Free eContent

The following links do not require a Library Card with the Lake Dallas Public Library to utilize their services. 

Ancestry

• Castle Garden
  Created by the Battery Conservancy from records at NARA, this free online searchable database contains entries for 10 million immigrants from 1830 through 1892, the year Ellis Island opened. Searchable by passenger name, the database provides information including age, sex, literacy, occupation, country of origin, port of embarkation, date of arrival into New York, and ship name. From 1855 - 1890, Castle Garden was America's first official immigration center.
• Ellis Island
  Ellis Island has an online searchable database using records from NARA, (created by the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation), of 22.5 million arrivals to New York between 1892 - 1924. Registration is required but free, and you can view scanned images of actual passenger manifests. You can also purchase copies through the site. Over 20 million immigrants passed through the Port of New York at Ellis Island from 1892 - 1924.
• Family Search
  Search from many databases of records from around the world, including many provided from the National Archives. This website is a project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).
• Passenger Lists 
  Electronic records at NARA relating to immigrants to America from Germany (1850-1897), Russia (1834-1897), Ireland (1846-1851), and Italy (1855-1900). The National Archives offers the AAD database as a free public resource and it can be accessed from anywhere.

Art

• Digital Public Library of America
  "DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science."
• National Public Library
  Contains information on 60,574 works from the National (UK) Portrait Gallery's collection of over 320,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, and photographs

Business

• Thomas Net
  Thomas Net is a Business to Business website that connects businesses, provides business insights, and assists with marketing. 
• Trade Stats Express
  Get the latest annual and quarterly trade data with customized outputs for visualization and analysis.  

Dissertations

• PQDT Open
  Find open access dissertations and theses. 
• EBSCOhost
  American Doctoral Dissertations, 1933 - 1955. 
• NDLTD
  Search over 4,000 electronic theses and dissertations. 

Driver Information and Driving Practice Tests

• Driving Tests: These practice tests are good for the learner license test, driver’s license test and the senior citizens’ refresher test. Practice tests for cars, motorcycles, and your CDL. Tests are available in English and Spanish. Handbooks and TX DMV FAQs are also available for free.
• DMV Written Test: These 16 practice examinations are based upon the 2018 Texas Driver Handbook. Each practice exam provides a grade at the end, as well as a link to the online 2018 Texas Driver Handbook.
• ePermitTest Driver Education: Ready to start preparing for your Texas drivers permit test? If you are between 14 and 24 years old and live in Dallas, Austin or anywhere else in the state of Texas, you will find everything you need to get started, right here on this page! Welcome to our fantastic, free driver’s education course, suitable for 2020 DPS permit test applicants. This course covers traffic laws, road signs, driving skills and everything else you will be assessed on during the written driver’s license test. It is never too soon to start studying for the permit test, so why not get started right now?
• ePermitTest Practice Tests: Use these interactive DMV practice tests to prepare for your driving exam. All of the practice tests are specific to Texas and are supplemented with study aids, and detailed explanations that come up whenever a student makes a mistake. We even have a real DMV test simulator that is provided in the same format as the written exam.  

eAudioBooks

• Sync - Audiobooks for teens.
• Storynory- Free audio stories for children.
• Open Culture - Free audiobooks, eBooks, Textbooks, and online courses.
• Loyal Books - Free public domain audiobooks and eBook downloads.
• Lit2Go - A free, online collection of stories and poems in MP3 format.
• LibriVox - Listen to public domain audiobooks for free online.

eBooks

• Baen Free Library - Small library of short stories - mostly the first of ongoing series to get you hungry for more.
• Project Gutenberg - The first to convert public domain works into a digital format, offering over 50,000 free ebooks. Choose from epub or kindle.
• Manybooks - A large selection of books and genres to select from.
• BookRix - Find thousands of books to read online and download free eBooks. Discover and read free books by indie authors as well as classical books.
• Read Print - Browse thousands of free books, get recommendations on new books, and keep track of what you read.
• Free Computer Books - Free computer, mathematics, technical books, and lecture notes.
• BookBub - BookBub keeps track of free ebooks from amazon and other retailers and compiles a list for you here.
• International Children's Digital Library - Check out children's books from all over the world.
• Internet Archive - The Internet Archive offers over 15,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts.
• Questia - Questia has a library of over 5,000 public domain, classic, and rare books you can read online for free.
• Open Library - Browse thousands of books by subject including art, fantasy, biography, and science.
• Free eBooks - Discover all-new, rising authors including independent authors of fiction/romance and non-fiction.
• Sacred-Text Archive - Browse the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric.

eBook Textbooks

• Open Culture - Free audiobooks, eBooks, Textbooks, and online courses.
• OpenStax - Free, high-quality text books available for free through Rice University.
• Wikibooks - Open-content textbook collection that anyone can edit. 
• The American Yawp - A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook.

Education

• CREDO (Ask staff for login information)
  Credo is aneasy-to-use tool for research, homework, and other reference needs. Gatherbackground information on your topic from over one thousand full-textencyclopedias and subject handbooks, as well as 500,000+ images and audio filesand over 1,000 videos.
• Heinonline
  HeinOnline is a premier online database containing more than 173 million pages and 270,000 titles of historical and government documents in a fully searchable, image-based format. HeinOnline bridges an important research gap by providing comprehensive coverage from inception of more than 2,700 law-related periodicals. In addition to its vast collection of academic journals, HeinOnline contains the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, and entire databases dedicated to treaties, constitutions, case law, world trials, classic treatises, international trade, foreign relations, U.S. Presidents, and much more.
• History Matters
  Designed for high school and college teachers and students,
  History Matters serves as a gateway to web resources and offers
  other useful materials for teaching U.S. history.
• ERIC
  The ERIC online system provides the public with a centralized ERIC Web site for searching the ERIC bibliographic database of more than 1.1 million citations going back to 1966. More than 107,000 full-text non-journal documents (issued 1993-2004), previously available through fee-based services only, are now available for free.
• Library of Congress
  Utilize databases from the Library of Congress that cover information from the arts and humanities to science and technology. 
• MERLOT  
  Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments.
• MIT OpenCourseWare
  Search for college class materials available free online.

Movies & Video Content 

• Public Domain Movies - Stream free, public domain movies
• Ted Talks - Watch free informational videos from experts in every field

Senior Resources

• Retirement Living
  Find resources for assisted living communities, memory care, nursing homes, home health care, active adult communities, independent living communities, and continuing care retirement communities.

Technology 

• Excel Easy
  Microsoft Excel is an important skill in many jobs. This online tutorial helps you become a master of the application with everything from Basics to Formulas. 
• GCF Learn Free
  From interactive tutorials for learning Microsoft Office to guided lessons on Reading and Mathematics, this Goodwill Community Foundation website provides you with easy-to-follow lessons complete with videos, tests, and downloads.
  
• Windows 10 Troubleshooting
  Learn how to troubleshoot issues with the Windows 10 operating system for free using this easy-to-follow online tutorial.

Texas

• Handbook of Texas
  Created and maintained by the Texas State Historical Association, the Handbook of Texas is a digital gateway to Texas' history. 
• Portal to Texas History
  A gateway to rare, historical, and primary source materials from or about Texas. 
• Texas.gov
  From birth certificates to vehicle registration and driver license renewal, Texas.gov has all of the information you need to live and thrive in Texas. 
• TRAIL
  The Texas Records and Information Locator (TRAIL) service provides access to Texas state government information contained in electronic publications. TRAIL facilitates ready access to the information for Texas citizens and other users.