Online Resources

Know what you are looking for? Use the search bar to find resources by name or descriptions, scan the listings in alphabetical order, or use filters to explore different subjects, formats, age groups and more.


Academic Search Premier

Includes full text of many articles, plus index entries for others. Subject areas covered include arts & literature, humanities, science, social science and many other specialties. Updated daily.

Library card required

African American Experience

A collection of scholarly articles and primary source documents on African American history and culture. Includes books, speeches, letters, photographs, illustrations and audio clips.

Library card required

American History

Conduct research on American history with more than 16,000 primary and secondary sources, including overview essays, biographies, government and court documents, photos, maps, audio/video clips, and statistics.

Library card required

American Indian Experience

A collection of scholarly articles and primary source documents covering American Indian history from the paleolithic to the present. Includes treaties, speeches, and captivity narratives as well as traditional storytelling, maps, photographs, and video.

Library card required

Black Short Fiction and Folklore

Collects African and African-American short stories and folktales published in more than 15 countries from the mid-1900s to the present. Includes full digitized runs of select literary magazines and black-owned journals and newspapers.

Library card required

Black Thought and Culture

Collects published works by leading African American writers, spanning the 1700s to the present. Includes books, interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets and letters.

Library card required

Black Women Writers

Collects fiction, poetry and essays by black women published in Africa and the Americas from the 1700s to the present.

Library card required

BookFlix

Encourages reading by pairing streaming video storybooks with related fiction and non-fiction titles for children.

Library card required

Booklist Online

Current and archived reviews and articles from the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine. Includes reviews books, audiobooks, reference sources, video, and DVD titles.

Library card required

BrainPop

Watch animated movies, play learning games, and more. Includes BrainPOP Jr. (K-3), BrainPOP, BrainPOP Español, and, for English language learners, BrainPOP ESL. Videos and activities cover topic areas within Science, Math, Social Studies, English Language Arts, and more.

Library card required

Brooklyn Newsstand

Brooklyn Newsstand is a collection of digitized Brooklyn newspapers made possible through a partnership between Brooklyn Public Library and Newspapers.com.  

Brooklyn Newsstand (2,402,000 digitized pages) contains 44 newspaper titles-including the full run of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper (1841-1963) and Brooklyn Life (1890-1931), a Brooklyn Society Magazine. Learn more about the history of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

View the full list of newspapers and their date ranges.

This site is best viewed using Chrome or Safari. 

Free & accessible anywhere

Brooklyn Public Library Digital Collections

Discover Brooklyn history: Explore our collection of digitized Brooklyn content.

Free & accessible anywhere

Caribbean Literature

Searchable collection of Caribbean poems, plays, novels, short stories, and other materials from 1700 to the present. Works are in English, French, Haitian Creole, Spanish and Dutch.

Library card required

Chinese Electronic Journal Database (Qikan)

A full-text resource of over 500 Chinese popular and scholarly periodicals published in China. Search this Chinese database to find periodical articles for adults, young adults and children.

Library card required

CIA World Factbook and Country Maps

The Central Intelligence Agency's basic intelligence for 266 world entities; free maps can be downloaded and printed in PDF or JPEG formats.

Free & accessible anywhere

Directory of Open Access Journals

Free community-curated directory that indexes and connects to full text, open access, peer reviewed scientific and scholarly journals.

Free & accessible anywhere

Ebscohost Espanol

Artículos con texto completo de revistas, diarios y revistas académicas, índices generales, y otros recursos en ambos Español e Inglés. EBSCOhost Español tiene una función de traducción, pero no es garantizado obtener una traducción completamente exacta.

Library card required

Europeana

Web portal to the digital resources of many European museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. Formats include books, paintings, films, objects, sound recordings and archival records. 

Free & accessible anywhere

Fire Insurance Maps Online (FIMO)

New York State high-definition, full-color fire insurance maps from Sanborn and other publishers, real estate atlases, plat books, and other historical maps showing building structures, building construction details, property ownership, property uses, and other useful information. The site has an Interactive map search, and Geo-referenced or search by place name and drop-down menus.

Library card required

Flipster

Get access to major magazines and journals to read on your smartphone, tablet, or PC. Check out Flipster's getting started guide here. To get the free Flipster app, search for "Flipster" in either Google Play or  Apple's App Store

Library card required

Gale eBooks

24/7 access to reference ebooks. No checkout necessary. Titles can be browsed, searched, and downloaded anytime from any Internet-connected device. Topics include arts, business, education, history, law, literature, medicine, religion, science, and social science.

Library card required

Gale General OneFile

A searchable collection of general interest and scholarly publications on topics including Careers, Computers & Technology, Education, Health, History, Personal Finance, and Self-Help. Content includes reference books, newspapers, magazines, journals, and audio & video files.

Free & accessible anywhere in NY state

Gale In Context: Elementary

Gale In Context: Elementary (formerly Kids InfoBits), introduces elementary school students to database searching with easy-to-use resources featuring age-appropriate, curriculum-related content

Free & accessible anywhere in NY state

Gale In Context: High School

Gale in Context High School (Formerly Student Resources) contains information on a variety of topics in an easy to read format. Includes primary documents, biographies, topical essays, background information, critical analyses, magazine articles, audio and video clips, and thousands of photographs and illustrations. Includes topics in science, health, history, literature, current events, sports, world cultures, and business/economics. Easy to search and topics are comprehensive in content.

Library card required

Gale In Context: Middle School

Gale In Context: Middle School is a Gale database created specifically for middle school students, combining reference content with age-appropriate videos.

Free & accessible anywhere in NY state

Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints

Gale in Context Opposing Viewpoints covers today’s social issues, from Offshore Drilling to Climate Change. Helps students research, analyze and organize a broad variety of data for conducting research, completing writing assignments, preparing for debates, creating presentations and more.

