Database Basics
Databases are commercial products designed to help researchers FIND information. This is a selection of databases suggested as a starting point for your research. OU Libraries has access to many additional databases, so if you do not find what you need in these databases, please contact your librarian or visit the full list at Databases and E-Resources.
OU Libraries is the one responsible for ACCESS to articles. We pay for full-text in more ways than just databases, so if you don't see the full-text in the database select OU Link to Article. OU Link to Article will connect you to other full-text options, let you search the catalog, or Interlibrary Loan the article if we don't own it.
General Databases
- Web of Science
Multidisciplinary database covering sciences, social science, and humanities. - 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.
- 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. - Annual ReviewsReviews of topics; good for finding more sources or citing by themselves.
Science, Environmental, and Engineering Databases
- Annual Review of Environment and ResourcesJournal covering topics in the environment and resources.
- 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! - GeoBase (via Engineering Village)Covers geography, geology, ecology, international development, and related disciplines. Materials indexed include journals, books, conference proceedings, and reports.
- GeoRef (via Proquest Earth Science Collection)International database of geoscience literature of the world. Materials indexed include journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses. Covers the geology of North America from 1785 to the present and the geology of the rest of the world from 1933 to the present. The database includes references to all publications of the U.S. Geological Survey. It is the electronic equivalent to Bibliography and Index of Geology.
- GeoScience WorldA comprehensive resource for research and communications in the geosciences, built on a core database aggregation of peer-reviewed journals indexed, linked, and inter-operable with GeoRef.
- GreenFILEProvides access to scholarly and general interest titles, as well as government documents and reports, related to the the positive and negative ways humans affect the environment.
- ICPSR1962 - present. Provides access to an archive of raw social science data for research and instruction. Electronic access to ICPSR is funded by the College of Arts and Sciences. You must create an account at https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/cgi-bin/newacct in order to access the data. All questions about ICPSR should be directed to the campus Official Representative for ICPSR, Dr. Ann Beutel, Department of Sociology.
- Natural Science Collection
Searches multiple databases in the following science areas: Agricultural, aquatic, atmospheric, biological, earth and environmental.
