Databases by Subject/Department
Links to 1) Databases by Subject, or Names of Databases; 2) Research Guides to find more databases and research help specific to your major or discipline.
Multidisciplinary Databases
- Academic Search Premier
General database via EBSCO that covers a wide range of research resources, including core subjects such as applied science, art, education, humanities, law, social science, business, and technology. A good place to start research. - Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window Covers a wide range of controversial topics and results may include sources such as magazine, newspaper or journal articles, government documents, political position papers, public policy statements, legal and legislative materials, pamphlets, statistical data, biographies, court cases, and links websites.
- Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature – scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine social sciences and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. From researchers pursuing scientific breakthroughs to academic institutions and government agencies evaluating research, Scopus is the abstract and indexing database of choice.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window A digital interdisciplinary archive of over 1,000 leading academic journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. JSTOR also includes other valuable materials for academic work, such as select monographs, photographs, manuscripts, speeches, maps, and pamphlets. All collections are full-text searchable, offer search-term highlighting, include high-quality images, and are interlinked by millions of citations and references.
- SAGE Journals Online This link opens in a new window A gateway to journal articles in over 500 SAGE publications, with coverage in the disciplines of business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. This database offers full-text access to numerous SAGE journal titles and includes complete access to the SAGE Full-Text Collections for education and psychology.
- Project MUSE This link opens in a new window This interdisciplinary journal collection provides full-text access to over 300 scholarly journals. It is particularly strong in the humanities disciplines, such as literature, history, and area studies (Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe), but also has content from the sciences and the social sciences.
- Criminal Justice Abstracts This link opens in a new windowCriminology database containing international journals, books, reports, dissertations and unpublished papers. Topics included are crime trends, crime prevention, deterrence, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice, police, courts, punishment, sentencing and more.
- National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database This link opens in a new windowProfessional criminal justice database from the US Dept of Justice, indexes articles, government reports, books, research reports, Congressional hearings, training materials and more.
- APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new windowAvailable via EBSCO. The American Psychological Associations (APA) notable database for locating abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations. This resource is the largest of its kind dedicated to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health, and it also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law. Material is drawn from over 2,000 periodicals in more than 20 languages.
- APA PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window Available via EBSCO. Features access to full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology and contains over 137,000 articles from more than 60 journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA), its imprint the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF), and allied organizations such as the Canadian Psychological Association. This database includes all journal articles, book reviews, letters to the editor, and errata from each journal.
- Sports Medicine and Education Index This link opens in a new window This kinesiology related database provides access to articles covering to topics of biomechanics, coaching, dance, health, physical education, physical fitness, physical therapy, recreation, sport psychology, and sport medicine.
- SPORTDiscus Full-Text This link opens in a new window This database offers comprehensive indexing of literature pertaining to sports, sports medicine, exercise psychology, biomechanics, psychology, training, coaching, physical education and fitness, physical fitness and related disciplines. Sport Discus includes over 565,000 records, with citations from over 1,200 periodicals (published 1975-present), books and theses (1949-present), conference reports, and videotapes.
- GreenFile This link opens in a new window GreenFILE contains information on global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. Some full-text articles included.
- Communication Source This link opens in a new windowCommunication Source is the most complete full-text research database for communication studies. It offers hundreds of top communication journals, magazines and other sources covering all related disciplines, including media studies, linguistics, speech pathology, rhetoric and discourse.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Provides indexing to journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats on all national literatures, literary criticism, language, linguistics, and folklore.
- ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window A comprehensive business database via ProQuest that includes book reviews, dissertations, newspapers, magazines, reference/reports, scholarly journals, and trade publications. It features over 4,000 journals and offers access to more than 2,900 full-text titles spanning business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, management techniques, and competitive and product information. This database includes access to ABI/INFORM Dateline, ABI/INFORM Global, and ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry.
Sciences | Technology
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window Science Direct provides access to over 2500 scientific scholarly journals in the areas of biochemistry, biological sciences, business and management science, chemistry, clinical medicine, earth sciences, economics, engineering and technology, environmental science, materials science, mathematics and computer science, microbiology and immunology, neurosciences, pharmacology and toxicology, physics, social sciences and more. Many articles are in full-text.
- Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature – scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine social sciences and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research. From researchers pursuing scientific breakthroughs to academic institutions and government agencies evaluating research, Scopus is the abstract and indexing database of choice.
