If you need help finding something for your homework, you can contact the River Forest Public Library staff several ways.
Text a Librarian! -available during library hours
On the go and need to know? Text a Librarian!
RFPL Now Offers Text Reference Services (standard message rates apply).
Try it now with your cellphone. To get started, text “askrfpl” to the number 66746. Then send in your question. Save 66746 as “askrfpl” in your phone for all of your “need to know now” questions!

Meebo Chat Reference- available during library hours
Type directly into the text box below and hit enter to have your message sent to a River Forest Library Reference Librarian!

You can also contact us by email at reference(@)riverforestlibrary.org, or by phone at 708-366-5205 x 316.

Need help now and the Library is closed?
You may also use AskAway!- an online chat service which connects you to librarians all over the country.

You can use our Premium Resources at home for research any time, day or night. All you need is your library card! Access our complete list of premium online resources here.

Premium Resources Especially for Teens

MAS:Ultra
Designed specifically for high schoolers, MAS Ultra:School Edition, contains full-text from popular high school magazines and reference books, as well as biographies, and an image collection of over 400,000 images.

Mango Languages
Learn a new language! Access online lessons in Japanese, German, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese as well as 3 ESL courses for Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish.

Middle Search Plus
Find full-text articles from over 140 middle school magazines, biographies, essays and primary source documents in this research for middle school students.

Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
This online collection of resources is designed to help students as they research and study today’s hottest social issues, topics, and current events.

Points of View Reference Center
This database provides information on 250 controversial, current and hot topics. Series of essays on each topic contain multiple viewpoints and are constructed from a variety of resources.

Student Resource Center Gold
Geared toward middle school and high school students and teachers, this resource contains content based on national curriculum standards. Find articles as well as multimedia resources and study guides and more.

Helpful Websites for Research

Library Catalog
Access the SWAN Catalog here or through the link in the sidebar. Search by subject and location to find materials located at the River Forest Public Library.

Search Engines

Google
Unique features include Google News, Google Earth and Google Maps. Searchers can us double quotes ” ” for phrases, +(pluses before words to make sure they are seached especially common words) and -(minuses to get rid of annoying words)

Yahoo!Search
An extensive search engine, which responds to quotes, pluses and minuses. Also responds to the Boolean terms AND, OR, NOT (must be capitalized.)

Metacrawlers

Dogpile
Searches Google, Yahoo, LiveSearch, and Ask.com simultaneously.

Clusty
Takes the results of several well known search engines and clusters the sites for more effective results.

Surfwax
Searches several search engines and news sites and puts them in a handy list that can be sorted in several ways.

Subject Directories

About.com
Millions of websites, selected and grouped together by 750 expert “guides.”

Academic Info: Educational Subject Directory and Online Degrees
25,000 handpicked resources for high school and college students, grouped together in handy subject guides.

Infomine Scholarly Internet Resource Collections
Developed by the University of California, this site lists over 125,000 well annotated sites for academic research.

Librarians’ Internet Index
Sites on all topics, chosen and vetted by professional librarians .

Other Helpful Sites

Thinkfinity Browse for different subjects or find homework help, activities, and booklists.

Shmoop Free online guides to literature, history, poetry, plays and more.