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Mary DeJong, M.L.S. mary.dejong@nau.edu
In Lesson 1 you learned that we must have a way to make previously published research findable, and databases fulfill this need. The Information Literacy Basics Tutorial provides an overview of databases in Lesson 6, including how to use the library's discovery tool (Quick Search). If you have not already read that lesson then you should do so now before digging in to this lesson! This lesson will discuss all the types of databases that campus libraries offer, with an emphasis on article databases.
Campus library databases
Campus library databases
Most campus libraries offer six main types of databases for finding sources:
A catalog for finding books and other media owned by a particular library
Article databases for finding articles (such as journal articles, conference papers, newspaper articles, and magazine articles)
Content-specific databases for finding just one specific type of content – such as data, patents, videos, newspaper articles, etc.
Publisher databases for finding sources produced by a particular publisher
E-print databases for finding manuscripts of research articles and papers
A discovery tool that can retrieve records from inside other databases
Now let's look at each of these in more detail.
- Catalogs
A catalog stores data on the unique set of books owned by a particular library. Catalogs also contain records for other materials owned by a library, such as video recordings, dissertations, theses, maps, etc. Most libraries offer a link to their catalog right on their home page. The link (or search box) might be called Catalog, or it might be called Find Books, or something like that.
Alternatively, some libraries offer a way to search their catalog through their discovery tool. A discovery tool is a search box that's often found on a library's home page, which offers a search for books, articles, media, and more. For example, the catalog for NAU's Cline Library is accessed through the discovery tool search (called Quick Search) on Cline Library's home page.
To the right you see one method for using the discovery tool to search the catalog.
2. Article databases
2. Article databases
Scientists and applied scientists tend to use article databases more than any other type of databases. Article databases help you find articles; most are specifically designed to help you find records for journal articles – but many article databases also contain records for conference papers, newspaper articles, magazine articles and sometimes book chapters. Examples of article databases include: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Academic Search, Google Scholar, etc.
Most library databases, including article databases, contain records that represent published sources. When you search a database, you'll pull up brief records for various sources. You can usually click on the brief record to bring up the full record which will provide a more detailed overview of what that particular source is about. Article databases also offer a way to click out to get to the full-text of the source, just like you see in the PubMed record shown below.
At the top of this PubMed record for a journal article (also available to view here) you can see the article was published in Journal of Attention Disorders (J. Atten. Disord.) in September 2016.
Below that you'll see the article title, the authors, and the abstract. But, to get to the full-text of this article you have to follow the links presented in the upper right corner of the record.
So, just to reiterate, most article databases help you find records that represent journal articles, but they don't usually provide the full-text of those journal articles. Getting to the full-text takes another click, and – if you recall from the first lesson – whether you can actually view or download the full-text is a bit complicated and depends on whether the source happens to be free, or whether you have access to a library's journal subscriptions, or a library's document delivery/interlibrary loan service. Otherwise you have to pay for it yourself.
Types of article databases
Types of article databases
The table below provides an alphabetical list of some article databases and shows the subjects they cover and the types of sources they track. Some cover many different subjects and so are considered multidisciplinary. Others focus on particular subjects and are considered subject-specific. All of these databases help you find journal articles but again note that some also contain records for newspaper articles and magazine articles. And, some contain records for other source types to a greater or lesser extent – such as conference papers, books, etc.
In case you're wondering where all these article databases come from, many are produced by private companies like EBSCO, Gale, Clarivate, ProQuest, Elsevier, Ovid, etc. For example, the company Clarivate produces Web of Science while the company Elsevier produces Scopus. Others are produced by professional societies or organizations, such as SciFinder which is produced by the American Chemical Society and MathSciNet which is produced by the American Mathematical Society.
A few databases are produced by United States government agencies, such as PubMed, which is produced by the National Library of Medicine. And of course Google produces Google Scholar. These last two examples (PubMed and Google Scholar) are freely available for anyone to search, but most article databases require a subscription to access. Campus libraries pay these subscription fees so that you don't have to!
