public Information Online is the ‘one-stop’ on-line resource, where everyone can access government information from Westminster, the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland and the Welsh assemblies.
Theory Test Pro
Prepare for your Driving Theory Test with this online test site.
NB If you are experiencing difficulty accessing this site through Internet Explorer, please try a different web browser, for example Firefox or Google Chrome.
The Times Digital Archive
Search The Times from 1785 to 1985 and see the results as individual articles and in context on the whole page.
Which?Online
Available at the Library of Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield Library. Please ask staff members to log you into the site.