These resources can also be accessed outside of the Library with the use of a Library of Virginia account. When prompted, please enter the email address associated with your LVA account, which is required for access as of June 5, 2019. Please see our New Catalog FAQ for more information.
If you have any questions contact the reference desk at 804-692-3777 or refdesk@lva.virginia.gov.
Make sure to also check out the digital resources of your public library, our digital collections, and our online crowd-sourcing projects.
Biographical and Geographical
American History Collection: Papers of George Washington
Provides the complete contents of The Papers released to date: the Colonial Series (1748-1775), Revolutionary War Series (1775-1783), Confederation Series (1784-1788), Presidential Series (1788-1796), Retirement Series (1797-1799) and the complete diaries (1748-1799).
American History Collection: Papers of James Madison
Contains the complete contents of the print edition: the Congressional Series (1751-1801), Secretary of State Series (1801-1805), Presidential Series (1809-1815), and Retirement Series (1817-1826).
American History Collection: Papers of John Marshall
Presents the complete contents of the print edition (1775-1835).
American History Collection: Papers of Thomas Jefferson
Provides the contents of the Main Series (1760-1804), volumes 1-12 of the Retirement Series (1809-1818), and volumes 1 and 2 of the Memorandum Books (a look at the daily life of Jefferson).
American History Collection: Papers of Woodrow Wilson
Presents the complete contents of the letterpress edition (1856-1924).
American History Collection: People of the Founding Era
Provides biographical information for over 75,000 men and women born between 1713 and 1815, drawn from the digitized papers of the founding fathers and other documentary editions of the Founding Era collection.
Biography & Genealogy Master Index
An index to reference works containing multiple biographies such as biographical dictionaries, who’s who publications, subject encyclopedias, and literary criticism volumes.
Mountain People: Life and Culture in Appalachia (1700-1950)
Includes diaries, journals and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers. There are also family histories, folklore, and accounts regarding the development of farming and mining communities. These chronicles provide details regarding the social, political, economic, scientific, religious and agricultural characteristics of the communities in the vast region between Lexington, Kentucky and Winchester, Virginia, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Birmingham, Alabama.
ProQuest History Vault. Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries, 1700-1896
Includes company records; business and personal correspondence; documents pertaining to the purchase, hire, medical care, and provisioning of slave laborers; descriptions of production processes; and journals recounting costs and income. The collections document slavery in enterprises such as gold, silver, copper, and lead mining; iron manufacturing, machine shop work, lumbering, quarrying, brickmaking, tobacco manufacturing, shipbuilding, and heavy construction; and building of railroads and canals.
ProQuest History Vault. Southern Life & African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records
Business records include ledger books, payroll books, cotton ginning books, work rules, account books, and receipts. Personal papers include family correspondence, diaries, and wills. The collection includes items from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida plantations.
Business and Economics
Mergent Online
U.S. and international company data including annual reports, stock prices, SEC filings, equity and industry reports, and company histories.
Nexis Uni
Includes aggregated economic data on businesses, corporations, and industries in the U.S. and abroad.
ReferenceUSA
U.S. business and residential directory. Allows users to generate lists of businesses by location and other variables such as business type, sales volume, number of employees, and year established. White pages can be used to conduct market research or locate friends and relatives. Search options include name, address, median home value, median home income, phone number, and more.
General Reference and Ebooks
Books in Print
Allows users to determine the publication status of U.S. books, ebooks, audio books, video, and multimedia titles. Users can also create lists of titles using various criteria such as awards won, format, audience category, review sources, and much more.
Career Transitions
Provides support with creating resumes, writing cover letters, and applying for positions. Includes career exploration tools to assist with discovering interests and identifying new opportunities based on work or military experience.
eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)
A collection of general interest eBooks (fiction and non-fiction) in PDF and EPUB formats. There are classics of literature, popular works, texts for teens and children, and an extensive history collection. Compatible eBook readers include Apple (iOS) devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) and Android devices (smartphones, tablets).
Novelist Plus
Comprehensive readers’ advisory resource with reading recommendations for fiction and nonfiction titles for all ages.
Oxford English Dictionary
Access to the 20-volume Second Edition and 3 Additions Series volumes, as well as OED’s historical thesaurus.
Oxford Reference Online
Over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works, plus the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Oxford Scholarship Online
Access to thousands of books in 20 subject areas from Oxford University Press. Book chapters can be read in the browser or downloaded or printed in pdf format. Compatible with Android, Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and the Bluefire Reader app.
Government Information and Legal Resources
Gale Legal Forms
Provides Virginia legal forms for divorce, wills and estates, real estate, bankruptcy, landlord tenant, power of attorney, name change, business incorporation and more.
Nexis Uni
Provides a broad array of federal and state legal resources including codes, constitutions, attorney general opinions, regulations, court rules, supreme court and court of appeals opinions, circuit court trial orders, legal journals, and much more.
Proquest Congressional Publications
Use this resource to locate congressional reports, hearings, bills, laws, and much more. Includes full text access to: the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, including the American State Papers (1789-present), bills and laws (1970-present), vote report (1987-present), and the Congressional Record (1985-present). See govinfo for additional full-text hearings. For earlier documents see A Century Of Lawmaking (Library of Congress).
Social Explorer
Provides quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. Enables users to create maps and reports to help visually analyze and understand demography and social change throughout history. Includes US Census data from 1790 to 2010, American Community Survey updates, the Religious Congregations and Membership Study (1980-2000) and more.
Maps and Architecture
Antique Map Price Record
Includes the most up-to-date information on the antique maps market, compiled from the offerings of hundreds of dealer and auction catalogs. The database currently contains over 80,000 entries, representing thousands of mapmakers, with new listings being routinely added as they become available.
