Our most popular free resources:
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O'Reilly for Public Libraries subscription includes more than 47,000 books and 30,000 hours of video in areas such as information technology and software; business; digital media; professional and personal development; and desktop and web applications.
Serving the needs of patrons working to advance their careers, tune into business and technology trends, or explore new software, this collection—created and curated by O'Reilly—serves the business and technology needs of a wide range of users.
Included are hundreds of books and videos for makers, gamers, and tinkerers; more than 100 hobbyist titles, including STEAM Lab for Kids and The Lego Build-It Book, Volumes 1 & 2; more than 900 books from the "For Dummies" series; and more than 150 titles on job-seeking and career development.
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Ancestry® Library Edition, distributed exclusively by ProQuest and powered by Ancestry.com, delivers billions of records in census data, vital records, directories, photos, and more. Ancestry Library Edition brings the world's most popular consumer online genealogy resource to your library.
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Ever since Benjamin Franklin founded the nation’s first public library, Pennsylvanians have been emPOWERed by their libraries—to research, study, learn, communicate, discover new interests, develop new skills, retool their careers, and find their pathway through life.
In support of these endeavors, the State Library of Pennsylvania fostered the development and expansion of a statewide database of library catalogs, accessible from a single website on the Internet for all residents of Pennsylvania. This service, Access Pennsylvania, enabled resource sharing across the Commonwealth. Services provided by the State Library of Pennsylvania grew to include electronic databases, digital collections, and a 24/7 live chat service. In 2013, all of these services were united under a single web portal and named POWER Library.
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Providing free legal help for work permits, DACA, and citizenship, with a comprehensive database of educational guides that explain immigration process. Their work has been covered in the Boston Globe, Yahoo News, and CBS News.
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NoveList has been helping readers find their next favorite book for more than 20 years, and continues to develop innovative solutions for connecting readers, books, and libraries. By helping libraries help readers, NoveList empowers libraries to engage and inspire their communities.
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A Quick and Easy Way to Create Your Professional Resume. 30+ Professional Resume Templates Choose from over thirty modern and professional templates. All of which can be customized to your liking. Fast and Easy to Use Our resume builder lets you easily and quickly create a resume using our resume wizard.
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Pennsylvania's Electronic Library Pennsylvania's Electronic Library PA's. Electronic. Library. PA CareerLink. Resume Builder. Pennsylvania Career Guide. Education Planner.
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Want to learn much more about Excel? Check this site out – offering free tutorials on how to use Excel. This site provides related examples and features (300 examples!) on the right side of each chapter. They keep it easy!
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Want to learn much more about Excel? Check this site out – offering free tutorials on how to use Excel. This site provides related examples and features (300 examples!) on the right side of each chapter. They keep it easy!
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U.S. Major Dailies provides access to the five most respected U.S. national and regional newspapers: The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Wall Street Journal in full-text format and offers users historic and current coverage of local, national, and global events.
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News and media resources:
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Explore and stay informed on local and national topics, people and events in areas such as business, health, education, jobs and careers, political and social issues and more. Features a wide variety of credible, vetted news sources spanning the U.S. Also available remotely 24/7 on any device.
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Your library’s go-to resource for 23 bestselling digital magazines, Flipster is an easy-to-use digital magazine newsstand for libraries. Now available for patrons on desktop or the app! Look for FRANKLIN CO LIBRARY and then choose Patron ID Login under the Sign In button to log on.
Colleges and universities:
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Paying for college isn’t getting easier, and student debt can impede borrowers’ ability to buy homes, get married or expand families. Here’s a breakdown of student loan debt with the most recent figures and how you can tackle it.
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Switching careers can feel daunting. For many people, beginning a new career path involves starting from scratch–and that often means investing a substantial amount of time and money into education and training.
The good news is that these days you don't necessarily need to pursue a two- or four-year degree to rewrite your career track. Instead, you can enroll in a coding bootcamp. Bootcamps are becoming increasingly common, and they allow students to quickly enter a new field.
