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Online library

Ancestry

Available at Bath Central Library, Keynsham, and Midsomer Norton Libraries, you can research your family tree, access historic military records and past records from across the world.

British Film Institute (BFI) Replay

BFI Replay is a free streaming service available exclusively for UK public lending libraries, featuring thousands of digitised videos and television programmes from the collections of the BFI National Archive and UK regions and nations film archives, alongside contributions from other significant archives such as Channel 4 and ITV.

You can access this service from the Public Network computers in Bath Central, Keynsham or Midsomer Norton Libraries.

Electronic books, audiobooks, and magazines

eAudiobook service: BorrowBox

Library members can access a free eAudiobook service using their computer, tablet or smartphone. You can access BorrowBox free of charge direct from the BorrowBox website or by downloading the free BorrowBox app , (for iOS and Android, and Kindle Fire). To log on, please enter your library card number and PIN.

eMagazines: Libby

Library members can access a free eMagazine service using their computer, tablet or smartphone. You can access Libby free of charge direct from the Libby website or by downloading the free Libby app (for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire). To log on, please enter your library card number and PIN.

The titles are unabridged, interactive and in full colour, and include some one-off publications, as well as subscription titles.

More details are available on the LibrariesWest website.

Which? Magazine

Get free access to Which.co.uk, where you can read full articles and monthly magazines. With expert testing, reviews and advice, Which? reviews products and services so that you make the best purchase decisions for your needs.

The service is available at Bath, Keynsham and Midsomer Norton libraries. Ask a member of staff for details on how to use this service.

Access to digital content is provided by a third party supplier who delivers access to the platform and content through their own systems. Please be aware that the supplier will be the data controller for the information it collects. The supplier has servers in the US and has their own terms and conditions which you will need to read before choosing to use their service.

The Library Service is not responsible for third party content, and the information you share with the third party supplier.

Dictionaries, biographies, and other reference resources

Oxford English Dictionary: Find out where words came from, as well as their meaning.

Oxford Dictionaries in all languages: Dictionaries for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese.

Oxford Music Online: This is the authoritative resource for music research with over 52,000 articles charting the diverse history and cultures of music around the globe.

Oxford Art Online: Includes over 200,000 articles that span ancient to contemporary art and architecture, as well as over 19,000 images of works of art, structures, plans, and artist signatures.

Benezit Dictionary of Artists: A comprehensive and definitive resource for artists’ biographies, published since 1911.

John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera: The collection offers a fresh view of British history through primary, uninterpreted printed documents which, produced for short-term use, have survived by chance. These include advertisements, handbills, playbills and programmes, menus, greetings cards, posters and postcards.

Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Current, peer-reviewed trustworthy research, read in 30 minutes or less across 25 encyclopedias.

Oxford Reference Online: Discover the best of Oxford University Press’s Reference titles, such as the Oxford Classical Dictionary and the Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature.

Who’s Who and Who Was Who: This comprehensive resource provides short biographies of the all the movers and shakers in the UK.

Dictionary of National Biography: Over 63,000 biographies, 75 million words, 12,000 portraits of significant, influential or notorious figures who shaped British History.

American National Biography: Over 19,000 biographies of significant, influential, or notorious figures from American history written by prominent scholars.

Oxford Bibliographies: Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource directs researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.

New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern spelling for reading and study. Original spelling for literary and bibliographic research. Essays on questions of authorship and chronology across the Shakespearean canon.

World Shakespeare Bibliography: The World Shakespeare Bibliography Online is a searchable electronic database consisting of the most comprehensive record of Shakespeare-related scholarship and theatrical productions published or produced worldwide from 1960 to the present. Only available at Bath Central Library, Keynsham, and Midsomer Norton Libraries.

African American Studies Centre: 20,000 articles by top scholars in the field. Over 2,500 images, more than 700 primary sources with specially written commentaries, and nearly 200 maps have been collected to enhance this reference content.

Online books

Oxford World's Classics: Currently providing access to novels, and other writings, from the 18th, 19th and 20th century, you can support your research using the comprehensive introductions, clear explanatory notes, chronologies, and bibliographies available in every book.

Project Gutenberg: offers over 70,000 free eBooks for you to download or read online.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): provides access to over 88,500 academic, peer-reviewed open access books.

Explorion: a library for adventurers.

Online newspapers

eNewspapers: BorrowBox

Library members can access a free eNewspaper service using their computer, tablet or smartphone. The titles are unabridged, interactive and in full colour, and include some one-off publications, as well as subscription titles.

To access this free service, you will need to create an account on the BorrowBox website. You can also downloading the free BorrowBox app , (for iOS and Android, and Kindle Fire). To log on, please enter your library card number and PIN.

eNewspapers: Times Digital Archive 1785-2019

Find any news story, obituary, birth notice, and more from the Times Newspaper. This fascinating database is fully searchable.

Online journals

Directory of Open Access Journals: A directory of over 3,000 quality controlled, full text, scientific and scholarly journals covering a wide range of subjects and languages.

Access to Research: Free online access to over 1.5million published academic articles from the Access to Research desktop shortcut on our library computers. You can browse for articles from home, but please note you will only be able to view the journal text from a library computer.

Online library catalogues

LibrariesWest Catalogue: Search for and reserve items, renew your loans and update your details (joint catalogue for Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Dorset and Poole public libraries.

COPAC: Merged online catalogue of the British Library, 24 major university research libraries in the UK and Ireland and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales.

Fantastic Fiction: Comprehensive lists of fiction authors.

RNIB Library: Catalogue of resources in formats accessible to those with a visual impairment.

Whichbook: Choose a book online to suit your mood!

Online learning

Driving Theory Test Pro

This resource provides a highly realistic online simulation of the UK's driving theory tests for all vehicle categories.

You can take a mock UK driving theory test. It includes all the official test questions from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and an online version of the Highway Code.

To use this resource you must be a member of the library. You will need to sign up and create a username and password.

Visit the website

Go Citizen: Life in the UK or British citizenship test

This is an online study resource for candidates preparing for the Life in the UK test or British citizenship test.

It includes an online version of the latest official study materials licensed from the Home Office, the people who write the handbook plus hundreds of practice test questions in the same format as the official test.

To use this resource, you must be a member of the library, and you must first sign up and create a username and password.

Visit the website