Which of Cline Library's databases serve YOUR discipline?
Which of Cline Library's databases serve YOUR discipline?
Many of the databases listed by discipline below are subscription-based databases – paid for by Cline Library – and only accessible to current NAU students, faculty, and staff due to the subscription licensing terms. That means once you graduate, you may lose access to some of these databases. Even so, you should still be aware of the databases that serve your discipline. Why?
You may end up in a job where your employer offers access to these databases, and you'll look foolish if you are unaware of them.
You may end up working in a town or city with a college or university that allows members of the public to walk into the campus library and access these databases; you're going to look highly effective to your boss if you are aware of this and know which databases to search.
It would be embarrassing to work with colleagues who know about the databases that serve your discipline and mention them in conversation – but you have no idea what they are referring to.
In the list below, notice that Web of Science and Scopus are listed in nearly every discipline. Every science student should recognize the names of these two extremely well-known, multidisciplinary databases. In addition, you'll see some especially important subject-specific databases listed in red. Learn the names of the databases for your discipline!
ASTRONOMY: ADS (Astrophysics Data System), ArXiv, Web of Science, Scopus
BIOLOGY: BIOSIS, Web of Science, Scopus (For biomedicine use PubMed, for zoology use Zoological Record, for ecology use environmental science databases.)
CHEMISTRY/BIOCHEMISTRY: SciFinder, Web of Science, Scopus
EDUCATION: ERIC, Web of Science, Scopus
ENGINEERING: Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore (Compendex is the premier engineering database, but unfortunately Cline Library does not subscribe to it.)
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE/ECOLOGY: Agricultural and Environmental Science Collection, Web of Science, Scopus, CAB Abstracts, GreenFILE (there are lots of databases that cover this discipline and no one database stands out as the most important subject-specific database)
FORESTRY: CAB Abstracts, Web of Science, Scopus, Agricultural and Environmental Science Collection
GEOLOGY: GeoRef, Web of Science, Scopus
MATH: Web of Science, Scopus (MathSciNet is the premier math database, but unfortunately Cline Library does not subscribe to it.)
MEDICINE: PubMed, CINAHL
NURSING: CINAHL, PubMed
PHYSICS: Web of Science, Scopus, ArXiv
PSYCHOLOGY: PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus
SOCIOLOGY: SocIndex, Web of Science, Scopus
Where to find article databases
Where to find article databases
To find article databases on NAU's Cline Library website, click the link to Find databases which is just under the Quick Search box on the library's homepage.
Once you've done that, note that you can:
Search for a specific database by title.
Select the subject area for your topic from a drop down list, to view the best databases for that particular subject area.
View databases by type – such as patent databases, newspaper databases, etc.
Navigate to a particular database using an alphabetical list.
3. Content-specific databases
3. Content-specific databases
Content-specific databases help you find just one specific type of content. For example, there are content-specific databases devoted to helping you find just patents, or just newspaper articles, or just videos, etc. The adjacent table shows some examples of content-specific databases.
To find content-specific databases on Cline Library's website, click the Databases A-Z link on Cline Library's home page. Then, look for the drop-down menu to view databases by type as you see in the adjacent image (outlined in green).
4. Publisher databases
4. Publisher databases
Now we will move on to publisher databases. Publisher databases are provided by major publishers, and they present sources produced only by that publisher. Here are some examples:
There are also a few publisher databases that provide access to the collected output of groups of smaller publishers. Examples include:
Where to find publisher databases
Where to find publisher databases
To access publisher databases, use the same instructions that you see above for accessing article databases.
Should you use publisher databases?
Should you use publisher databases?
If you're looking for articles on a topic, as a general rule it's best to stick with searching article databases, since those databases track articles across multiple publishers. After all, why restrict your search to the offerings of just one publisher?