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With college enrollment increasing year over year, there is a more diverse assortment of populations attending Pennsylvania universities. In order for students to thrive, it is pertinent for universities to provide students with inclusive environments.
The team at BestColleges.com concentrates and streamlines the information into a bundle of simple, accurate guides to aid present and future students with disabilities. Their guides have narrowed down information relating to schools that have intentional resource centers, specific scholarship opportunities, and delve into specific environment information that could be beneficial for those with disabilities.
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Student credit cards are designed for college students who have no or limited credit. These cards usually offer low credit limits, and most don't charge annual fees. If you're new to credit cards and want to learn how to use them responsibly, you're in the right place.
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Many college students need student loans to pay for educational expenses. Although federal student loans are typically the most affordable, they may not be a complete solution for every student.
Regardless of your credit, grades or financial need, you may be eligible for federal Direct Unsubsidized Loans. But there are limits on how much you can borrow each year, ranging from $5,500 for dependent undergraduate students to $20,500 for graduate or professional students. There are also total loan limits.
Private student loans can cover the gap between what you need for school and any federal student aid you receive, including grants, loans and work-study pay, as well as how much you can afford to pay toward your school expenses. This guide explains how private student loans work, their advantages and drawbacks, and what you should look for when you’re shopping for private student loans.
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If you’re saddled with student loan debt and worried about making payments on your federal loans during the coronavirus pandemic, you can breathe a sigh of relief. A coronavirus aid bill passed in March pauses payments on federal loans and sets interest rates at 0% from March 13 through Sept. 30, 2020. Private lenders may offer their own special relief programs, or you can refinance your private student loans to save money.
Whether you have federal, private or both types of student loans, consolidating or refinancing them might help you reduce your debt, better manage payments and work toward other financial goals. Too much student loan debt can affect your ability to save for retirement, increase disposable income or qualify for other loans, such as a mortgage. This guide explains the differences between refinancing private student loans and consolidating federal student loans, the pros and cons of each, and the best options for different situations.
Methodology: National student loan refinance companies in this guide are selected based on consumer ratings and availability of products.
No private student loan refinancer is perfect for every borrower. These lenders are a good starting point for most people, but you should research each company on your own.
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This resource provides full-text scholarly content for major college courses. Designed specifically for academic institutions, this database provides full-text and peer-reviewed journals essential for undergraduate and graduate studies.
Health and wellness:
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Consumer Health Complete supports the information needs of patients and fosters an overall understanding of health-related topics. This resource provides content covering all key areas of health and wellness, from mainstream medicine to the many perspectives of complementary and holistic medicine.
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Providing free legal help for work permits, DACA, and citizenship, with a comprehensive database of educational guides that explain immigration process. Their work has been covered in the Boston Globe, Yahoo News, and CBS News.
Educational references:
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World Book Online is an engaging, verified, and trustworthy digital resource for grades pre-K through high school.
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Paying for college isn’t getting easier, and student debt can impede borrowers’ ability to buy homes, get married or expand families. Here’s a breakdown of student loan debt with the most recent figures and how you can tackle it.
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This resource, also located on the niche academy platform, is free to all Pennsylvania residents and requires no password at all. Please freely recommend it to patrons.. This site has learning resources on computer and internet skills, COVID, Job and Career Skills, Social Media, Genealogy, and Wellness. Some of it contains information for referrals for needed resources.
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Explora, EBSCO's new interfaces for K12 schools and public libraries is now! Student Research; Middle School Student Research; Public Library Search.
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Preparing middle school students and educators for success.
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GreenFILE is a free research database covering the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and governments and what can be done at each level to minimize negative impacts. It provides thousands of open access full-text records from scholarly, government and general interest sources.
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Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) is a free research database for library and information science studies. LISTA provides indexing and abstracting for hundreds of key journals, books, research reports. It is EBSCO's intention to provide access to this resource on a continual basis.
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A complimentary research database for teachers, Teacher Reference Center (TRC) provides indexing and abstracts for more than 230 peer-reviewed journals.
