Book Guides & Lesson Plans – Find lesson plans, discussion questions, novel units, reader’s theater scripts, and other instructional support for the books you’re reading in any K-12 classroom. 

Booklist: Build Your Own – Compile, organize, analyze, and share instructional materials associated with the books in your curriculum. 

Diverse Books – Include diverse cultural experiences in your instruction as reflected in quality fiction and nonfiction books. 

Literature-Based Vocabulary Lists – Have ready-to-use vocabulary lists – often organized by chapter – for the books that you’re teaching. Vocabulary lists include definitions, example sentences pulled from each book, and audio pronunciations.

Meet-the-Author Videos & Book Readings – Have the author reveal, anytime, the author’s purpose, writing, and research processes with these TeachingBooks.net exclusively created primary source materials. 

Resources for Award-Winning Books – Lists of U.S. Award Winning titles. 

Access with your Library Card  • All ages 

Google Translate is a free multilingual machine translation service. It includes language recognition, strong translations, and pronunciations.

Mobile apps available 

Operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, FamilySearch is among one of the largest genealogy-related, free databases worldwide. Explore free records, resources, and much more.

Perfect for family trees  • All ages 

Contribute to and discover grave sites worldwide. This completely free database includes burial information and details, and is continuously being added to daily. There are over 170 million records.

Perfect for family trees  • All ages 

The Genealogy Room collection, located within the Beale Memorial Library, contains books, magazines, printed vital records, and books on heraldry and family names. Complete California census records through 1920 are also available on microfilm. Additionally, the collection includes the microfiche index to the collection of the Sutro Library. In 2014, 300 new genealogy books were added to the collection, covering Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri. The Genealogy Room is open, during most normal operating hours of the Beale Memorial Library. Volunteers from the Kern County Genealogical Society are on hand to assist customers.

Perfect for family trees  • All ages 

To make a research request, fill out the following forms:

Obituary Request        Article / Research Request

Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) was one of the most highly acclaimed early Western photographers. This collection includes photographs of various Kern County scenes from the 1880s, with an emphasis on Rancho El Tejon.

Historical photos 

This collection includes photographs of assorted Kern County scenes following the 1952 earthquake.

Historical photos 

This collection includes miscellaneous illustrated and photographic postcards of Kern County locations.

Historical photos 

This collection includes Bakersfield city scenes from the 1990s.

Historical photos 

Since 2012, the Kern County Library has utilized Flickr to share both current programming photos and to also make the viewing of local history photos from the Local History Room available to the public.

Historical photos 

Part of the Online Archive of California (OAC) launched in 2002, which provides free public access to primary resource collections by more than 200 contributing institutions throughout California, the Kern County Library’s photograph collection includes images of historical interest of Bakersfield and other areas of Kern County from the late 1800s to 2001.

Historical photos 

The National Archives has collections spanning from general topics and through the 19th to 21st century. Among the notable collections include photos of WWII, Women’s Suffrage, and American Indians.

Historical photos 

The San Joaquin Valley Digitization Project began in the Summer of 2001. The project provided the 9 public libraries of the San Joaquin Valley Library System (SJVLS) with equipment and training so that they could digitize portions of their historical photograph collections. This Project aimed to improve access to historical images found in the region, to preserve the photographs and their valuable content, and to put in place the equipment, skills, and infrastructure that would enable the SJVLS member libraries to work independently to digitize the unique content in their collections. would not have been possible without the support of the California State Library, and the funding available under the Library Services and Technology Act.

Historical photos 

A local One-Stop Center within the County of Kern that serves a training center for local job seekers. Many services are available, including no-cost training, job placement services, and job-hunting resources.

Ages 18+