- Wiley Online Library This link opens in a new window Wiley Online Library provides access to a multidisciplinary collection of online resources covering life, health and physical sciences, social science, and the humanities. Among the subjects covered are: architecture, arts, business, chemistry, earth and environmental science, engineering, humanities and social sciences, life sciences, mathematics and statistics, medicine and nursing, physics and astronomy, psychology, social and behavioral sciences.
- ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window Database accessible via ACM. A collection of journals, magazines and conference proceedings relating to computing, software, hardware, computational theory, AI, information science, human-computer interaction and instruction al technology.
- IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window Subjects covered include aerospace, biomedical technology, computer science, computing and control technology, consumer and industrial electronics, electrical and electronics engineering, information systems, power, robotics, telecommunications. To limit search to full text available to Pollak Library, select 'Search subscribed full-text content only' under the Publications heading on the IEEE search page.
- SpringerLink Journals This link opens in a new window SpringerLink database provides full-text coverage of scientific, technical, and medical literature. Among the subjects covered are: architecture and design, behavioral science, biomedical and life sciences, business and economics, chemistry and materials science, computer science, earth and environmental science, engineering, humanities, social sciences and law, mathematics and statistics, medicine, physics and astronomy, professional and applied computing.
- CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new windowCINAHL, the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature, is a comprehensive research tool for nursing, allied health, public health, biomedicine, and related fields. It provides indexing for articles from 5,400 journals in the fields of nursing and allied health. This database provides full text access to more than 1,300 journals dating back to 1937.
- AgeLine This link opens in a new windowAgeLine is available via EBSCO and it focuses exclusively on the population aged 50+ and issues of aging, presenting the literature of social gerontology and aging-related content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy. This database indexes over 600 journals, books, book chapters, reports, dissertations, consumer guides, and educational videos.
- Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window The Cochrane Library brings together research on the effectiveness of healthcare treatments and interventions, providing independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. The Cochrane Systematic Reviews are presented full text with abstract, plain language summary, meta-analysis, and exhaustive literature reviews. The collection of six databases can be searched / browsed individually or simultaneously.
- Science This link opens in a new window Includes access to 'Science Magazine,' a source for full-text peer-reviewed general-science articles, scientific news, commentary, and cutting-edge research. With full text of the journal's news stories, research reports, and commentary articles in a searchable database, enhanced by additional information, links, multimedia, and user services, as well as a database of scientific-product information.
- Nature This link opens in a new window Nature Publishing Group (NPG) combines Nature, Nature Research Journals, Nature Reviews Journals, NPG Academic Journals and NPG Reference publications, to provide a major information resource for the basic biological and physical sciences.
- EiVillage CompendexCompendex is an abstracting and indexing database, comprising coverage of >28M records of highly curated, globally published, scientific content, focused primarily on applied engineering research, literature and technical information. It supports in-depth search and discovery of both engineering-specific and engineering-related content primarily in the physical sciences, while also addressing increasing interdisciplinarity in engineering (including the computer sciences), and physical science domains overall.
Search Examples & Strategies
Search Examples & Strategies
Be elastic & be specific. Both are necessary. Narrow down your topic when your topic is too broad or when you find too much information. Expand your topic when you do not find enough information. You can also use the following techniques to help you narrow down or expand your searches.
Search Techniques
- AND -- to narrow down/refine a topic by combining words together
electronic commerce AND cloud computing
Big Data AND health care outcome
- OR -- use nested search to include synonyms or related words
(social media OR twitter)
(artificial intelligence OR AI)
- " " -- use double quotes to search words as a phrase and to make searches more precise
"Social media"
"machine learning"
- * -- use the asterisk/wildcard to truncate words so you can retrieve letters after the stem
teach* -> teach, teacher, teachers, teaching
pollut* -> pollute, pollutes, pollutant, polluting, pollution
Subject Words
Look for subject words on your topic.
Subject words are "controlled vocabulary" -- words and phrases -- that are used to categorize / organize informations resources (books, articles, and other media) so researchers can find them easily: Grouped under a "subject" regardless of what synonyms, variant spellings, and homographs authors/editors may have used. Researchers can't invent subject words but they can discover the subject word(s) for a topic in the description of a book, an article, or other information sources. ~ paraphrased from this source.