Research

America's News

America’s News provides access to 3,500+ sources across all 50 states, including 70+ titles from the state of Virginia alone–such as the Nelson Times, the Roanoke Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Martinsville Bulletin, Danville Register & Bee, The News-Gazette, The News Virginian, The Daily Progress, and the Virginian-Pilot among others.

Ancestry for Virginians

Search for your Virginian ancestors. Free public access to select content from Ancestry.com. Provided by the Library of VA.

Black Life in America

NewsBank presents Black Life in America, “The experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, 1704 to today.” This primary source collection offers an expansive window into centuries of African American history, culture and daily life—as well as the ways the dominant culture has portrayed and perceived people of African descent. Content in this database is sourced from more than 19,000 American and global news sources, including over 400 current and historical Black publications.

Explora Public Libraries

  • EBSCO’s Explora is a user-friendly search tool that supports both research and instruction. Explora searches across the following resources.
    • MasterFILE Complete – A comprehensive collection of full-text general interest articles from periodicals, newspapers, and books. This authoritative general information database is the best place to start your research project.
    • Read It! – Research while practicing reading skills. Read It! helps students who have a basic foundation in English grammar and reading but need level-appropriate reading material. Read It! is also a great tool for English Language Learners.

Search Consumer Reports

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Explora Secondary Schools

Explora supports both student research and classroom instruction with age-appropriate content for middle and high school learners with an easy-to-use interface and great accessibility tools, including translation and text to sound.

Gale in Context: Elementary

Gale In Context: Elementary meets the research needs of students in Kindergarten through grade 5, with age-appropriate content from magazines, newspapers, and reference materials, covering current events, the arts, science, health, people, government, history, and more.

Jones Memorial Library

Find local family records and obituaries from Jones Memorial, Lynchburg’s local history library.

Legal Forms

Find downloadable, fillable forms for basic legal transactions, current to Virginia code covering basic legal needs--wills, power of attorney, landlord/tenant, and lots more. Includes a comprehensive section of templates for small businesses including: invoices, leases, sales agreements, contracts, and more.

Lynchburg City Code

Look up the Lynchburg City Code of Ordinances.

News and Advance

Read the current News & Advance paper, or any article from the past eight years.

Virginia Laws

Look up Virginia laws. Brought to you by Virginia’s Legislative Information System.