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Gale Virtual Reference Library is your single source for eReference aimed at the needs of students, researchers, professionals and general readers. Now you can offer more than 7,000 authoritative, full-text titles—from Gale and a host of premier publishing partners —within 18 subject areas researchers study most.
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Where Stories and Nonfiction Connect.
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Designed to meet every student researcher's needs, Science Reference Center contains full text for hundreds of science magazines, journals, encyclopedias, reference books and a vast collection of images.
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TrueFlix® helps students improve literacy skills, build content-area knowledge, and cultivate the critical skills necessary for academic success and college and career readiness. TrueFlix helps students: Comprehend and evaluate a range of texts. Build strong content knowledge.
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Available in Franklin and Fulton Counties: Gale Virtual Reference Library is a database of encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research. These reference materials once were accessible only in the library, but now you can access them online from the library or remotely 24/7. Because each library creates its own eBook collection, the content you see may vary if you use the database at different libraries (your school, your public library, or your office)
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Available in Franklin and Fulton Counties: The World Book Web is a suite of online research tools that includes encyclopedia articles, primary source collections, educator tools, student activities, pictures, audio, and video, complemented by current periodicals and related Web sites.
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Ask Here PA is designed to provide fast answers to your questions, using information found on the Internet and in proprietary databases funded by libraries. In most cases, Ask Here PA Librarians will provide an answer online in 15 minutes or less! If your question involves lengthy research, we’ll get you started and/or provide a referral for you or your question.
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Providing free legal help for work permits, DACA, and citizenship, with a comprehensive database of educational guides that explain immigration process. Their work has been covered in the Boston Globe, Yahoo News, and CBS News.
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Alexander Hamilton Memorial Free Library has partnered with F&M Trust and Banzai to bring you clear, in-depth lessons that help you dive into the financial topics you care most about.
Languages:
Auto Repair:
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Discover the most accurate, authoritative and up-to-date service and repair information for thousands of domestic and imported vehicles.
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This reference database provides detailed yet user-friendly repair guides for all manner of small engines. All of the content is organized in a powerful, easy-to-use manner so that users can quickly find the information they need.
Disabilities:
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There are 9 million people with hearing difficulties in the USA with somewhere around 20,000 of them applying to post-secondary educational institutions annually. At this point, they face one of the most challenging periods in their life.
While regular students take common learning modes for granted, the latter becomes a real challenge for those who have hearing difficulties of any level. Hearing loss of any type impacts students’ academic performance severely, so education services do their best to prevent academic setbacks and meet the special needs of the deaf community. Fortunately, they seem to succeed.
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EBSCO:
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Forge a clear path to success and support the digital needs of students, remote learners and faculty with access to high-quality academic e-books.Click here to login.
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Choose from more than 1.5 million e-books, including 225,000+ DRM-free titles.
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Give students, educators and administrators on-the-go access to popular e-books. This robust collection is an easy and cost-effective way for libraries to provide full-text e-books that align with their school’s curricula. It includes a selection of classic literary works, important historical documents and general reference materials.
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This cost-effective e-book collection supports a quality learning experience for K-8 students across all subject areas taught in elementary and middle schools. It’s an effective way to provide educators with full-text e-books to support their curricula.
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Build strong literacy skills in students from pre-K to 8th grade by offering digital access to award-winning, short-form fiction and nonfiction titles by Cricket Media. This unique e-book collection explores a wide range of subjects to help young readers explore and expand their worlds.
Funding and Support Attribution
ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA’S POWER Library services are funded primarily by:
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s “Library Access” budget line item; and
Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
These funds are administered by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, Department of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, Governor. Notice of these funding sources must be provided on all printed or electronic presentations of POWER Library resources as listed below. This project is made possible in part by Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and through Library Access Funds administered by the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, Department of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, Governor. OCL reserves the right to change or terminate the ACCESS PENNSYLVANIA POWER Library program based on the availability of funding, program needs, or the availability of vendors that can provide qualified services.