FIMo (Fire Insurance Maps Online)
Historical Virginia fire insurance maps and real estate atlases that are in color and searchable by address or geographic coordinates. Includes some plat books. Fire insurance maps include information such as the outline of buildings, construction materials used, heights and functions of structures, and location of windows and doors. They also provide street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers. Original index maps have been overlaid with a modern street map to make research easier. Coverage: Maps in the public domain 1865-1963.
Historic Map Works Library Edition
Provides access to over 1.5 million U.S. cadastral (land ownership) maps from the late 1700’s to the present day and thousands of antiquarian maps covering the world (1400’s-1800’s). Includes geocoded maps which can be overlaid with present day Google map images and a Points of Interest Map Finding Tool to help users locate places and geographical features (e.g., buildings, streams, bridges, etc.). Provides access to over 1,000 city directories and to thousands of map-related images of family residences, buildings, advertisements, and more.
Proquest Sanborn Maps Geo Edition (1867-1970)
Historical Virginia fire insurance maps searchable by address or geographic coordinates. Allows maps from different years to be layered on top of each other and over modern street, satellite, and hybrid images. These maps are large-scale plans containing data that can be used to estimate the potential risk for urban structures. This includes information such as the outline of each building, the size, shape and construction materials, heights and functions of structures, and location of windows and doors. The maps also provide street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers.
Military Service
American Civil War Research Database
Provides military records for over 4 million soldiers and thousands of battles, with over 17,000 photographs. Information which can be used for statistical analysis such as soldiers’ methods of entry into and exit from the military, age at enlistment, and the number of prisoners taken and casualties incurred during battles is also provided.
Civil War in Words and Deeds
Regimental histories and first-person accounts compiled in the postwar period and early 20th century which chronicle the highs and lows of army life from 1861 through 1865. These accounts explore the reasons individuals volunteered, the experience of leaving home for the first time and entering camp, the clash of arms, the daily routines of camp life and garrison duty, and the anguish of imprisonment. Soldiers’ attitudes regarding army life, officers and fellow soldiers, the enemy, and the political questions of the war are candidly expressed. This collection comprises, in its entirety, the microfilm collection Travels in the Confederate States, as well as a small number of selected titles from the microfilm collection Travels in the New South I, 1865-1900.
Newspapers and Magazines
American Periodicals
Searchable digital images of over 1,100 periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children’s and women’s magazines, and many other historically-significant periodicals.
America’s News: Historical and Current
Includes full-text articles from the Richmond Times-Dispatch (1985-current), digital issues of the Richmond Times-Dispatch (1903-1986), as well as digital issues beginning January 1, 2019 (with a 90-day embargo) for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bristol Herald Courier, Culpeper Star Exponent, Daily Progress, Danville Register & Bee, News & Advance, News Virginian, News-Gazette, Roanoke Times, and Virginian-Pilot.
HarpWeek (1857-1912)
A fully-indexed and keyword searchable electronic archive of the news and literary journal Harper’s Weekly.
MasterFile Complete
Full-text magazines, reference books and primary source documents, as well as an extensive image collection containing photos, maps and flags.
Newspaper Archive
Digital collection of select issues of more than 5,000 national, local, and foreign newspapers, with some content dating back to the 1700’s. Virginia titles with extensive coverage include the Bee (Danville, VA), Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Danville Register, Harrisonburg Daily News Record, Progress Index (Petersburg, VA), Pulaski Southwest Times, Radford News Journal, and Winchester Star.
Nexis Uni
Full-text articles from foreign and domestic newspapers including the Richmond Times-Dispatch (1995-current), New York Times (1980-current), Washington Post (1977-current), and USA Today (1989-current). Includes death notices and obituaries. Provides access to popular magazines such as Consumer Reports, academic journals, and television and radio broadcast transcripts.
Proquest Civil War Era (1840-1865)
A digital collection that includes nearly 2,000 pamphlets and complete runs of eight newspaper titles (including Richmond’s Daily Dispatch from 14 January 1852 through 30 December 1865) which were specifically selected for the regional and diverse perspectives they offer.
Proquest Historical Newspapers. Black Newspaper Collection
Digital reproductions of pages. Includes the Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003), Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988), Chicago Defender (1909-1975), Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991), Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005), New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993), Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2003), Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001), and Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002).
Proquest Historical Newspapers. The Washington Post (1877-2002)
Provides full-text access with digital reproductions of pages.
Proquest Recent Newspapers: The Washington Post (2008-recent)
Digital issues with a 3-month content embargo.
Proquest Recent Newspapers: U.S. Southeast Collection
Digital issues with a 3-month content embargo. Includes Virginia’s Daily Press (2010-recent) and several titles from other states in the region.
RBDigital Magazines (formerly Zinio)
An electronic newsstand that offers digital copies of popular magazines. Magazines can be downloaded or read offline using mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. To begin click on the ‘Create New Account’ link and enter your library card number. Please note: your user name is your email address.
Student Resources
Kids InfoBits
A database developed especially for beginning researchers in Kindergarten through Grade 5. Features a developmentally appropriate, visually graphic interface & curriculum-related, age appropriate content from the best elementary reference sources.
Read It!
Designed for middle and high school students and adults who have a basic foundation in English grammar and reading but need adapted reading material for a variety of subjects. Content categories include History, Civics and Culture; Life Skills (including citizenship requirements, etiquette, currency, etc.); Literature; and Science. The database offers article translations in 34 languages.
Universal Class
Provides access to over 500 classes covering subjects ranging from computer software and marine biology to gardening and meditation. Includes ESL (English as a second language) and U.S. Citizenship Test Preparation courses. Classes include lesson assignments, exams, discussion boards, and progress assessments.
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