Resources » Adult

A to Z World Food is a food culture and traditional recipes database covering 174 countries. Features include recipes, food glossaries, food history timelines and thousands of photos.

AALBC.com maintains a curated and growing collection of over 13,000 titles covering a century of Black writing from around the world.  You’ll find reviews, bestsellers lists, awards, excerpts, publisher information, and more. Readers can discover books grouped by over 1,500 different categories.

This web site is devoted to the advancement of the science of African American Genealogy and genealogical study of other Ethnic Studies by Dr. James M. Rose, alias Dr. Roots.

American Periodicals, from the Center for Research Libraries, comes to the Evanston Public Library through a generous donation by the Malkinson Family.  American Periodicals contains digitized, full text copies of 387 publications spanning the 19th century through the dawn of the 20th century. The collection contains special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and photographic periodicals, as well as other historically significant titles. Key titles include: American Annual of Photography; The Craftsman; Electrical Age; Hampton’s Magazine;The Labor Journal; Popular Science; Woman’s Protest Against Woman Suffrage; and many more.

Because the database contains digitized images of periodical pages, researchers can see all of the original typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts exactly as they were originally published.  For more information, or for help using  American Periodicals, please call the Reference Desk at 847-448-8630, or use the online chat whenever the library is open.

Search U.S. Census records from 1790-1930; Evanston city directories from 1890-93; immigration records; birth, marriage, and death records; and old telephone directories from around the country. Normally, only available in the library.    Remote access link during COVID-19 crisis.  Access to this resource has been temporarily expanded to library cardholders working remotely, courtesy of ProQuest and its partner Ancestry.

Evanston Public Library partners with Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO) as a Legal Self-Help Center. Now, patrons can make a free, online appointment with our legal self-help navigator! Learn about the law, your legal rights, and how to go to court.  Our trained ILAO Navigator will help you:

• Search online for answers to your legal questions,
• Refer you to free and low cost legal providers, and
• Show you how to find and prepare court forms

Half-hour appointments are available, via video chat or phone, on Tuesdays 12-2 PM and Thursdays 4-6 PM.  Contact the Reference Desk at 847-448-8630 to book an appointment.

You can also look below for links to lists of local free and low-cost legal organizations that may be able to help you with your legal issues.  The lists are organized by legal category, and there is also a master list of all the legal organizations.

Charity Navigator helps charitable givers make intelligent giving decisions by providing information on over thirty-four hundred charities and by evaluating the financial health of each . Includes article and blog on wise and effective charitable giving.

Planning major or minor repairs to your house this summer and need to find someone to do the work?  Looking for a reliable Air Condtiioning contractor?  Need your basement waterproofed? For information about Chicago-area service providers, without the expense of subscribing to Angie’s List, use your Evanston Public Library card to access Chicago Consumers’ Checkbook, and find ratings, comments and advice on services from Accountants to Window Washers and everything in between.  (You can even find ratings on physicians, dentists, acupuncturists, and other health care practitioners.)  Do you want to rate a firm or leave your own comment?  You can do that, too.  Consumers’ CHECKBOOK/The Center for the Study of Services is an independent, nonprofit consumer organization founded in 1974 with the help of funding from the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs.  Their purpose is to provide consumers information to help them get high quality services and products at the best possible prices.

Contains the full text of the Defender from 1989 to the present.

The Evanston Public Library is pleased to announce a new online history resource aimed at expanding the public’s knowledge of local and African American history. The Chicago Defender, one of the most respected and well–known black news sources, chronicles decades of events and stories relevant to Chicago and Evanston’s African American community. Now, Evanston residents have direct access to the early and mid-century Chicago Defender issues online.

The complete full text of this legendary paper, from 1910-1975, including every obituary, photo, advertisement and article, is available to any Evanston resident with a library card.
For any questions, please email hnorborg@cityofevanston.org or call the Reference Desk at 847-448-8630.
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