Encyclopedias & Reference

Featuring 200+ city travel guides, AtoZ World Travel is a comprehensive travel resource with information about points of interest, security, transportation, food and recipes, culture, language, and more.

Contains “Do-it-Yourself” car repair manuals for a large range of makes and models. Both domestic and imported manufacturers are included.

Watch the Auto Repair Source tutorial, opens a new window to learn more about this resource.

Includes full text for leading Canadian and international magazines and newspapers, such as Canadian MoneySaver, the Toronto Star, and Maclean's, as well as reference books, biographies, and thousands of images from the Canadian Press.

A large collection of scanned early Canadian print materials, including complete ebooks. Some resources are only accessible inside the library.

A convenient collection of research content and topic coverage which addresses subjects of interest to students and teachers today.

Watch the Explora tutorial, opens a new window for more information about this resource.

An online resource for our youngest researchers to use. Explora has topic overviews, research starters, and an easy-to-use search interface to make learning and research for projects easy and fun!

Primary Search is for elementary school learners. It includes full text for the most popular children's magazines, e-books, and easy-to-read encyclopedic entries written specifically for kids.

This database provides over 25,000 encyclopedic entries covering a variety of subject areas.

Watch the Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia tutorial, opens a new window to learn more about this resource.

Spanning the years 1844 to 2020, the archive has searchable first-hand accounts and coverage of events and people in Canadian history.

Full text for over 2,000 publications with full text information dating as far back as 1975. Covers covers a wide-range of subject areas including business, health, education, general science, multicultural issues and much more. This resource includes full-text and PDF versions of Consumer Reports from 1991 to present. 

Watch the MasterFILE Premier tutorial, opens a new window to learn more about this resource.

Access current and past issues of National Geographic Kids magazine as well as National Geographic Kids books and movies on kids' favourite topics.

Watch the National Geographic Kids, opens a new window tutorial to learn more about this resource.

The Oshawa Public Libraries has a growing collection of digitized materials hosted on the Internet Archive, including books, newsletters, directories, and more. These are keyword searchable and free to download.

Explore the world of animals, important people, and places in easy-to-read articles, images, and videos. You can also solve puzzles while learning fun facts or try out science experiments.