Children and young adults are welcome to seek homework help at the Library. Before coming in to the Library, you might want to see what's available on our Homework Help pages for Kids and Teens. These pages include links to the online "Help Now!" service. If you have questions about materials in the Library, call your branch or the Headquarters Youth Services Desk at (352) 334-3941.
Reference staff at the Headquarters library have access to our entire Gainesville Sun Index and microfilm of local newspapers dating back to the 1800s. Please see our Genealogy page for details, or call Headquarters reference at (352) 334-3939.
If you’re looking for information on a specific person or subject, the best way is to use our PowerSearch, which can search through millions of articles in dozens of databases. To find out more about PowerSearch, see the Research page.
In general, a database is a collection of information organized for quick and easy access by computer. Think of a database as an electronic filing system. The databases on the library website give you free access to variety of premium information such as magazine articles and encyclopedias – and you can find exactly what you want much faster than looking through printed books.
The Web offers huge amounts of information but no guarantee that a site is accurate, complete, up to date or unbiased, especially if it is a commercial site. Library databases have high quality information compiled from researched sources, and are commercial free and accurate by current standards.
A very wide variety of information is available, everything from medical research reports to automobile repair instructions. Our Research page will help guide you to the information you need. One feature on that page is our PowerSearch, which searches dozens of databases that contain millions of articles.
• If you are not at the library:
- The most likely cause is that a PC firewall program, such as Norton Internet Security, is not allowing the connection to the database. Disabling Norton’s ad blocker can help.
- Always access the database from a web page in the library’s website. Don’t go directly to it by searching for the name of the database or using a URL address from your browser’s history. Start at our Research page or View All Databases page, and you should have success.
- A few of our database providers do not allow access from outside the library. If the database listed indicates “In-library use only,” then you can’t access that information from a home PC or on any computer that’s not inside an ACLD library branch.
• If you are at the library using a library computer, ask a staff member to assist you.
Librarian-selected websites now appear on each of the topical "Research Category" pages. A list of the Research Categories can be found on the main Research page. Each Research Category has its own list of related websites. The collection of websites that was once called "Great Links" has been saved in a Delicious.com account.
