Editor's note: Below is the first in a monthly column written by Yorkville Public Library staff members.

Databases available with your Yorkville Public Library card include Ancestry Library Edition, a genealogy search tool of many databases available only within the Library building.  This is an increasingly popular database as people are seeking to trace their ancestry. 

Along with Ancestry, the Library offers Heritage Quest, a genealogy database that is available from your home computer with your Library card number. For those who are interested in the geography of our planet, there is AtoZ Maps Online that offers outline maps, topographical maps, political maps, in addition to historic, thematic, scientific maps and more.  What a great resource for students and educators.

FirstSearch is a site that contains library databases of holdings from all over the country.  If you are unable to find what you need in our PrairieCat catalog, search WorldCat, a catalog cooperative with over 130 million records of items in libraries worldwide.  Gale Reference Center Gold is a large database of full-text articles from periodicals.  The Grolier Online is a database geared for children. 

Novelist is an excellent reader’s advisory database for fiction readers.  Don’t know what to read next?  This site can help.  Searches can be made by author, title, and/or age group plus such options as author “Read-Alike”, plot descriptions, and recommended reads.  Check it out.

Of course, the Library offers access to PrairieCat catalog, a database of the Prairie Area Library System, the system of over 300 libraries that includes Yorkville Public Library.  The Library also has a website www.yorkville.lib.il.us, where activities, classes, and closings are updated regularly.