The world’s largest online collection of family history resources, home to more than 7 billion historical records, millions of family trees and much more. Please note that this database can only be accessed from within the library.

Our library system, RAILS, has partnered with BiblioLabs to bring Normal Public Library patrons a library of e-books on the BiblioBoard platform. There is no limit on simultaneous use; items can be read by 1 or 100 patrons at the same time. This means no hold queues and no waiting for titles. 

Scholastic BookFlix is an online literacy resource that pairs classic video storybooks from Weston Woods with related nonfiction eBooks from Scholastic to build a love of reading and learning. The engaging way to link fact and fiction, BookFlix reinforces early reading skills and introduces children to a world of knowledge and exploration.

Brainfuse HelpNow is America’s premier online homework help and tutoring provider offering a unique tutoring and study suite backed by an industry-leading academic team. This service is available to assist students of any age achieve success and includes live online help from 2 pm to 11 pm every day in English and Spanish.

Brainfuse VetNow helps veterans transition to civilian life through live, interactive career assistance, academic tutoring, benefits navigation and much more.

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives and museums and makes them freely available to the world.

Whichever type of motor vehicle you wish to operate, whichever knowledge tests you need to pass, here are some handbooks and practice tests to help you out. The questions on our practice tests resemble those on the official knowledge tests, so you will learn what to expect on the official tests.

eRead Illinois includes an e-book collection and Axis 360 software platform from Baker & Taylor for RAILS members and IHLS non-SHARE members. Participating IHLS libraries that are members of the SHARE catalog will use the Cloud Library.

FirstSearch is an online service that gives library and education professionals access to a rich collection of reference databases. FirstSearch also offers electronic access to more than 10 million full-text and full-image articles.

Normal Public Library patrons can download MP3s to keep forever for free! Freegal offers thousands of songs and each patron can select 5 per week to download and keep. You will need your NPL PIN in order to log in to Freegal. Find out more about your PIN here.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.

Bringing you thousands of movies, full music albums, audiobooks and more. Hoopla is a revolutionary digital service made possible by your local library. Borrow up to five items a month on your Normal Public Library card.

Includes archives collected by the Illinois State Library, Illinois Statewide Vital Records Databases and the Illinois Regional Archives Depositories.

Completely interactive online learning platform of practice tests and tutorial course series to help you succeed on academic or licensing tests. Get immediate scoring, complete answer explanations and individualized analysis of your results.

lynda.com is a leading online learning company that helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals. Through individual, corporate, academic and government subscriptions, members have access to the lynda.com video library of engaging, top-quality courses taught by recognized industry experts.

Learn languages while watching foreign feature films. You can watch the films in Engage Mode to maximize your language learning, or in Movie Mode to just sit back and enjoy. 

The Merck Manuals are one of the world’s most widely used medical information resources. Find information on medical topics, symptoms, drugs, procedures, news and more, written in everyday language.

Niche Academy provides ready-to-use tutorials for the most commonly used library electronic resources. As these resources evolve over time, Niche Academy updates the tutorials.

Provides enhanced subject access to over 70,000 fiction titles and contains over 1,000 subject oriented booklists and complete lists for over 150 book awards.

An unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history and pronunciation of 600,000 words—past and present—from across the English-speaking world.

PebbleGo is the award-winning PreK–3rd-grade database for reading and research. Databases are simple to navigate and offer key reading supports such as read-along audio and word-by-word highlighting.

A comprehensive database of over 12 million businesses, searchable by company name, geographical location, business size, executive title and yellow page heading.

Scholastic Teachables has tens of thousands of trusted, searchable and printable quality educational materials—including bilingual mini-books—for your homeschool families, library initiatives and more on subjects like math, science, reading comprehension, STEM, writing and beyond.

Kids can enjoy audiobooks, read-alongs, puzzles, games, language learning and more.

H. W. Wilson databases cover a wide variety of subject areas including art, education, engineering, humanities, social sciences and more.