Free & accessible anywhere in NY state

Gale Literature Criticism

An online collection of literary criticism. Based upon well known reference series like Contemporary Literary Criticism, Drama Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Poetry Criticism. Conduct research on authors and their works, as well as articles on multiple eras, genres, and regions.

Library card required

Gale Literature Resource Center

Online resource for research on literary topics, authors, and their works. Coverage includes all genres and disciplines, all time periods, and all regions of the world.

Library card required

Gale Literature: LitFinder

Full text online editions of classic poems, short stories, essays, plays, and speeches.

Library card required

Gale OneFile: Diversity Studies

Customized selection of journals relating to Diversity Studies. From the New York State Online Virtual Library database collection.

Free & accessible anywhere in NY state

Hyread

Access Chinese eBooks and audiobooks on a variety of topics including health, English learning, art, literature and children’s materials. Titles can be read or played on PCs, laptops, or mobile devices. Download the free app.

Library card required

JSTOR

JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journals, books, and primary sources as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. The material available spans many disciplines in the arts, sciences, and humanities.

When browsing or searching, you may find locked content. We apologize that some content is not available via Brooklyn Public Library's subscription. 

Only in library branches

Latino American Experience

Scholarly articles and primary source documents covering Latino American history and culture from the 1400s to the present.

Library card required

MarciveWeb DOCS

Searchable catalog of U.S. government publications from July 1976 - present. Access to Congressional Research Service reports that are in the public domain.  

Only in library branches

MasterFILE Premier

Full text articles covering a broad range of subjects including general reference, business, education, health, general science and multicultural issues.

Library card required

Middle Search Plus

Middle Search Plus is a full-text database providing popular middle school magazines, reference e-books, and thousands of primary source documents and videos. Subjects include history, current events, science and sports.

Library card required

New York Heritage Digital Collections

Search and browse digital collections about New York State's extensive history. Includes letters, diaries, photographs, newspapers, and maps from over 160 museums, libraries and archives.

Free & accessible anywhere

Novelist K-8 Plus

Find good books for kids, whether fiction or nonfiction. This online resource includes reading recommendations from librarians. Search for books by reading level, genre, content, time period, and more.

Library card required

Novelist Plus

Find good books and audiobooks for adults, whether fiction or nonfiction. This online resource includes reading recommendations from librarians. Search for books by genre, content, time period, and more.

Library card required

NovelNY (resources for students)

Encyclopedias and research tools for elementary and middle school students: the Scholastic Go! encyclopedia, eLibrary Elementary for books and magazines, Kids Infobits for children's magazines, and Opposing Viewpoints in Context. High school and college students can access General OneFile, Academic OneFile, and Opposing Viewpoints for research. From the New York State Online Virtual Library database collection.

Free & accessible anywhere in NY state

Oxford Research Encyclopedias

Oxford Research Encyclopedias are a collection of essays on a variety of topics, designed to give readers an overview of a subject that they can understand in half an hour of reading or less.

Remote users: Type your Brooklyn Public Library card number in the box "Sign in with your library card", click Sign In, and then select Brooklyn Public Library.

Library card required

Oxford Very Short Introductions

The full text of the entire catalog of Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions series. The books in this platform offer concise overviews to a range of academic subjects in the arts & humanities, law, medicine & health, science & mathematics, and social sciences. 

Remote users: Type your Brooklyn Public Library card number in the box "Sign in with your library card", click Sign In, and then select Brooklyn Public Library.

Library card required

PowerMyLearning

Online learning activities curated by educators and organized by subject, grade and Common Core standard. Educators can create playlists of activities tailored to their lessons and invite students to a "class" with a code and track their students' progress. Students can create an avatar and "level up" the more they play. Parents can also log in and connect with their children to set goals and rewards for them. Create a free login to get started.

Free & accessible anywhere

Project Muse

Humanities and social science content for the scholarly community. Complete, full-text versions of scholarly journals and books from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies. 

You may encounter locked content. When browsing or searching "All Muse", select "Only Content I have access to" to find subscription content. We apologize that some content is not available via Brooklyn Public Library's subscription.

Library card required

Salem Literature

Collection of classical and current literary criticism of the world’s most-studied literature. Focuses on both an individual author’s entire body of work or on a single work of literature.  Based off of Magill Books or Masterplots series.

Library card required

SIRS Discoverer

Areas covered include: current events, history, health, language arts, math, science, social studies, and technology. Includes newspaper and magazine articles, material from DK Eyewitness books, and science experiment ideas. Search for something specific or explore a variety of topics and current events.
 

Library card required

TrueFlix

Read and listen to e-books and watch videos online based on titles from the Trueflix nonfiction book series.  Also look up project ideas, extra information, and lesson plans for teachers and others.

Library card required

Tumblebooks

Search from a selection of read-a-long and animated talking picture books, eBooks, graphic novels, non-fiction, and educational videos, puzzles, and games.  Titles include accelerated reading, Lexile, and grade reading levels.  Create your own playlists of favorite titles.

Library card required

Urban Archive

View our collection of city stories and check out the platform of digital collections of New York City's museums, archives, and libraries.

Free & accessible anywhere

World Digital Library

Images of historic items from countries around the world, curated by the U.S. Library of Congress and the United Nations.  Materials include photographs, maps, newspapers, journals, books, and manuscripts from museums, libraries, and national archives from around the world, representing over 100 languages.  Easily search by time period, institution, type of material, language, place, or topic.

Free & accessible anywhere

WorldCat FirstSearch

Search other libraries' catalogs for books and other materials. WorldCat FirstSearch is a service of OCLC, a library cooperative.

Library card required