Life in Britain is an online study resource for candidates preparing for the Life in the UK Test or British Citizenship Test. It includes the latest official study materials from the Home Office, plus hundreds of practice test questions in the same format as the official test.

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The world's most authoritative guide to the meaning, history and pronunciation of more than half a million words, tracing their usage through 2.5 million quotations, relaunched in December 2010 with new features including timelines, the Historical Thesaurus of the OED, and more search options. Regularly updated with new words.

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10 online books, clear and readable introductions to Twentieth Century Britain, British Politics, Drugs, Contemporary Art, History, Management, Mathematics, Nutrition, The Earth, and Planets.

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Free access to research guides on Victorian Literature and British and Irish Literature.

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Free access from all library PCs to one of the most useful websites for UK and International resources to help you trace your family tree.
Ancestry includes: census returns 1841-1901 for England, Wales, Scotland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man; indexes to births, marriages and deaths in England & Wales 1837-2005; First World War service records, pension records and medal rolls; lists of ships' passengers arriving in the UK 1890-1960; indexes to wills 1861-1941.

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Free access from PCs in all Solihull Libraries to records including: 1911 census for England & Wales; overseas indexes to births, marriages and deaths 1961-1994; lists of ships' passengers leaving the UK 1890-1960.
Please note that our Community Edition of Find My Past does not include access to the 'Living Relatives' records.

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This huge dictionary is the ultimate reference work on family names of the UK, covering 45,000 English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames.
It includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers, and those that had more than 20 bearers in the 1881 census.

Each entry contains lists of variant spellings of the name, an explanation of its origins (including the etymology), lists of early bearers and maps showing the distribution of the surname in the 1881 Census.

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The Genealogist is a specialist family history site, which has unique records not available on Ancestry or Find My Past. The unique records include tithe maps, some occupational records and many non-conformist registers.

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A highly realistic online simulation of the UK's driving theory test, for cars, motorcycles, large goods vehicles, and passenger carrying vehicles. It contains the entire official test question bank, hazard perception video clips and an online version of the Highway Code. All this material is licensed from the Driving Standards Agency (DSA), the people who set the tests. When you first use Theory Test Pro, you will need to register with your name, email address and password. There is no charge for this. This information allows Theory Test Pro to save your test scores so you can follow your progress as you practise for the test. You will need a valid email address to sign up for Theory Test Pro. Full access is available with a Solihull library card - it's free to join!

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This online archive provides copies of the Daily Express from 1900 to date, and also contains a collection of World War 2 papers, including the Yorkshire Post, Daily Worker and the Blackshirt, an excellent source for research.

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The British Newspaper Archive is a collection of millions of pages from hundreds of British newspapers from the 1700s to the 1970s.

There are local papers from all parts of the country available in fulltext, and thousands of new pages are being added each week at the British Library.

National titles include the Illustrated London News, and many suffragette titles

For this area, the Birmingham Daily Post, Birmingham Mail, Aris's Birmingham Gazette, Coventry Telegraph and Warwick & Warwickshire Advertiser are available.

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This archive of world newspapers, including most UK national papers and also local papers such as the Birmingham Mail and Sunday Mercury. In addition current issues of many papers including most UK ones are available as they are published in full image form – this includes the Times and Sunday Times which are not available on our enewspapers service PressReader. You can also explore diverse perspectives and stay informed on local, national and global topics, people and events by searching sources across more than 200 countries.

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The website of Which? magazine. As well as a two-year archive of reports, the site contains up-to-the-minute buying guides which make it more up-to-date than the magazines themselves. Available to use on computers at every library - just ask staff for assistance.

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