The websites listed below are all free to you as a library member.
Please also see our other recommended websites, our e-books and our online magazines and newspapers.
Provides masses of information for family history researchers: Birth, Marriage & Death Records; Military; Criminal; Wills, and more. This resource is available on library PCs or library Wi-Fi, but not from home.
Provides huge amounts of information useful to family historians, including census data, the 1939 register and parish registers for England and Wales. Also includes some York specific records taken from Explore’s archives. This resource is available on library PCs or library Wi-Fi, but not from home.
Please note: this website is currently not displaying a friendly welcome message, but it still performs searches and provides records without a charge.
Historic newspaper pages from the British Library’s vast collection. Register for a free account and away you go. This resource is available on library PCs or library Wi-Fi, but not from home.
Oxford Dictionaries – English gives you a comprehensive guide to our language: definitions, pronunciations, synonyms, examples, and more: make the most of it!
Use library PCs or wifi for instant access to the resource, or log in from home with your library card number.
Whatever you are thinking of buying you can be sure that it is better to do some research on the product beforehand. You can access the online edition of Which? Magazine on library PCs, just ask a member of staff when you visit.
These resources provide free online access to 15 million + academic journal articles, from library PCs or library Wi-Fi (not from home). Be aware that the keyword search-box brings up a lot of articles which are not free to access mixed in with the ones which are free, so it can be tricky to identify the free ones that way. Instead you may find it more straightforward to browse just the free articles alone by using the “browse all journals” link.
March 2023: Statement about Oxford Online Reference and Oxford English Dictionary
We assessed usage of Oxford Online Reference and Oxford English Dictionary and found they received an average of only 200 clicks per month compared with 1,000 – 2,000 clicks for our other online reference resources. Therefore we have cancelled our subscription as of 31 March 2023. The £4000 cost of buying these resources has been added to our book budget.