If you’re like me, you don’t realize the power inherent in your library card. Beyond borrowing books, magazines, and movies your library offers an incredible selection of online services and databases you can tap into if you have your card handy.

The key word there is “databases”. Your library website, if it’s anything like the Winnipeg Public Library site, is a mishmash of committee planning meetings gone awry. Over timethese sites gets added onto and lumped into the city’s swamp of a site and the needs of actual users are long forgotten in the multi-layers of bureaucracy libraries live in. It’s a horrible thing to try to navigate, but buried deep, and I mean deep, are access portals to many third-party services that are tied into libraries. Get looking, be persistent, and look for odd ways of describing third party services like “databases”, “ancillary services”, “info-guides”, “attached service”, and many more. Sorry, each library has its own way to describe additional services and the searching will have to be done by you for your library – but they are there. Somewhere.

In Winnipeg, here’s some of the services (“databases”) our library offers us with our library card:

Main database list.

Ancestry

Hoopla

Kanopy

Lynda – my fav learning place online!

Naxos jazz

Local Manitoba Newspaper Archives – searchable!
(psst, you can also look up the archives for the Winnipeg Tribune right here.)

Chilton’s – this is probably the most valuable resource available. These manuals are expensive yet necessary for the DIY’er. Free here with additional help for vehicle maintenance like average costs for repairs. Checking this resource I dodged a $600 repair estimate that only should have costed $150 – which it did, at a better repair shop.

More Winnipeg newspaper archives.

Don’t want to read old news? Then go for the latest local news! You can access the Winnipeg Free Press online through your library portal too. Thank you to local councillor @mathieuallard for pointing out this free Public Library resource.
https ://www.pressreader.com.wpl-dbs.winnipeg.ca/canada/winnipeg-free-press/20190228

I wanted folks to know there is a way to get free access through the Winnipeg Public Library. The link for the free press is here, but you need your library card: https://t.co/ZNUMv9Ji4K

— Matt Allard (@mathieuallard) February 28, 2019