What's a database?

A database is an electronic catalog of publications, typically organized in a way to allow both keyword searching (like in Google) and browsing (where you can click through a list of pre-defined terms) for information possible.

Databases in the Library highly emphasize scholarly literature. Most of this comes from peer reviewed journals that publish research articles and other scholarly items like literature reviews, but we also have databases that give you access to dictionaries, encyclopedias and other reference books, newspapers, magazines, reports, case law, and books covered a huge variety of topics.

Most of the databases we link to are licensed by university for student use during your courses.  However, there are also open access databases and tools available freely on the web, and for any that we recommend strongly, we link to them as well.  Our primary search tool, EBSCO Discovery Service, searches both licensed databases (like Academic Search Complete) and open access databases (like PubMed Central).