However, the situation is a bit different in certain disciplines like engineering, computer science, and math! In those disciplines, publisher databases can be essential to search for two reasons. The first reason is that not all libraries offer good article databases devoted to those disciplines, and so publisher databases can fill that gap.
The second reason is that in some of those disciplines, there's just one publisher that publishes most of the sources in that discipline, and so searching that publisher's database will result in a pretty comprehensive search. A good example is the database IEEE Xplore which tracks sources published by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). IEEE is the main publisher of sources in electrical engineering, so a search of IEEE Xplore should be pretty comprehensive.
5. Pre-print databases (also called e-print databases)
5. Pre-print databases (also called e-print databases)
Pre-print databases provide records for pre-prints, but that won't mean much to you unless you know what an pre-print is. A pre-print is an electronic manuscript version of a journal article or conference paper that's not yet been peer-reviewed, and is free for anyone to access. Some pre-print databases also contain post prints. A post-print is an article or paper manuscript after it's been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication.
Because they're manuscripts, pre-prints look different from formally published articles insofar as they've not been formatted to look like the typical PDF version of a journal article or conference paper. In other words, they've not been typeset by the publisher. Below you see an example of the manuscript version of an article found in the e-print database, arXiv, along with the formally typeset and published version of that same article in a journal:
As mentioned, some pre-print databases contain post-prints as well, and some even contain the final, published version of an article or paper in its typeset form.
Just so you know, e-print/pre-print databases are referred to by a variety of other names as well, including:
Pre-print (or e-print) repository
Pre-print (or e-print) server
Pre-print (or e-print) archive
Here you see a few examples of pre-print databases. By far the most well known is arXiv.
You can find and search pre-print databases for free on the web - but there are also a few linked from Cline Library's website.
Should you refer to and cite manuscript versions of journal articles and papers that you find in e-print databases? Certainly post-prints are safer to cite than pre-prints, since they've undergone peer review. But how you should use these databases and their contents may depend on the discipline you're in. So, get advice from your instructors, or simply find and use the final, published version of the journal article or conference paper instead of the e-print version.
6. Discovery tools
6. Discovery tools
A discovery tool is a database that doesn't contain its own content; rather, it finds content for you by going out to other database, looking in those databases for records on the topic you entered, then presenting you with whatever results it found. As you saw earlier, one of the databases it can mine is the library's catalog, but it can gather content from lots of other databases as well.
Cline Library's discovery tool is called Quick Search and you can see how it works by reviewing the Search Databases content from Lesson 6 of the Information Literacy Basics Tutorial. The reason Quick Search is highlighted in this tutorial is because it can be a great tool for novice searchers such as first-year college students. However, for upper-level students and professionals, discovery tools are usually not the best choice to search. Instead, use the article databases recommended for your discipline that you learned about earlier in this lesson.
Wait...what about Google Scholar? isn't Google Scholar GOOD ENOUGH for most research needs?
Wait...what about Google Scholar? isn't Google Scholar GOOD ENOUGH for most research needs?
You might be wondering why you should bother to search the databases that Cline Library provides when you can just search Google Scholar. There are a couple of reasons why Google Scholar is not always adequate. For one thing, many library databases like PubMed and Web of Science are curated to ensure that articles from predatory journals don't sneak into the database. Google Scholar is not curated and so you can get articles from predatory journals in your results.
Another reason is that the databases offered on the library's website have all kinds of search features that make it easier to zero in on the exact information you need. Google Scholar, on the other hand, has almost no search features.
Google Scholar can be really useful for finding a particular article (just copy and paste the article title into a Google Scholar search and you can usually find it). Or you can run simple searches in Google Scholar to get a general idea of what's available on your topic. But often you'll get better results from library databases, especially if you know how to search them!
We'll talk more about how to search databases and leverage their search features in Lesson 6, and you can see how Google Scholar compares to other databases in this regard.
You are finished with Lesson 4. What's next?
You are finished with Lesson 4. What's next?
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