by Theresa Tyner
Theresa Tyner is the director of the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
The Indiana State Library supports Indiana public libraries in many ways, but one of the best bargains it provides to all Hoosiers who have Internet access at home or at their public library is a free service called INSPIRE, a collection of databases and other resources that support the educational needs of Indiana students and lifelong learners of all ages.
INSPIRE includes full-text magazine and journal articles, newspapers, transcripts, images, videos, audio recordings, and other resources. In the Research area of INSPIRE, Indiana students can search one or more databases and collections according to grade level or subject area in order to access these resources. In the past two years, over 500,000,000 searches have been performed in INSPIRE.
A fun page in the TeachingBooks collection is the Author and Illustrator Pronunciator Guide. Over 3,000 authors and illustrators offer the correct pronunciation of their names with some stories or background information: the meaning, alternative pronunciations, surname changes in their family histories, or how they feel about their names.
The Test and Career Prep section contains modules to help improve reading and math skills; practice tests for citizenship, high school equivalency (GED), college admissions, and college graduate admissions; career exploration resources; and basic language instruction for thirty languages through Rosetta Stone.
The Indiana News and History section showcases four collections of newspapers and Indiana-related records: Hoosier State Chronicles, Newspaper Source Plus, Indiana Memory, and Indiana Legacy.
Newspaper Source Plus offers access to over 860 full-text newspapers for more current news and includes television and radio news transcripts.
The Hoosier State Chronicles is a collection of digital copies of over 144,000 issues of historic Indiana newspapers. While trying out the search function, I stumbled upon four ads for my Catholic great-grandfather’s Fort Wayne grocery store published in a Jewish Indianapolis newspaper, a source in which I never would have thought to look.
Indiana Memory is a portal to over 600,000 digitized Indiana-related primary source items, including books, photographs, maps, newspapers, and other media located from 466 collections in Indiana libraries, archives, and other institutions.
Indiana Legacy contains local history and vital records from Indiana libraries and other organizations. Users may search across one or more indices for birth, death, marriage, divorce, military and court records; obituaries; yearbooks and scrapbooks; and other records.
INSPIRE can be used at home by Indiana residents and is also available through the public computers at your local library. If you are unable to access INSPIRE databases from home, you may need an Access Indiana account, which can be created at this link: https://www.in.gov/access/index.html.
If you need assistance with INSPIRE, please contact the Reference Department at 765-362-2242, ext. 117.
