Database Basics
Databases are searching tools designed to help researchers FIND information, whereas OU Libraries is responsible for ACCESS to articles. We subscribe to both databases (paying for the indexing that the databases do) and to journals (to pay for full text access). Every database is different; if you don't see a full text in the database, look for OU Link to Article or take the article name or journal name back to the Libraries' catalog to search manually.
OU Link to Article will connect you to other full-text options or provide a link to Interlibrary Loan to obtain the article if we don't subscribe to it. Need help using our full text options? Try our full text tutorial to learn about the options for access or see our Interlibrary Loan video or handout.
The Lean Library browser extension can make accessing full text easier and will even direct you to Interlibrary Loan where needed.
Some databases cover only scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals, whereas others cover all types of materials.
General Science
- Web of Science
Multidisciplinary database covering sciences, social science, and humanities. - Natural Science Collection
Searches multiple databases in the following science areas: Agricultural, aquatic, atmospheric, biological, earth and environmental. - JSTOR
Provides access to journals in African-American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, General Science, History, Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology, Statistics. It is a digitized archive of the backfiles of selected scholarly journals. Full text available. - Google ScholarGoogle Scholar enables you to search for literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts, and technical reports from all broad areas of research. However, it indexes these items automatically and you should take care to verify the scholarly nature of items you find. Additionally, sometimes the OU Article Linker does not work correctly from Google Scholar results; in those cases take the title, journal, or authors and search in a database from the Libraries website.
- FirstSearch CollectionA list of databases available from FirstSearch on various subjects, including AnthropologyPlus, ArticleFirst, ClasePeriodica, Ebooks, ECO (Electronic Collections Online), ERIC, GEOBASE, GPO, History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Medline, OAIster, PapersFirst, Proceedings, World Almanac, WorldCat, and WorldCat Dissertations.
- Engineering Village
Engineering database - searches Compendex, Inspec, and GEOBASE. Click "Check Access" then click on "sign in" via your institution. Type in "University of Oklahoma" (your email will not work) then select University of Oklahoma. This will prompt you to log in with your 4x4. Then click "continue without signing in". It's complicated but it's worth it! - Dissertation AbstractsU.S. doctoral dissertations since 1861. Includes some international dissertations and US theses. Find most OU dissertations full text through summer 2013; after that date, find OU dissertations in SHAREOK. Most dissertations from other institutions, 1997 to present, are full text. To obtain pre-1997 dissertations, use the interlibrary loan request form.
Life Sciences
- PubMedU.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) database of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.
Web of Science Help
This video demos basis Web of Science usage. However, we do not have access to their Kopernio plugin to access pdfs. Please use the "OU Article Linker" instead.